Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 31 | Page 38

CIO OPINION CIO opinion “ VULNERABILITIES AREN’T FOUND AFTER RELEASE; THEY ARE UNCOVERED IN RIGOROUS ONGOING TESTING THROUGHOUT THE DEVOPS PROCESS. ////////////////// Mandla Mbonambi, CEO of Africonology There’s a new sheriff in town DevOps is a shift in IT delivery and development that focuses on speed, agility and lean methodologies to drive innovation and collaboration across teams. However, according to Mandla Mbonambi, CEO of Africonology, DevSecOps has emerged, which is the integration of development and security operations that allows for the embedding of security protocols and considerations throughout the DevOps process. 38 INTELLIGENTCIO D evSecOps pulls a new team into the conversation – security. It’s an imperative driven by the need to ensure that security remains at the forefront of collaboration and development, not something that’s brought in at the end when the loopholes are set, and the gaps widen. With this level of integration, it allows for the organisation to pivot and innovate at speed but within the highly relevant constraints of security. According to a Deloitte Insights paper – DevSecOps and the cyber imperative – DevSecOps allows for organisations to ‘enhance their approaches to cyber and other risks’. It ensures that security, privacy, policy and controls are embedded into the DevOps culture from the outset, allowing deeper integration of security throughout the lifecycle of innovation. In light of how vast the cybercrime landscape has become, and how sophisticated the threat vectors, it’s almost a surprise that DevSecOps has taken so long. Ultimately, organisations have to consider the governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) mandates that impact on their security stance across all areas of the business. This is further complicated by the tenets of GDPR, that are far-reaching, the incoming Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), and the regulations around security that govern the US, Asia and Australia. Ensuring that security is embedded within any solution has become mandatory to ensure global competitiveness and alignment. DevSecOps is neatly defined by Deloitte as being ‘an evolution of DevOps culture and thinking’ – it doesn’t disrupt the www.intelligentcio.com