devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Category: DevOps Toolbox

  • Quali Adds Free Tier to DevOps Automation Platform

    Quali Adds Free Tier to DevOps Automation Platform

    Quali has added a free tier of service to its Torque platform for automating infrastructure provisioning and application workload deployments.

    In addition, the company has updated the software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to provide blueprints through which it provides tighter integration with Terraform, an open source infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tool, along with support for custom tags to make it easier to generate reports and dashboards that provide greater visibility into infrastructure costs.

    Quali CEO Lior Koriat said the free tier is intended to make the Torque platform more accessible to both small teams of DevOps professionals and individual users. It includes the ability to build environments on Amazon Web Services (AWS) or the Microsoft Azure cloud in addition to providing integration with a variety of DevOps tools and platforms and access to a sample blueprint library. Support for the free tier is provided via an existing community edition of the platform.

    Koriat said Torque takes IaC a step further by also making it possible to automatically deploy complete application environments on top of infrastructure provisioned as code using blueprints rather than low-level Terraform scripts. The goal is to increase developer productivity by extending Terraform so that developers can spin up environments across multiple cloud computing platforms via self-service, he added.

    That approach also sharply reduces the chances a cloud platform will be misconfigured, which Koriat noted is the bane of cloud security professionals’ existence. Most developers lack the cybersecurity expertise required to ensure cloud computing environments are configured properly. Simplifying the provisioning of infrastructure is especially critical when developers employ complex platforms such as Kubernetes, added Koriat.

    At the same time, Quali’s Koriat said IT leaders want more visibility into how cloud resources are being consumed as the number of workloads deployed in these environments steadily increases. Developers tend not to remember to de-provision cloud resources when no longer needed, which Koriat noted conspires to increase cloud costs unnecessarily.

    It’s not clear just yet how quickly DevOps teams might be moving away from relying on lower-level tools toward automation frameworks accessed via a SaaS platform. However, as application environments become more complex, it becomes even more challenging to provision and manage IT environments—especially since many DevOps teams are still working from home to help limit the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    One way or another, the amount of time and effort spent managing IT infrastructure needs to be reduced. After all, while application environments are increasing in both size and complexity the number of individuals that make up a DevOps team remains largely the same. The need to rely more on automation frameworks has reached a tipping point that is becoming increasingly obvious to all concerned.

    As more organizations start to operate as software companies in the age of digital business transformation, it’s clear the way IT has been managed in the past is about to fundamentally change. The issue now is determining which automation framework lends itself best to enabling DevOps teams to achieve that goal.

  • How Log4j Becomes a Serious DevOps Problem

    How Log4j Becomes a Serious DevOps Problem

    The recent discovery of the Apache Log4j vulnerability has wide-ranging implications for anyone who develops software, especially for those in the DevOps realm. What’s most troubling about the vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) is how prevalent the use of Log4j is. The vulnerability is reported in a vast array of applications and directly impacts numerous Apache projects, including Druid, Dubbo, Flink, Flume, Hadoop, Kafka, Solr, Spark and Struts. There are also numerous Cisco programs impacted by the vulnerability. The list of impacted applications and libraries seems to be almost infinite, extending to Elastic LogStash, GrayLog2, Neo4J, Steam, Twitter and even the VMware Tanzu family of programs. 

    Simply put, any application that uses Log4J for logging and tracing is subject to the identified family of attacks known as Log4Shell. Those attacks prove easy to exploit and can be used to take control of vulnerable servers.

    Why DevOps Practitioners Should be Concerned

    The world of DevOps is all about reiteration, where features and improvements to applications are slipstreamed into production environments. To accelerate development, the QA process is usually limited to the most recent changes.

    In other words, developers, via their pipelines, can often establish a baseline of quality and then speed up their CI/CD pipelines by testing only what has changed since the last iteration of the application. This process ensures an acceptable level of quality without introducing what are perceived to be unnecessary steps.

    However, those processes do not take into account newly discovered flaws in older APIs and libraries, meaning that those flaws could telegraph into deployed applications and leave DevOps teams completely unaware of the impact and possible disruption. Detecting flaws after an application is deployed is like putting the cart in front of the horse.

    Further complicating the situation is that many developers lack a well-defined and well-maintained software bill of materials (SBOM), which means developers may be unaware of the components and/or libraries being used in a deployed application.

    Without an SBOM, it becomes increasingly difficult to remediate an issue with an application—especially if developers are unaware of the issue to begin with.

    Where Should Responsibility Lie?

    More often than not, vulnerabilities introduced into applications become a game of finger-pointing, where developers blame library suppliers or infosec staffers, and infosec blames developers for not performing due diligence on the components they are selecting to incorporate into their applications.

    Of course, finger-pointing only adds to the angst and delays the process of remediation and does nothing to determine where the responsibility for detecting and remediating vulnerabilities lies. DevOps teams need to put these squabbles aside and establish a process that deals with unintentionally introduced vulnerabilities. What’s more, DevOps teams need to invest in DevSecOps to make sure that vulnerabilities are detected and remediated as quickly as possible.

    To avoid the potentially massive disruption that a vulnerability like Log4Shell can cause, those running DevOps should consider:

    • Creating and maintaining an SBOM 
    • Deploying automated tools that scan for discovered vulnerabilities
    • Automatically comparing the SBOM against vulnerabilities
    • Including DevSecOps processes within their CI/CD pipelines
    • Frequently testing applications for flaws
    • Coordinating with cybersecurity personnel when a flaw is discovered
    • Patching frequently

    With more and more vulnerabilities discovered on an almost daily basis, DevOps teams must be ever vigilant about what components are incorporated into their applications. What’s more, with the increased use of low-code/no-code tools and integrated development environments (IDEs), DevOps will also need to consider if those tools use other libraries that can become compromised.

     

     

  • Hasura Adds Engine to Transform REST APIs to GraphQL

    Hasura Adds Engine to Transform REST APIs to GraphQL

    Hasura today unveiled a Data Hub repository for integrating application programming interfaces (APIs). The repository includes a connector that makes it easier for IT organizations to convert REST APIs into ones based on the GraphQL specification.

    Tanmai Gopal, Hasura CEO, said the connector eliminates the need to write custom code to connect existing REST endpoints to a GraphQL API using an update to the transformation engine developed by Hasura. Instead, the model for the GraphQL API is automatically overlayed on top of the REST API endpoint, explained Gopal.

    Originally developed by Facebook, GraphQL has emerged as a popular alternative to REST APIs because it enables developers to retrieve data at a more granular level, which results in improved performance. Hasura provides an instance of a GraphQL engine the company has developed around a project that is now hosted by the GraphQL Foundation, an arm of the Linux Foundation. GraphQL provides a complete description of the data made available via an API and is organized in terms of types and fields rather than traditional endpoints. In addition to clarifying what data is available via that API, developers can employ types to avoid writing manual parsing code.

    Hasura claims its engine has been downloaded more than 400 million times since its introduction in 2018. It automates the repetitive work involved in mapping models to APIs by providing common access patterns for pagination, filtering, joining, setting up authorization rules and optimizing performance. Hasura also provides APIs that are able to connect to multiple services and data sources, embed domain-specific authorization logic and provide additional layers of security.

    Hasura is now also adding a way to create identity-specific authorization policies for any GraphQL service or data source, enforcing security by limiting the models and fields of the GraphQL APIs in a way that eliminates the need for IT teams to cobble together disparate libraries and frameworks, said Gopal.

    In addition, Hasura is adding support for Google Cloud to Hasura Cloud in beta, a managed API integration service the company already provides via the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Support for the Microsoft Azure cloud will be forthcoming in 2022, added Gopal.

    It’s not clear the degree to which organizations are looking to replace existing REST APIs with ones based on GraphQL. However, Gopal noted there are plenty of instances where organizations need to overlay a GraphQL API on top of a REST API that they may not own. For example, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that currently exposes a REST API may not have any plans to support GraphQL, he said.

    There’s no doubt the number of GraphQL APIs being employed in the enterprise is about to dramatically increase. The challenge now is finding a way to manage them alongside the previous generations of APIs that remain. The trouble is that many of those APIs were created by developers that may not have documented the APIs they created or, in some cases, never informed DevOps teams that they existed in the first place.

  • Speedscale Makes Free API Observability Tool Available

    Speedscale Makes Free API Observability Tool Available

    Speedscale today announced it is making a free edition of its observability tool for application programming interfaces (APIs) available to developers.

    Ken Ahrens, Speedscale CEO, said the goal is to expose more developers to the company’s API testing tool that can be accessed on their local machine via a command line interface (CLI). Dubbed Speedscale CLI, it is designed to enable individual developers to inspect, detect and map API calls on local applications or containers rather than having to subscribe to the company’s current API testing platform via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

    That approach should reduce the number of disruptions DevOps teams are likely to encounter after an application is deployed in a production environment, noted Ahrens.

    Speedscale CLI features include service mapping, which enables developers to auto-detect and map external dependencies that could break, a traffic viewer for logging and tracing API calls and latency detection tools that show how code changes are impacting performance. In a forthcoming update, Speedscale also plans to include load generation capability to enable developers to run tests locally. The overall goal is to enable IT organizations to shift more responsibility for the management of APIs further left toward the developers that create them, said Ahrens.

    Naturally, Speedscale is also hoping that, as more developers are exposed to its observability platform for APIs, there will be increased demand for its SaaS platform among DevOps teams that need to manage and maintain APIs in production environments within their existing workflows. Speedscale exposes a set of APIs of its own to enable that integration, noted Ahrens.

    At its core, the Speedscale SaaS platform is designed to enable DevOps teams to replay how calls are made between APIs and external mock services to make it easier to diagnose issues.

    In general, there’s a lot more focus these days on APIs, thanks to digital business transformation initiatives that are dependent on APIs to integrate processes. The challenge organizations face is many of those APIs are built by separate development teams. In some instances, organizations can find themselves deploying redundant APIs. Other organizations will create APIs that, over time, are simply forgotten about or that go dormant when the developers that created them leave the organization. These “zombie APIs” often represent a security risk because cybercriminals now routinely scan IT environments for unattended APIs through which they can exfiltrate data without anyone noticing.

    One way or another, the management of APIs is becoming a distinct discipline within many organizations as they come to appreciate the level of IT flexibility they enable. Replacing backend services is a lot simpler when the APIs calls that invoke them both internally and externally remain relatively simple. The challenge is that building and maintaining microservices-based applications based on APIs is a more complex endeavor than building a monolithic application. The first step toward reducing that complexity is, of course, to provide more visibility into the application environment for all concerned.

  • The Graph Donates $48M to Advance GraphQL Platforms

    The Graph Donates $48M to Advance GraphQL Platforms

    The Graph, a provider of indexing and query tools based on the GraphQL language designed for blockchain platforms, today announced it has given $48 million to The Guild, a group of developers advancing an open source application programming interface (API) platform to further development of GraphQL-based technologies.

    Administered via The Graph Foundation, a nonprofit consortium that oversees the development of an open source graph database dubbed ONgDB, the agreement also calls for members of The Guild to contribute to the development of indexing and query tools being advanced by The Graph over the next four years.

    Eva Beylin, director of The Graph Foundation, said the goal is to fund the development of projects that leverage GraphQL, an open source data query and manipulation language for application programming interfaces (APIs) originally developed by Facebook, to create subgraphs used on blockchain platforms like Ethereum to index data in a way that is more accessible to developers.

    The open source community that is starting to evolve around blockchain platforms, also known as Web3, is now a major contributor to a range of GraphQL projects, noted Beylin. Those blockchain platforms are now being used to drive decentralized finance (DeFi) applications that do not rely on any single platform to process transactions. Those platforms are being employed by both startup and incumbent providers for financial services around the globe.

    It remains to be seen, however, how the GraphQL community will address security concerns. GraphQL APIs can easily suffer from broken object-level authentication issues just like any other API. The issue is a single GraphQL query could exfiltrate much more information than a typical API request. If the GraphQL provider does not have granular authorization checks for each particular method and resource, a GraphQL endpoint could become a major vulnerability.

    Cybercriminals also tend to launch brute-force attacks against APIs. With REST APIs, that malicious behavior is easier to catch with standard web application firewalls (WAFs) because it’s easier to notice hundreds of peculiar malformed requests. However, with GraphQL, a brute-force attack is harder to detect. It’s easier to limit this type of nefarious traffic with REST APIs by assigning access parameters to each resource and handling authorization checks one at a time.

    It’s not likely GraphQL APIs will replace REST APIs overnight. However, as the backend platforms for managing GraphQL APIs become more robust, the number of these APIs being used in a production environment by DevOps teams will dramatically increase—assuming there are no objections from cybersecurity teams.

    In the meantime, the open source community is clearly starting to rally around GraphQL, which should result in innovations applicable across a wide range of use cases. The challenge now is not only determining which type of API to employ and when, but also deciding whether any existing legacy APIs need to be replaced. One way or the other, however, the managing and securing of APIs—like it or not—is only going to become that much more challenging in 2022.

  • Log4j Puts Effective IT Operations at Center Stage

    Log4j Puts Effective IT Operations at Center Stage

    News of the Apache Log4j vulnerability exploit is striking fear into the hearts of both software makers and users. Log4j is the most popular Java logging service used today, with over 400,000 GitHub downloads and has been embedded in most internet services and products from companies all over the world, including Apple, Amazon, Cloudflare, Steam, Tesla, Twitter and Baidu, just to name a few.

    Exploiting this vulnerability is simple and allows threat actors to control Java-based web servers and launch remote code execution (RCE) attacks. New variations of the original exploit are being introduced rapidly—over 60 in less than 24 hours. The attack surface grows by the minute. Good credential management and advanced authentication will not help as this exploit is pre-authentication, which means an attacker doesn’t need to authenticate to your web applications to attack. Your web server is vulnerable.

    The good news is your organization likely has a team of seasoned IT operations pros that can help protect against the worst of Log4j’s devastation.

    How IT Operations Can Protect Against Log4j Vulnerabilities

    Step One: Find Log4j Wherever it Exists

    You need to investigate every internet-facing application, website and system that you own or use. This includes self-hosted installations of vendor products and cloud-based services. Focus on systems that are internet-facing that contain sensitive data. Once you’ve completed assessing your hosted apps and vendor systems, move on to endpoint applications. Java-based apps like WebEx, Minecraft, Citrix and many more.

    Step Two: Patch, Patch, Patch

    Patch in the same order as above: Internet-facing applications, websites and systems. If no patch is yet available for your apps and systems, uninstall.

    The pandemic has forced many endpoints into workers’ home environments, which creates extra challenges for patching those endpoints and keeping them compliant. Operations teams can’t rely on work-from-home folks to patch their own systems, even if they’re given clear instructions. Many of them will just ignore those directions, so you need to adopt systems that enforce continuous compliance.

    Step Three: IT Operations is Essential

    Communicate with your senior leaders. They should be in the know about this one! Senior leadership needs to position their IT operations teams among their most vital employees. Don’t think this is going to go away any time soon—we’re just starting to get a glimpse of what is being tried out there in the wild. Buckle up. 

     

  • U.S. Govt. CX EO | Mozilla Revenue | Log4j Latest

    U.S. Govt. CX EO | Mozilla Revenue | Log4j Latest

    Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

    This week: Improving U.S. government CX, how much money Mozilla makes, and the latest on the Log4j/Log4Shell débâcle.

    EO: “Transforming Federal Customer Experience”

    First up this week: The Biden–Harris administration makes an executive order directing its Federal agencies to make 36 specific customer experience (CX) improvement commitments. Much of this involves using technology to improve what DevOps teams would call UX—but government doesn’t like the language of “users.”

    Analysis: Customer-centricity FTW

    Remarkably, a lot of interaction with government still involves paper forms. But this EO shouldn’t merely be about putting existing processes online. Work also needs to be done to solve the underlying complexity and fragmentation of services: Focusing on CX is a helpful frame.

    Brett Samuels: Biden to sign order to streamline government services

    [The] executive order [is] intended to cut back on the bureaucracy around government services for the public such as renewing passports, applying for loans or changing names. [It] affects 36 “customer experience improvement commitments” across 17 federal agencies, [targeting] travel, retirement, business, health and updating personal information.
    …
    For example … to renew their passports online rather than dealing with print forms. [It] will create a single portal for … student loan debt, and small-business owners will have a more streamlined process for … loans, grants and certifications.
    …
    Survivors of natural disasters will also no longer be required to complete forms with several agencies when applying for assistance … and they will be able to file smartphone photos and use virtual inspections when filing claims. [That] could be critical as natural disasters become increasingly devastating, as evidenced by the tornadoes that ravaged Kentucky over the weekend, killing dozens of people and destroying communities.


    Is this a technology problem? Yes, in part—but it’s also a government problem, argues Jennifer Pahlka:

    Surely laws like the 21st Century IDEA Act … which required agencies to … “eliminate or consolidate websites or web pages that are duplicative or overlapping … and ensure that each website or digital service is designed around user needs,” made life easier for the customers of those agencies? What’s that you say? You’re not sure you’ve noticed that? Turns out you’re not alone.
    …
    An EO is one of the many mechanisms our government has at its disposal for what I like to call “magic words.” [But there’s a] gap between magic words and the changes they are supposed to compel. [Failures] happen at such a staggering scale they have become entirely expected.
    …
    We tend to assign the blame … to government technology [but] at some point, you can only improve the customer experience by addressing [underlying] complexity. … Most of the Kafka-esque nightmares people get stuck in happen because each service sees only the burden they impose, and not [what] the customer experiences.


    If, like me, you’re inherently cynical about government efficiency, you’d expect this effort to be a huge failure. But let’s not be too cynical: Warning of “the hazards of selection bias,” here’s ShanghaiBill:

    In the olden days, I took half a day off work to go to DMV and renew my DL. Now I can do it online in 5 minutes. … I pay my property tax online. I renew my business licenses online. I incorporated online.

    $500 Million per Year—But for How Long?

    The Mozilla Foundation has unveiled its revenue forecasts for this year. As in previous years, Mozilla makes the lion’s share of its cash from Google—by making it the default search engine. But there are new revenue sources.

    Analysis: And not a moment too soon

    The future of the browser market should be a strategic focus for DevOps teams. Mozilla’s Googley cash cow might not last. It’s often assumed the maker of Chrome keeps Mozilla alive so it can point to Firefox as “competition.” But with Microsoft’s browser Edging up the usage charts, that might no longer be true.

    Frederic Lardinois: Mozilla expects to generate more than $500M in revenue

    For 2021, the organization forecasts revenue of more than $500 million. What’s maybe most important, though, is that Mozilla’s new products like its Mozilla VPN service, Firefox Relay Premium, Pocket and other commercial initiatives are slowly but surely starting to pay off.
    …
    But for all intents and purposes, Mozilla remains fully dependent on Google for the time being. Diversifying its revenue sources is really the only way for Mozilla to decrease its reliance on a search deal with a company that is both a competitor, thanks to its dominant Chrome browser, and is increasingly out of alignment with Mozilla’s overall philosophy.
    …
    There is a window here for a non-Chrome browser, with users increasingly skeptical about Google’s motivations and Microsoft’s Edge team making a few missteps in recent months. Yet at the same time, Mozilla’s efforts to bring sponsored suggestions and ads to Firefox haven’t necessarily endeared the organization to its own users either.


    Why is Google funding its competitor? u/SerAaron:

    Google is Mozilla’s biggest donor. … It’s basically to avoid any monopoly allegations—so they can point to Firefox and say “look, we have competition”.

    Mozilla takes their money, sure, but … they don’t sell data, and they aren’t beholden to Google.


    But don’t count on that cash continuing to flow, says Maelwryth:

    That money is probably under threat now with Edge going for the market. Why give Mozilla hundreds of millions to show competition when you have actual competition from Microsoft?

    Log4j/Log4Shell Seems Worse Every Time We Look

    The list of popular DevOps tools vulnerable to Log4Shell grows by the hour. Merely finding your exploitable services can be an impossible task—let alone patching them.

    Analysis: Defense in depth is key

    Searching for and patching your vulnerable code is not enough. You’re also going to need to shore up your network defenses, by auditing internet-visible services and by tightening your application firewall rules. And—ironically—keep a close eye on your logs for signs of attempted exploits and IoCs.

    Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: We Are in So Much Trouble

    Log4j is used a lot. And, when I say a lot, I mean it’s used in hundreds of applications [including] Druid, Dubbo, Flink, Flume, Hadoop, Kafka, Solr, Spark, Struts, Apple iCloud, … LogStash, GrayLog2, … Steam, Twitter, and … VMware.
    …
    Log4Shell is both easy to exploit and can be used to grab complete control of vulnerable servers. … Even as you’re reading this, odds are decent you’re being attacked. [But] even if you patch it in your systems, it’s all too likely to be hiding in other applications.
    …
    Log4Shell may be the worst security problem in a generation. … This is going to be a long, hard ride.


    Hyperbole? Even December 25 isn’t close enough for government work. Catalin Cimpanu:

    The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has told federal civilian agencies to patch systems affected by the Log4Shell vulnerability by Christmas Eve. … Federal agencies have ten days … to test which of their internal apps and servers utilize the Log4j Java library, check if systems are vulnerable to the Log4Shell exploit, and patch affected servers.
    …
    Despite being a recent vulnerability, it is already considered one of the worst security flaws ever discovered, primarily due to its near-ubiquitous use among enterprise software makers, its simple and easy-to-use exploit, and the ability to hijack systems remotely. … Days after being disclosed, the vulnerability has been massively abused. … The first attacks were seen on December 1.


    There’s always another shoe. Here’s Teri Robinson:

    Maybe Log4j vulnerabilities are like rats—for every one that’s visible, multiple others scurry beneath the surface. … Apache said the fix addressing “CVE-2021-44228 in Apache Log4j 2.15.0 was incomplete in certain non-default configurations,” according to … CVE 2021-45046.

    The Moral of the Story: In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.


    You have been reading The Long View by Richi Jennings. You can contact him at @RiCHi or tlv@richi.uk.

    Image: Bernd Dittrich (via Unsplash)

  • NetApp Survey Shows Hybrid Cloud is Maturing

    NetApp Survey Shows Hybrid Cloud is Maturing

    A small survey of 79 midsized to large enterprises conducted by NetApp suggests enterprise IT organizations might finally be embracing hybrid cloud computing beyond use cases involving backup and recovery.

    The survey finds 20% of respondents are currently employing both on-premises and cloud resources to support the same workload in a production environment, with another 17% planning to do so within 24 months.

    Darnell Fatigati, senior product marketing manager for hybrid cloud at NetApp, noted that a hybrid approach to cloud computing will dominate with more than three-quarters of respondents reporting their organization plans to operate a hybrid cloud environment for the foreseeable future. Only 17% expect their organization to eventually migrate all their IT environments to the cloud.

    A major factor in the decision to not migrate all workloads to the cloud is the amount of data gravity that legacy applications running in on-premises IT environments exert, noted Fatigati. The amount of effort required to successfully migrate terabytes and even petabytes of data into the cloud is simply too great, he added.

    The primary benefits of hybrid cloud computing cited by survey respondents are faster innovation (26%), increased responsiveness (25%) and increased collaboration (22%). Survey respondents also noted they are looking to improve infrastructure flexibility and scale (27%), optimize costs (21%) and improve data accessibility (13%). Data protection involving disaster recovery, backup and archiving remains the most widely employed use case for hybrid cloud, with 29% either employing it today or planning to do so in the next 24 months.

    Most hybrid cloud computing environments today consist of multiple clouds and on-premises IT environments that are managed in isolation from one another. The fact that more organizations are now starting to deploy the same workload across both a cloud service and an on-premises IT environment has significant implications for DevOps teams that will be required to manage those workloads. Most DevOps workflows today do not span multiple platforms. However, as more organizations become impacted by the occasional cloud outage, the level of resiliency enabled by hybrid cloud computing is becoming a higher priority.

    In many cases, the shift to hybrid cloud computing was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic that drove many organizations to increase the number of workloads deployed in the cloud. Now, heading into 2022, those same organizations are looking to reduce IT costs by centralizing IT management as much as possible, noted Fatigati. Each time an IT organization adds a new platform, the tooling and personnel required to manage that platform increase the total cost of IT for any organization. Much of the shift to hybrid cloud is being driven by C-level executives looking to reduce those costs.

    It may be a while before most enterprise IT organizations are able to deploy workloads across multiple platforms. However, as both cloud and on-premises IT environments continue to evolve and as more platforms deployed in local data centers are increasingly managed using a cloud operating model, the way those platforms are accessed on demand will continue to converge. In fact, there may come a day when the term cloud computing itself disappears from the IT lexicon as every IT platform, by default, leverages one type of cloud or another.

  • Stacklet Embeds Collaboration in Compliance-as-Code Platform

    Stacklet Embeds Collaboration in Compliance-as-Code Platform

    Stacklet has added collaboration capabilities to its security and compliance platform that automatically groups related notifications, routes them to the right stakeholders and integrates with existing workflows and collaboration tools.

    The Stacklet platform is based on Cloud Custodian, an open source project that provides access to a domain-specific language that enables an IT team to employ YAML files to manage compliance-as-code.

    Stacklet CEO Travis Stanfield said that approach makes it simpler for organizations that have embraced DevSecOps best practices to comply with a wide range of mandates by shifting responsibility for achieving compliance further left toward DevOps teams.

    The latest version of the Stacklet Platform adds communications capabilities that leverage cloud resource configuration and policy metadata to automatically route notifications and escalations. Customizable notification templates add context for teams to collaborate either via email or integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams and Symphony instant messaging. The Stacklet Platform can also trigger external workflows in tools such as Jira and ServiceNow to track issue resolution and generate reports.

    Ultimately, the goal is to make it simpler for IT teams to prioritize their compliance remediation efforts by keeping everyone involved continuously updated, said Stanfield.

    The number of compliance and security issues that organizations are experiencing in cloud computing environments is especially problematic. Developers often employ infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools to provision cloud infrastructure. Unfortunately, they typically lack security and compliance expertise, which then results in large numbers of misconfigurations.

    The Stacklet platform is designed to give DevOps teams a way to prevent compliance and security issues using a compliance-as-code framework that spans multiple cloud platforms rather than requiring DevOps teams to employ a different set of compliance tools for each cloud platform on which applications are deployed.

    It’s not clear yet how far left responsibility for compliance will shift. In theory, organizations could avoid penalties if compliance issues are addressed before an application is deployed in a production environment. However, the teams that manage compliance in larger enterprises today are even further removed from DevOps teams than their cybersecurity counterparts. It may be several years before the cultural divide between these teams is bridged. In the meantime, many DevOps teams are taking it upon themselves to manage compliance as code to prevent unexpected issues from arising at the last minute before deployment.

    Overall, the goal is to enable DevOps teams to enforce compliance policies without slowing down the rate at which applications are built and deployed. The hope is that the adoption of compliance-as-code and DevSecOps best practices will address that issue. In fact, as the pace at which applications are deployed continues to accelerate to support digital business transformation initiatives, the number of potential compliance issues steadily increases. More troubling still, the greater the number of compliance issues there are, the more likely it becomes that cybercriminals will find a vulnerability to exploit.

  • Sentry Acquires Specto to Add Analytics Tool for Observability

    Sentry Acquires Specto to Add Analytics Tool for Observability

    Sentry this week announced it has acquired Specto, a provider of a set of tools for analyzing the performance of mobile applications.

    As the number of mobile applications being deployed continues to expand, developers are being asked to manage them as part of a general shift left that requires them to take on more accountability for how well their applications run in a production environment.

    Sentry CEO Milin Desai said today the Specto tools are focused on making it easier for developers to determine how mobile applications are running, but that the plan is to expand that analytics capability to a wider range of applications.

    As the responsibility for applications continues to shift left toward developers, the need for observability and monitoring tools that developers can easily use is becoming more acute. Sentry already provides a JavaScript software development kit that enables developers to insert a small amount of code in their application to track, for example, how many times an application failed. The Specto tools will take those observability capabilities to a deeper level by enabling developers to analyze a wider range of metrics collected, said Desai.

    Of course, DevOps teams are already collecting metrics, as well. Sentry has worked with partners such as GitLab and GitHub to provide a plug-in that makes it possible for DevOps teams to see the same metrics that developers are now using to manage applications. The goal is to make it easier for developers and IT operations teams to collaborate around a common set of metrics, said Desai.

    The rate at which responsibility for the management of applications is being shifted left, of course, varies widely. Some organizations continue to prefer to have developers mainly focus on writing code. However, Desai said Sentry is encountering more instances where site reliability engineers (SREs) are providing Sentry tools to developers as part of an effort to provide them with more insight into how their applications are running in a production environment.

    Historically, IT operations teams have relied on application performance management (APM) platforms to manage IT operations. Those platforms are now evolving into observability platforms that promise to provide more context by correlating events as they occur across both applications and IT infrastructure platforms. That approach, however, typically requires developers to insert agent software into their applications. Once inserted, that agent software needs to be maintained and updated within the context of a larger DevOps workflow.

    The Sentry approach provides developers with a tool for collecting data from an application that, after being embedded in the application, consumes just tens of kilobytes of memory. That approach eliminates the need to rely on much larger agent software to achieve observability.

    Regardless of how developers go about instrumenting their applications, the overall state of observability clearly needs to improve as application environments become more complex. The issue now is determining how best to achieve that goal in a way that benefits both developers and DevOps teams alike.