The Top Five DevOps Compliance Challenges

Increasing cross-functional collaboration and speed and dependability while integrating security, quality, and feedback into the pipeline are among the main objectives of DevOps. Most firms have varied degrees of success in achieving this goal with automation and shift left tactics. Nonetheless, a large amount of manual procedures are still involved in compliance controls and audit activities, which renders them ineffective and prone to error.

Even in the present day, manual compliance is probably the most popular and straightforward type of compliance procedure utilized by businesses. It typically involves forms with specific questions that may occasionally have straightforward, objective answers, comments, and even descriptions, as well as the measuring and tracking of a pre-defined set of properties/metrics.

As a result, a compliance officer faces significant difficulties in verifying this information. Again, to make sure all procedures are carried out in accordance with expectations, firms must audit the compliance process on a regular basis.

Security and compliance are dependent on effective DevOps governance. Improved communication between diverse teams and stakeholders is necessary, as is the use of clear, widely accepted language about security and compliance. Everybody should understand how a pipeline operates and the many approval workflows it contains.

Teams that had a thorough understanding of the change process were 1.8 times more likely to fall into the elite performer category, citing the DevOps Research & Assessment (DORA) 2019 study.

Even though a lot of companies have jumped on the DevOps bandwagon quickly, they nevertheless cling to old restrictions that support the division of labor. These archaic methods must be abandoned by modern DevOps teams, who must instead shift security and compliance to the left, with developers handling security and compliance requirements.

Cloud data breaches frequently highlight typical mistakes that may be prevented, like weak identity, credentials, and access management, malevolent insiders, account hijacking, and privilege misuse, as well as insecure interfaces and APIs. Although teams can overcome these obstacles by adhering to security best practices, cloud computing presents more difficult security and compliance issues.