Continuous compliance is an essential practice in today’s fast-paced software development environment. As highlighted in the latest Thoughtworks Technology Radar, this technique involves ensuring that software development processes and technologies continually adhere to industry regulations and security standards through extensive automation.
In traditional models, compliance checks were often manual, leading to slower development processes and potential errors. However, with continuous compliance, organisations can automate these checks and integrate compliance tools directly into their software development pipelines and platforms. This allows for early detection and resolution of compliance issues, which not only enhances security but also accelerates development cycles by reducing the need for manual oversight.
Benefits of continuous compliance
The benefits of adopting continuous compliance are multifaceted:
Efficiency: Automation reduces the time spent on manual compliance checks, thereby speeding up the development process. Identifying and addressing compliance issues early in the development cycle can significantly reduce the costs associated with late-stage corrections.
Security: By automating the detection of vulnerabilities and ensuring that coding standards are met, software is inherently more secure. In addition, by baking organisational policy and governance requirements into a platform, compliance can be more uniformly supported
Consistency: Automated tools help enforce standards consistently across different teams, projects, and infrastructure. In an ideal world, decentralised development teams can contribute workflows, automations, and checks to the platform team via the inner source model. This enables the reuse and promotion of standardised compliance components.
Recent surveys show the impact of not supporting developers in this space. The Harness State of The Developer Experience 2024 report states that "59% [of developers] say that their AppSec requirements limit their ability to release code frequently."
Puppet’s 2024 State of DevOps Report explores the impact that a platform team can have in supporting developers with compliance requirements: "43% of respondents say that their platform has a dedicated security and compliance team, highlighting the importance of proactive security management [and that] most respondents report that the platform team has helped their company become more compliant.
Continuous compliance case studies
There are numerous case studies of continuous compliance available online, focusing on the platform as a whole or specifically targeting components such as databases:
After making the case for why an organisation should invest in continuous compliance, let's focus on tools that can help platform engineers make this a reality for their application development teams.
Expanding on continuous compliance and its implementation through Kratix
Continuous compliance is increasingly vital in a world where software is ubiquitous in critical systems—from finance to healthcare and beyond. As we delve deeper into its importance, it's essential to explore how platform building frameworks like Kratix facilitate the need for platform engineering teams to implement continuous compliance.
Deeper integration of compliance into DevOps
The evolution of DevOps has brought forward the need to integrate compliance seamlessly into continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. Continuous compliance ensures that every piece of code, every configuration, and every deployment adheres to stringent standards for security and reliability from the get-go rather than as an afterthought.
Kratix enables engineers to build a platform where compliance tools and checks are built directly into the platform orchestration and infrastructure as code (IaC) components. This not only ensures that compliance is an ongoing process but also makes it an intrinsic part of the development lifecycle rather than a discrete or separate activity.
Automating compliance checks
The automation of compliance checks is a cornerstone of continuous compliance. By using tools like Kratix, teams can automate scanning code changes for vulnerabilities, enforcing coding standards, and tracking infrastructure configuration changes. This automation can extend beyond simple checks to include the generation of compliance reports and documentation, which is crucial during audits.
For example, Kratix can integrate with tools like SonarQube for code quality analysis, cert-manager for generating TLS certificates, or HashiCorp Vault for managing secrets, which are all important aspects of maintaining a compliant and secure environment. Many of these tools are available via the Kratix Marketplace of existing Promise APIs and services.
Continuous feedback and monitoring
Continuous feedback mechanisms are essential for maintaining compliance. With Kratix, platform engineering teams can implement and monitor compliance standards and receive real-time feedback on their compliance status. This capability enables teams to address potential compliance issues immediately rather than discovering them later in the development cycle, which often leads to costly and time-consuming fixes.
The role of Policy as Code
Policy as Code (PaC) is another crucial aspect of continuous compliance. By codifying policies, organizations can automate the enforcement of compliance rules across their entire IT infrastructure. Kratix supports the integration of PaC tools, such as Open Policy Agent (OPA) and Kyverno, which allows platform teams to define and enforce policies that automatically check the compliance of their systems. This not only speeds up the compliance checks but also reduces the chance of human error.
Enhancing developer experience with compliance
A significant advantage of using Kratix in continuous compliance is the enhancement of the developer experience. By abstracting the complexities of compliance into the platform layer, developers can focus more on building features rather than worrying about all the details involved with compliance. This leads to faster development cycles and shipping more code (and value), all while staying compliant.
Future trends in continuous compliance
Looking forward, the scope of continuous compliance is expected to expand as regulations become more stringent and encompassing. Integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning could further automate compliance monitoring, predicting potential compliance breaches before they occur and suggesting corrective actions.
Kratix, with its ability to integrate with a wide range of tools and technologies, is well-positioned to enable platform engineers to adapt to these future advancements.
Making continuous compliance a competitive advantage
In the modern software development landscape, continuous compliance facilitated is not just a regulatory requirement but a competitive advantage. It ensures that platform engineering teams can enable the application development teams to deliver faster, safer, and more reliable software.
As compliance requirements evolve, the tools and strategies employed will need to be as dynamic and innovative as the technologies they aim to regulate. Building a platform that supports your specific compliance requirements on days one, two and two thousand is therefore essential.
If you have any questions about implementing continuous compliance or would like to book a demo of Kratix, please contact us.