Automated Compliance and Governance in DevOps

Compliance and governance are essential considerations in software development, especially as organizations adopt DevOps practices that aim to accelerate the delivery of software. The traditional manual process of verifying and documenting compliance can slow down the software delivery process, and introduce human error into the equation. Automated compliance and governance in DevOps help organizations to maintain high standards of quality, security, and compliance while speeding up the delivery process.

Here are some of the benefits of automated compliance and governance in DevOps:

  1. Increased speed and efficiency: Automated compliance and governance processes can be completed much faster than manual processes, helping to speed up the software delivery process.
  2. Improved accuracy: Automated compliance and governance processes reduce the risk of human error, helping ensure compliance is properly verified and documented.
  3. Increased transparency: Automated compliance and governance processes provide clear documentation of compliance, making it easier to track and monitor compliance over time.
  4. Better risk management: Automated compliance and governance help organizations to identify and manage risk more effectively, reducing the likelihood of security breaches and other incidents.
  5. Better alignment with DevOps practices: Automated compliance and governance processes are well-suited to the fast-paced, iterative nature of DevOps, helping organizations to maintain high standards of quality and security while still delivering software quickly.

Let’s take a closer look at an example of how to automate compliance and governance in DevOps.

Imagine you have a web application that needs to be deployed on a cloud platform. One of the compliance requirements is that the web server must use the HTTPS protocol for secure communication. To ensure this requirement is met, you can use the infrastructure as a code tool Terraform to automate the deployment process.

Here is an example of a Terraform configuration file that sets up an AWS Elastic Beanstalk environment for the web application, and ensures that HTTPS is used for communication:

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-1"
}

module "web_app" {
  source = "terraform-aws-modules/elasticbeanstalk/aws"

  name = "my-web-app"
  environment_type = "SingleInstance"

  settings = {
    "aws:elb:listener:443": {
      "Protocol" : "HTTPS",
      "InstanceProtocol" : "HTTPS",
      "InstancePort" : "443",
      "SSLCertificateId" : "arn:aws:acm:us-east-1:123456789012:certificate/12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012"
    }
  }
}

In this example, the Terraform configuration sets up an AWS Elastic Beanstalk environment for the web application and uses the settings block to specify the HTTPS listener for the environment’s load balancer. The SSLCertificateId field specifies the Amazon Certificate Manager (ACM) certificate for secure communication.

By using Terraform to automate the deployment process, you can ensure that the compliance requirement for secure communication is consistently met every time the web application is deployed.

In conclusion, this is just one example of how you can use infrastructure as code to automate compliance and governance in DevOps. By automating compliance and governance, you can ensure that your applications and infrastructure are always in compliance with your organization’s policies and regulations, while also speeding up the delivery process.

Advertisement