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We are living in an increasingly connected world with mobile apps and cloud computing defining our business models and processes. The demand for continuous value addition has never been felt as aggressively as now. The onus of delivering continuous value at increased momentum is being felt by developers and development companies of all sizes and niches across the spectrum.
Just because the penetration of smart applications and enterprise-ready software solutions is passing through an all-time high demand, Agile practices and platforms like DevOps are continuously getting popular. DevOps single-handedly as a platform transformed the software development practices. Principally because of DevOps, Agile development methodology has become so popular in recent years.
While Waterfall method has been used by software development companies for years and always required very meticulous planning for the whole project well in advance. But Agile became quickly popular across modern development projects because of the vast scope of iteration and collaboration. Agile allows incorporating client feedbacks often in between the development process and thus ensures better quality and assured output. DevOps as a platform brings together all these benefits to allow collaboration among the developers and operation teams of IT firms.
When it comes to constant collaboration and optimum quality coupled with the smooth delivery of software products, DevOps is the most reliable and standout platform. It boosts the end-user experience to the maximum level. The DevOps can be characterized as a platform to ensure the business-focused software delivery with the Agile approach.
Utilizing Automated Testing to Ensure Security Advantage
In the traditional development process, we generally carried out the testing custom code to minimize flaws and vulnerabilities at the very end of the development process. But this approach actually makes the process slower besides having the risk of carrying the same vulnerabilities. In contrast, the continuous improvement and continuous development approaches of DevOps make way for automated testing of small batches of code. DevOps achieve this by utilizing a lot of automated Application Security Testing (AST) tools wherever possible.
The basic objective of such an approach is to deliver highly secure code while maintaining a high speed of delivery. While manual reviews of the code cannot ensure clearing all errors and bugs at one go, these automated and meticulously crafted tools can check the code without any instances of repetitive faultiness. This will actually help to curb all the unnecessary time and money spent in reworking the code. Undoubtedly, this high-speed testing with least chances of vulnerabilities will ensure not only optimum speed and quality of development but also will provide huge competitive advantages.
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The Key Role Played by DevOps Collaboration Culture
One of the significant aspects that define the DevOps culture is the easy collaboration among developers and operation team all through the development process. This all-pervasive collaboration plays a key role in every parameter. While thanks to the DevOps platforms, developers and operation professionals can continuously keep in touch and collaborate with each other. The application or software security also gets a big boost through this collaborative culture.
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Provides Security-Specific Checklist and Facilitates Training
A detailed checklist for security-specific attributes can be provided to the developers or integrating their code with the minimum vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the platform can also facilitate training on various policy matters for the developers and operation executives. In that respect, DevOps can really play the role of resource generator and launch pad for all new software development projects.
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Ensures Best Security Protocols and Practices
In addition to the above-mentioned points, DevOps also ensures best security protocols and practices to prevent any type of cyber-attacks and security threats related to cross-site scripting, SQL injection, intrusions into configuration files and buffer overflows. The platform also provides ready help to safeguard IT infrastructure setup across containers and cloud platforms.
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Facilitates a Clean Development Process
When it comes to the advantages of the Agile work process in relation to software development and release, the collaborative environment of DevOps literally offers the most appropriate and well-equipped environment. As the platform actively reduces recurring security issues and coding errors of all types through embedded tools, a very lean and clean development process can be ensured.
Embrace Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
Another primary approach or strategic step that helped countless development companies relying on DevOps platform is the continuous development and continuous integration approach. When you need to deliver developers much updated information about software development and deployment, the well-coordinated develop and test environment of DevOps having the boost of continuous input can really play a significant role. DevOps always offers a great apparatus to find all the vulnerabilities and bugs before they really take off.
Basically, DevOps is known to take deeper consideration of all aspects of software starting from the service lifecycle, software development needs, planning, and deployment to maintenance. The best part is obviously the automated deployment of the software with an automated script. This deployment pipeline of DevOps helps continuous integration of required tools, testing automation, continuous development and deployment.
How Continuous Integration and Continuous Development Work on DevOps Platform
- Any change made with the source code ultimately triggers a process on the server.
- The development process integrating the changes allows continuous compilation and supplies all the tools as well as artifacts necessary for deployment as a comprehensive package.
- Following the creation of these packages complete with tools, automated tests are carried out on them. The test is done to evaluate whether the code works as per expectations.
- With the completion of the initial testing process, the software can be subjected to a more rigorous quality assurance process.
- In the end, after approval of the software by the evaluation and testing team, it is straight sent for production.
Conclusion
The above-mentioned approaches to optimize security and to streamline the development process at DevOps have been picked up to utilize the organic and built-in power of the platform. DevOps has emerged as a robust and developer-friendly platform for building and deploying niche software applications thanks to these inbuilt security advantages.
