The software development process continues to change drastically. DevOps has taken over the world, as automation is the foremost goal of DevOps to maximize efficiencies when deploying software, as more Development and IT teams work in harmony. Unlike the Waterfall Model and Agile developments, the DevOps environment delivery process needs to be continuous. Instead of releasing application updates every month or so, DevOps teams can deploy changes every day and sometimes several times a day. The DevOps model is very much customer-centric to offer the best possible experience across fast-moving channels.
Results from the 2017 State of DevOps Report suggest striking differences between high performance organizations employing DevOps principles and organizations that do not. According to the report, high performance organizations have far higher software deployment frequencies (46 times more frequent), far faster lead time for changes (440 times faster), and a significantly lower software change failure rate (five times lower) than their lower performance counterparts.
So, it’s clear to say that anyone not adopting DevOps practices are getting left behind.
Image Source: https://razorops.com/blog/benefits-of-devops/
But how does that fit in with PKI?
DevOps teams often struggle with consistently managing PKI and this is especially true when it comes to managing digital certificate infrastructure. The process of requesting a certificate from a Certificate Authority (CA), receiving it, binding it to an endpoint, and managing it is often slow and lacks visibility. Sometimes, DevOps teams avoid established practices by using less secure means of cryptography or issuing their own certificates – putting their organizations at risk. However, PKI certificates from a globally trusted CA offers the best way for engineers to ensure security, identity and compliance of containers and the code within them.
GlobalSign’s Atlas Certificate Management platform which is built to scale and manages large volumes of PKI certificates can be used in the DevOps environment. Organizations can now automate the procurement and installation of trusted digital certificates within continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines and applications to secure DevOps practices and support digital transformation.
The benefits of CI/CD pipeline
- Increase in release flow reliability, since the human element is excluded, and the verification stages are automated.
- The ability to release small pieces of work enables teams to release important things first.
- Reduction of pressure on QA teams from frequent releases.
- Reduction of the complexity of releases involving the work of multiple teams within the same project. Automation helps to avoid potential conflicts in the multiple teams’ work and provides tools when they arise.
- Improvement of the security of rebuilding the release candidate if a ticket blocks the release and needs to be removed.
- Improvement in the visibility of all release stops, such as a failed or non-working builds, because an automatic system notifies the right person about the problem at the right time.
DevOps CI/CD is a reliable methodology that helps teams be more productive while improving product quality and speed of release.
Introducing GlobalSign & HashiCorp: Securely Integrated PKI for DevOps
GlobalSign continues to develop its presence in DevOps to work alongside developers to help ensure their rapidly evolving applications are secure, including the recent integration into HashiCorp Vault. Utilizing Atlas, the automation capabilities and APIs make it easy to embed certificates for any DevOps team at any phase of the CI/CD pipeline.
HashiCorp Vault is an identity-based security solution that leverages trusted sources of identity to keep secrets and application data secure. A secret is anything that you want to tightly control access to, such as API keys, passwords, or certificates.
This integration allows users to issue certificates, list and revoke them. In addition, Vault guarantees encryption to the end-user along with, access management and audit trials.
How it works
For more details on the GlobalSign’s Atlas Certificate Provider Plugin for HashiCorp Vault, and how you can secure your DevOps processes without slowing them down, visit https://www. globalsign.com/en/pki-devops/atlas-hashicorp-vault.
Utilizing PKI in your DevOps methodologies ensures a secure environment for you to build and deploy with confidence that you are shipping the best product for your end users while protecting your business.
Increasing performance, reducing costs, and building better software that has fewer failures is something all IT teams should be looking to achieve. With a secure DevOps approach, this is more than achievable.
