Many of us know that introducing large batches of changes into production is risky. However, because of complexity and many moving parts, it can also be risky when deploying changes in small batches – without the right techniques. One of the better ways of mitigating deployment risk is by gradually deploying small and frequent changes Read more…
When using serverless on AWS, you do not need to worry about load balancing, auto scaling, operating system management, managing utilization, or underlying hardware failures. All of it is abstracted from you so that you can focus on coding. What’s more, since you only pay for what you use, you can do more experimentation. It Read more…
One of the biggest challenges with managing usernames, passwords, API keys, and other secrets is balancing the need to make it simple for authorized accounts, databases, and APIs to securely access these secrets while adhering to the principle of least privilege. Simply put, most everyone knows not to store sensitive configuration information in plain text Read more…
Many enterprises attempt to drive software development and delivery towards a DevOps mindset. Likewise, organizations struggle with increasing security challenges while adopting these innovative software practices. Embedding security within the deployment lifecycle is non-negotiable. Therefore, integration of security into CI/CD workflows need be done cautiously to meet an ever-evolving technology landscape. DevSecOps is an important Read more…
The AWS QuickStart team open sourced a project they use for automated testing of CloudFormation templates called TaskCat. With TaskCat, you can run automated tests to learn of and fix any errors that arise in your CloudFormation templates. If you have been using CloudFormation for any period of time, you will learn that even if Read more…
Traditionally, managing transport layer security (TLS) digital certificates that are used for encrypting data in transit between clients and servers has been a very manual process. In 2016, Amazon Web Services began offering the AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) – a service for managing these digital certificates. By using AWS CloudFormation and AWS CodePipeline, you can Read more…
“AWS Config provides AWS managed rules, which are predefined, customizable rules that AWS Config uses to evaluate whether your AWS resources comply with common best practices.” (Source) There are over 100 Managed Config Rules that AWS provides for all types of checks including Analytics, Compute, Database, Machine Learning, Security, Identity & Compliance, and Storage – Read more…
Whether it’s in or out of the cloud, most IT compliance usually comes in the form of a multitude of checklists – like the one you see below. It might be a spreadsheet, website, or other “digital” tool but, in the end, it’s still checklists that software teams must comply with by filling out forms Read more…
It’s 7:37 AM on a Sunday. You’re in the Security Operations Center (SOC) and alarms and emails are seemingly being triggered everywhere. You and a colleague are combing through dashboards and logs to determine what is causing these alerts. After running around with your “hair on fire” for around 30 minutes, you finally determine that Read more…
Value stream mapping (VSM) is a technique for modeling process workflows. In software development, one of the key reasons for creating a VSM is determining the bottlenecks slowing down the delivery of value to end users. While VSM is used in many different industries (mostly related to physical goods), the topic of this post is Read more…