The banking industry’s digital transformation is much-awaited progress which opened opportunities for many fintechs and banking organisations to come up with innovative ideas to meet generation Z’s expectations. With a plethora of offerings and continuous strive to provide seamless services, financial institutions are always on the verge of hunting different opportunities. To accommodate the every rising customer needs the banking industry has now turned to the DevOps culture to meet customer expectations and provide seamless customer service.

DevOps in Banking

What makes a bank stand out are their innovative offerings without compromising on the quality. Also, customer expectations are steadily increasing giving banks a tough time to cope up with siloed architecture. So, banks need an environment that can help them develop, test, and debug their software in a short span of time with reduced errors and efforts. DevOps, on the other hand, with concepts like CI/CD, Containers, Microservices, etc., brings a definitive culture among testers and developers to work hand-in-hand and improve the functional and non-functional aspects of the end product. Hence, DevOps is the right culture for the banking industry.

What’s next?

In DevOps, considering concepts like Containers, enterprises use open source tools as it has plenty of options to innovate. And the use of microservices results in shorter release cycles, which means that testers and developers have to work fast to implement the changes. Something which goes unnoticed in above cases is the security checks. In banking, the one area which made many think twice about digital transformation or cloud migration is the lack of cybersecurity. When banks go digital, along with plenty of opportunities to innovate, there are security threats as well, because the transactions made through internet are exposed to cyber-attacks. Therefore, an additional layer of security is highly necessary to leverage the DevOps culture efficiently.

Enter DevSecOps

DevSecOps simply mean Development+Security+Operations. It helps to track the security changes and vulnerabilities in all stages of the DevOps process. DevSecOps makes the whole process of security testing easy because minor risks can be detected at early stages and debugged immediately. This additional layer of security helps banks to ensure robust software with proper encryption.

How does DevSecOps work?

The working of DevSecOps is pretty much similar to that of DevOps except for the inclusion of security. When a developer develops a code, another developer retrieves the code and runs through the security analysis tool, before deploying it using IaC. If the first developer uses any unsecured software, it breaks in security analysis stage and goes back to the development stage for debugging. This way, the application is secure even before deployment. Post deployment, the end product is continuously monitored for any malware for additional safety.

Benefits of DevSecOps

The introduction of DevSecOps concept is to enhance the overall security of the environment. However, enhanced security is not the only advantage of DevSecOps:

1. Faster roll-out of the products

The time required to identify and debug issues in a small piece of code is less than that of the entire software. In DevSecOps, as each and every code developed, undergoes security check, the entire process is completed faster. Also, multiple people can make the changes and hence, the overall speed of the process is increased.

2. Reduced cost

Early detection of errors can be fixed easily and it costs less compared to detecting the errors in a complicated combination of code.

3. Better work culture

A common notion is: developers and testers often mistake the security team’s rejection of software in a siloed environment. It is obvious given that testing and development team might lack the knowledge of the security threats. In DevSecOps, as all three teams work together, each team understands the challenges and goals of another team, hence, collaborate and motivate each other to provide an efficient end product.

4. Optimized testing

Most security operations can be automated and hence, the increased utilization of automation leads to optimized quality control testing.

5. Hassle-free Cloud Migration

Most banks are opting to fully/partially offer their services on the cloud. DevSecOps ensures a hassle-free cloud migration using strong encryption protocols, which makes the software less vulnerable to any security threats.

Conclusion

Banks that are currently using the agile process have understood the need for DevOps technology and most have shifted as well. While DevOps has a plethora of offerings, the addition of security just makes it an ideal solution for banking. With DevSecOps culture, one can hone their bank’s offerings to a great extent.

 

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