A basic tenet of a successful business is to maximize your efforts. Of course, there are several ways to do this: efficient processes, skilled team members, continuous refinement of procedures. However, using the right tooling is a quick and easy way to empower your team members to increase productivity while improving consistency in the quality of your products.
DevSecOps tools provide more than just streamlined operations – they also work to increase data security efforts to protect your Salesforce environment as a whole.
A development pipeline involves the efforts of a range of departments and individuals. Each of these development stages has its own set of tools and procedures that can be optimized for speed and quality.
And while speed can be beneficial, because it’s always best to produce your products as quickly as possible, many teams risk sacrificing quality. DevSecOps tools are designed to maintain high quality products while enabling accelerated development.
But which tools can best help each stage of the development pipeline? How can you save your team members’ time, which translates directly into money saved?
These 7 DevSecOps tools streamline operations to save time and money:
- Continuous integration
- Continuous Delivery/Deployment
- Static Code Analysis
- version control
- data loader
- Sandbox management
- Data Backup & Restore
1. Continuous Integration
Working in a team of multiple developers accelerates updates and applications through the DevOps pipeline. Simply put, more hands working together can build something faster. However, it can become difficult, time consuming and error prone to collect the work of all these different hands and merge them into a single product.
Continuous integration is the development process of automatically integrating code from multiple developers into a single software version.
Bugs in the code become more expensive to fix as they are found later in the development pipeline. Each commit to the shared repository is continuously verified by an automated build process to identify potential issues early, reducing overall costs.
2. Continuous Delivery/Deployment
Collecting and testing the code from multiple sources is only the first step in preparing an update for production. The update or application itself should take everything to the next stage, and that’s where our next DevSecOps tool comes in handy.
Continuous delivery and continuous deployment both serve to bring all kinds of changes, such as features, configurations, and bug fixes, into production.
These two similar tools allow teams to build, test and release with increased frequency and speed. However, there is one big difference between these two tools: approvals.
Continuous delivery requires completion of an approval phase before the product is sent to production. Continuous deployment automates the entire release process to the point of production for rapid release.
3. Static Code Analysis
The biggest factor in the success of a DevSecOps project is the code that makes it up. Faulty code can create data security vulnerabilities, negatively impact the end-user experience, and lead to expensive fixes and updates. Getting it right the first time is important to save on both the money needed to complete a project and the attention of your team members.
Static Code Analysis provides complete visibility into the health of your code from the time it is written.
This allows developers to rectify any errors once they are entered into the system. And as we said above, mistakes get more expensive to fix the later they are found.
Static code analysis eliminates errors in the DevSecOps pipeline, saving operational costs, avoiding bugs and supporting successful implementations.
4. Version Control
We’ve mentioned how teams of multiple developers help speed up the application development process. We also mentioned how this can create a cluttered work environment that leads to errors. Source code management is an essential consideration for keeping all contributions from multiple developers organized so that nothing gets lost or contradicts other lines of code.
Version control is the cornerstone of a development organization and a critical part of a DevSecOps strategy.
Version management is a method of managing software revisions or updates over time. Each source code update is tracked with a timestamp and a personal tag for the person making the change. This increases responsibility and visibility.
5. Data Loader
A Salesforce data loader is an essential DevSecOps tool for importing and/or exporting large amounts of metadata and data.
A powerful data loading tool provides the ability to protect this information as it moves through encryption and other data masking services. This contributes to a company’s ability to remain compliant with data security regulations, saving money on potential fines if they fail to comply.
6. Sandbox Management
Developers will often work within their own sandbox while working on a new update or application. These sandboxes can span large geographic areas and are difficult to keep consistent. This can also make the overview more difficult.
A sandbox management tool provides reports on successes across sandboxes, allows you to remove redundant data after instance comparisons, and synchronize versions of a project across multiple sandboxes.
It can be confusing when data is stored in multiple locations. Sandbox management keeps everything aligned so nothing gets lost in the mix.
7. Data Backup & Restore
We’ve saved arguably the most important DevSecOps tool for one last time: data backup and recovery. You just never know when a data loss event will happen. Even companies with strong data security strategies are prone to accidental deletion, cyber-attacks and natural disasters. And losing access to your data can be an incredible waste of time and money.
The average cost of downtime is $5,600 per minute.
A reliable data backup tool with restore functionality will get your system back online when you need it most. Failure to maintain an up-to-date data backup results in redundant work as team members attempt to return the system to how it was before the loss. Not only does this cost money, it also keeps them away from promoting ongoing projects.
DevSecOps tools are available to address many different aspects of the development pipeline. Automation is an essential aspect to reduce manual work and streamline your efforts. And any tool that improves quality and frees up your team members will save you time and money.
Tim Van Ash is Vice President of Products at AutoRABIT†
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