That is due to the fact that software that uses DevOps practices are constantly maintained and improved, making it faster to deal with errors and problems. Hence, developing software within a DevOps world brings many advantages when looking at security and speed.

How can DevOps practices help improve Software Development?

DevOps practices have an impact on every level of the software development process. With DevOps, software development and delivery have been completely altered, and probably for the better. Indeed, rather than having to release new versions of apps every year or so, software developers operating under the DevOps model are able to release updates and fixes quickly every so often.

Moreover, there are some tools such as Jenkins or Docker that are allowing the automation of various procedures and application processes, hence, simplifying the software development process within the DevOps life cycle.

What are the Benefits of having DevOps practices in Software Development?

Relying on a DevOps model can bring quite a few benefits to the development process.

With DevOps, ongoing software development is less complex, thus making it easier and faster for software developers to fix vulnerabilities or issues. Moreover, with the development process being faster, developers are more productive and can achieve better work and focus on tasks and projects that are relevant.

Besides, this leads to an enhanced customer experience as software deployment is faster and the applications usually last longer. Finally, DevOps brings more collaboration and teamwork within a team, which is only beneficial to any company.

DevOps also help developers to better fix vulnerabilities, by implementing the right processes and procedures. However, cybercriminals become more and more cunning and adapt their strategy according to the new releases, so it is a never-ending loop.

Therefore, DevOps practices are able to give software developers the tools they need to make their applications more secure. This is usually done by adopting open-source security procedures in the first stages of the software development life cycle. Indeed, these open-source security measures will reduce the cost all the while allowing the development teams to be more innovative during the continuous delivery processes.

Hence, by implementing security practices, software developers will make their software more secure with continuous evaluation, testing, and updating.

Conclusion

With the DevOps model, organizations are ensuring the security of their products and infrastructures. By automating security in the development process, software developers can deliver safer products quickly.

More and more companies are trying to deliver better and safer software faster, hence, rendering DevOps indispensable and making way towards the integral implementation of DevSecOps in the near future. DevSecOps will allow having security directly implemented at every stage of the software development process.

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Many testing teams have managed to meet the demand for accelerated testing, but how many can claim that they’d be able to keep up high-quality standards in testing if the rate of development accelerated even further?

Accelerate with AI

Given the veracity and the pace of change, new technologies, advanced capabilities and more innovative methods, many QA teams are looking to AI in order to capitalise on the efficiencies it offers by way of speed, innovation, and accuracy.

In testing, the ability to blend human expertise with AI-powered insights has never been more important: it’s about using the best person or bot for the job in order to keep pace with testing and ensure quality. For example, QA teams can indicate the prioritised user journeys to test first before switching to an AI-powered test mode in order to test other journeys that they might not have even considered. These could be focusing on modules that have changed or exploring areas that have not received adequate test coverage. Teams can now also automate the capture and analysis of runtime performance data and enable the testing process to “learn” where potential bottlenecks are in order to eradicate them.

AI is also enhancing application discovery capabilities. This means testing can now automatically build a GUI interaction model by routinely learning about the elements that compose an application screen. Companies can then use this information to automatically populate the automation logic in an application model.

Simplifying performance testing and device labs

In the past few years, we’ve seen subtle but critical improvements in load and performance testing products that teams should look to take on in order to keep pace as DevOps influences development, product and service delivery.

Performance testing is often a black art that requires specialist skills to set up. However, now techniques have evolved that allows test teams to scale up the load from the functional tests they have developed. Intelligent frameworks that can multiply the load from functional tests to create realistic load tests, put performance testing capabilities into the mainstream.

Similarly, testing the breadth and scale across a matrix of different devices, operating systems and browsers can now be simplified. Testers now have the ability to create a scalable ‘device lab’ that virtualises and manages thousands of devices, each with different OS and software combinations that can be run against different test cases and user types. The idea is that a test can be developed once and then run against a matrix of different real scenarios. And multiple tests can be cued up and multiplexed intelligently against this device lab.

Maximising the Team

The days of only looking at “does the code work” are in the rear-view mirror. Now more than ever it is vital businesses are measured by software delivering positive business outcomes and delighting customers. At the same time, the team are under cost pressure to deliver more with less in an ever-shortening time window. They must take advantage of automation while maintaining essential human influence where it makes sense in order to optimise testing.

By using AI, intelligent performance testing and device labs to test the digital experience, testing teams can keep the pace of DevOps, and improve time to market and customer satisfaction. This is without losing sight of the bigger picture, which is helping the business to understand and test the user journey and gain valuable insight into the entire user experience.

Written by John Bates, CEO at Eggplant

The post Keeping pace with DevOps: How testing teams can deliver appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

“The security company needs to know the company is embracing agile IT,” said Jon Oltsik, Senior Principal Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, in our conversation at the 2016 RSA Conference in San Francisco. “[Security] needs to adopt their processes and their technologies so that they’re flexible enough to keep up with agile IT.”

“The primary trend we see is companies trying to use their existing technologies and processes for cloud, for agile IT. That makes sense. They’re trying to get ROI on the tools that they know. But typically that doesn’t work,” added Oltsik, who advises companies to look at what they have, but also what they need to adjust in a new agile world.

There is not one new environment, said Oltsik. It’s a heterogeneous environment and you need tools that can operate in this kind of environment both on-premise and off-premise. You don’t want security controls specific to one environment, but rather security controls that can adapt to all the changes that are happening in the hybrid environment.

When we talked about microsegmentation, Oltsik said we need to have segmentation policies from workload to workload. Ask yourself, “What is the workload. Where is it? What does it need to talk to?” This is a completely new way of thinking about security that companies really need to adopt.

Read more on this topic [article]: Survey finds companies want security as part of continuous development but aren’t there yet

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Some 102 information security professionals at a US industry conference were surveyed to understand how organisations are using the cloud, the dynamics between security and DevOps, and associated challenges and perceived benefits for integrating security and DevOps.

Key findings from the report

• 58% of respondents said their company brings security into the design stage of a product lifecycle.
• But only 50% of respondents believe that security is capable of moving as fast as new release cycles.
• 65% cited a lack of resources (i.e. talent and budget) and siloed departments as the biggest barriers to getting seurity into release cycles earlier.
• 64% said they have a mixed or hybrid cloud deployment; only 8% reported not having cloud infrastructure.

“For organisations to stay competitive today, they need a faster way to continuously innovate and release new products and services. As such, continuous development methods such as DevOps are becoming commonplace among the most innovative, successful companies,” said Sami Laine, Chief Technologist at CloudPassage.

“However, with these methods, security often gets left out or drags behind. Our survey results demonstrate that organisations must find a way to integrate security with DevOps if they want to realise the benefits of continuous delivery and stay safe at the same time,” Laine added.

Companies lack infrastructure to support continuous innovation

Two-thirds (65%) of security professionals cited both lack of resources (i.e. talent and budget) and siloed departments as the biggest barriers to getting security earlier into release cycles. Lack of resources was reported as the main barrier by 34% of the respondents. Fewer respondents, 18%, said security would slow down the release cycle. Eight% said they believe “DevOps derails security.”

Security is moving toward continuous software delivery

When asked the stage at which security is brought into software or product development release cycles, more than half of respondents (58%) said security is introduced during phase one, the concept and design phase. A quarter of respondents (22%) said security is brought in during phase two, the coding and implementation phase.

Mixed emotions on security moving as fast as releases

While more than half of respondents (58%) said security is brought into the development lifecycle early, over half of respondents (51%) disagreed and or did not know if security is capable of moving as fast as product or service release cycles.

Benefits of integrating security and DevOps span the business

One-third (33%) of security professionals said the biggest business benefit for integrating security into DevOps methods is better security, faster. Twenty-five% of respondents said they believe the biggest benefit is new applications without delays caused by security. Twenty-four% said the driver is improved relationships between DevOps and security teams.

Most businesses have mixed cloud environments

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of IT security professionals characterised their organisation’s cloud deployment as being “mixed or hybrid.” Alternatively, 16% of respondents described their cloud deployment as private, 13% said they operate in the public cloud, and just 8% of respondents said they do not have any cloud infrastructure.

Edited from press release by Cecilia Rehn.

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