DevSecOps Best Practices to Drive a People-Centric Approach to Break Silos
Driving collaboration between development, operations, and security teams within an organization is easier said than done. Each team has a different view of the end goal which is significantly biased towards their core responsibilities. For instance, a security person is all about compliance, ensuring the application under development meets National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-53. At the same time, a developer has barely any idea about that specification and its relevance. This is where silos develop between security and development teams. Silos develop when varied departments are structured to work as independent entities with visions, goals, and responsibilities of their own. DevSecOps pipeline not just breaks silos it also encourages and integrates a very vital aspect, security, into the mix assuring safety of the application throughout the enterprise application development process and later.
In this blog, we talk about how adopting DevSecOps best practices across people helps break down team silos and improves collaboration and productivity within an organization.
DevSecOps Best Practices to Drive a People Centric Approach
A Culture of Innovation Values & Rewards Risk
Rooted in the culture of IT operations, enterprise DevSecOps transforms the siloed work model by integrating development, operations, and security. The cultural shift this leads to is tangible. As these multiple teams work in collaboration, there is alignment across all aspects of the enterprise application development process while embedding security. IT teams that make a transition towards DevSecOps vs. DevOps can gauge the cultural shift by gathering feedback. One-on-one check-ins and culture surveys are just a few ways to assure every employee’s alignment towards business goals and, thus, organizational goals. Only then can the organization reap the benefits of this operating model.
Additionally, DevSecOps encourages innovation. With teams working together, instead of in silos, they help improve workflows by readily sharing ideas. Collaborative values become part and parcel of your teams’ standard mode of operation, and everyone has a stake in the quality of the final product. Companies may thus even witness less turnover and an increase in employee morale.
Embracing Automation Raises the Bar on Security
In DevSecOps, automation is the common denominator that empowers development, operations, and security people in the unified DevSecOps team. Infusing automation counts among DevSecOps best practices. Multiple teams can collaborate and scale their perspectives across the software development life cycle (SDLC). They do so using automation regardless of the deployment framework. Deployment framework may be a private cloud, on-premises, hybrid, or private cloud. Automation accelerates the speed of security with security a part of an organization’s new culture. When security principles are incorporated right at the beginning of the SDLC, better known as the DevSecOps pipeline, there are shorter feedback loops and less friction. Security personnel can, hence, identify and fix security and compliance issues within no time. Remember, test automation extenuates issues early and frequently, hence mitigating the scope of timely and costly delays. In addition, there is less risk of human error, boosting productivity and improving product quality throughout the enterprise application development process.
Success Comes When Effective Communication Drives Collaboration
Effective communication is central to DevSecOps infrastructure, with efficiency and speed being its key features. Adopting a DevSecOps helps departments to work and communicate within a culture that oozes transparency. It is transparency that is the most important throughout the software development process. In case an issue or vulnerability occurs, teams can recognize, prevent, or resolve quality, security, and other issues faster as they collaborate during application development. “The goal is to bring everyone together and have the security folks start to think a bit like the development folks and the development folks start to pick up security thinking, so we are all rowing the boat together*,” says Jon Wall, enterprise security executive at Microsoft. You can steadily have different teams collaborate on a project using DevSecOps tools and adopting DevSecOps best practices. While working collaboratively, teams develop a common language or terminology, thus boosting communication.
Accountability is the Glue that Ties Commitment to the Result
DevSecOps best practices across the people boost’s shared accountability within the organization. It is through shared accountability that DevSecOps tools bring about greater collaboration and productivity. As you adopt DevSecOps operating model, development, operations, and security teams own a successful software launch free from security hazards. Every individual is held accountable for the successful overall enterprise application development process. Instead of making secure code – the only responsibility of developers, DevSecOps shares the responsibility for security testing with everyone, including developers, internal security teams, business owners, quality assurance (QA) teams, business partners, integrators, and cloud service providers. This leads to improved collaboration. When organizations integrate security into every step of the application development process, each team plays a critical role in identifying and resolving vulnerabilities and issues. Higher-quality apps and better team morale result in employee satisfaction reducing turnover, lessening overhead costs, and sustaining productivity month after month.
Trust is Earned Where Actions Meet Words
As DevSecOps helps to promote collaboration, it builds on a culture of trust. You break down app production barriers with DevSecOps. Everyone on multiple teams thus works with the same knowledge, DevSecOps metrics, and feedback, speeding up the software development life cycle. Remember, DevSecOps doesn’t boil down to just a list of best practices, but it is about the more significant cultural shift that drives these practices. DevSecOps can only succeed when you set up new communication chains between teams and get complete buy-in from different teams and leadership to implement changes. As you prioritize security at each stage of enterprise application development, you foster trust amongst teams and boost them to work together to keep security front and center while building cross-functional teams ready to break down silos.
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