DevOps and Compliance Automation Tools: The Case for Continuous Compliance Automation

As key organizational enablers, DevOps departments are increasingly prioritizing Compliance activities. After all, they must support the enterprise’s efforts to comply with several regulatory regimes, including those involving personal privacy (GDPR), credit cards (PCI DSS), and health privacy (HIPAA Compliance). According to Gartner, 70% of enterprises in regulated verticals will have integrated Compliance as code into their DevOps toolchains by 2026. The toolchain includes tools and technology that enable DevOps teams to collaborate across the entire software lifecycle, reducing risk management and improving lead time by at least 15%. While this is good news, many DevOps teams struggle to meet InfoSec Compliance requirements with continuous delivery. Why? Because Compliance and auditing processes are often not integrated into application development and delivery workflows, hindering DevOps’s usual speed and agility.

Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) leaders can use DevOps Compliance automation tools to enforce their policies across their infrastructure, apps, and databases. This enables organizations to achieve Compliance as part of their continuous delivery pipelines. And, as leading Compliance experts, anecdotes ensure DevOps achieve continuous Compliance, sans the hassle.

Gartner recently released the "Market Guide for Continuous Compliance Automation Tools in DevOps." This market guide was created to help clarify the following:

• What are Compliance automation tools in DevOps, and why are they needed
• Beneficial features of Compliance automation tools in DevOps
• How such tools can help DevOps achieve continuous Compliance

What Are DevOps Compliance Automation Tools?

Compliance automation tools in DevOps allow automated assessment and enforcement of security and Compliance policies as part of application delivery workflows. They also eliminate the need for manual and time-consuming evidence gathering, allowing automated processes to gather both the historical and current evidence needed for controls. These automation tools collect information through the various DevOps layers, such as database, application code, infrastructure, and open source.

Database Compliance: Automation tools check for policy adherence, gaps in Compliance, audit reporting, and database integration support.

Application Code Compliance: These tools test tool integrations, ensure secure coding standards, analyze software composition, enforce code policy, and deliver traceability reports.

Infrastructure Compliance: Automation tools detect configuration changes, leverage cloud security via APIs, report on cloud posture, and enforce policies.

Open Source Software Compliance: These automation tools undertake OSS security, license, and inventory monitoring and offer real-time alerts and breach notifications.

Why Are DevOps Compliance Automation Tools Needed?

Compliance automation tools for DevOps became necessary because organizations needed to upgrade their outdated, manual, and error-prone Compliance and governance processes. Finding gaps and demonstrating evidence of Compliance is only possible with automation. Instead of uncovering instances of non-Compliance late in the cycle when fixing mistakes are costly or even impossible, using automation tools allows organizations to find gaps early, making the entire process more efficient and stable— while reducing Compliance risks and possible security breaches.

In DevOps, platform and product engineering teams are already successfully utilizing Compliance automation tools to meet their organizations’ regulatory framework requirements. As organizations face more regulatory obligations, automating continuous Compliance in DevOps will become increasingly valuable to I&O leaders.

Beneficial Features of Tools for Continuous Compliance Automation in DevOps

When evaluating automation tools for continuous Compliance capabilities, consider these important features: 

• Complex auditing capabilities: Tools with the ability to audit – including evidence– and generate automatic reports serve to eliminate the delays and expenses associated with fixing DevOps-related Compliance issues
  
  
• Defined templates for known Compliance rules: Having a set of clear templates prevents common breaches and identifies common controls that map to various regulatory frameworks
  
  
• Enhanced detection techniques: These techniques – such as configuration integrity checks and infrastructure and OSS scans-- provide feedback in real-time to ensure quick issue remediation
  
  
• Clearly defined access rights: When access rights are delineated, organizations enjoy a greater level of control, visibility, traceability, and accountability
  
  
• Easy integration and plug-ins: Continuous Compliance tools should integrate deeply, seamlessly, and securely with your existing tech stack
  

How anecdotes Can Help Achieve Continuous Compliance in DevOps

Gartner touts Compliance automation tools as the key to helping DevOps drive efficiencies in meeting the requirements of the different regulatory frameworks and to enable continuous delivery of compliant database deployments. anecdotes, the recommended DevOps vendor by Gartner, is the first operating system (OS) that covers every stage of a business’s Compliance journey, and the ultimate DevOps Compliance automation tool.

The anecdotes Compliance OS platform was designed to collect and map data from various sources, including the cloud, and use that data to power applications covering various compliance aspects, including audit management, policies, and risk analysis. anecdotes’ automation ensures developers receive the rapid and actionable feedback they need to deliver compliant products at all stages of the pipeline. This ensures companies receive time-to-value from their DevOps Compliance automation tools without digging deep into their tech stacks, enabling them to scale their Compliance programs to keep up with their growth.