DEV Community: Jasveen Singh

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) - A Detailed Overview

Jasveen Singh — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 07:33:42 +0000

Today's rapidly evolving enterprise networks are highly reliant on cloud-based applications to run a multitude of business operations and use cases. In addition, the growth in the need for connectivity for business use-cases and mobile/remote users has resulted in the traditional enterprise network expanding beyond the network edge, thus bringing in a challenge to guard, secure and manage the network edge against vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is imperative for network owners to keep up with the latest security practices, frameworks and tools, rendering VPN-only solutions obsolete.

For enterprises to remain safeguarded and competitive in today's network landscape with a zero-downtime, all network endpoints must be secured and managed with the same security and networking policies as their on-premises infrastructure. This is what makes a use case for SASE.

The term SASE was coined by Gartner in 2019 & was introduced to bring a highly customizable network with security services seamlessly stitched into the cloud platform. Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture refers to a cybersecurity environment that brings advanced protection right out to the farthest edge of the network: the endpoints of users. In this SASE architecture definition, users are provided robust security features directly to their devices from the cloud, enabling them to connect securely from anywhere.

SASE brings multiple cloud-native security technologies together—Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Bearer (CASB), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), and Firewall Solution as a service (FWaaS) with WAN capabilities to help users and systems connect securely to a service or any application; anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, since there is a need to make the ecosystem operations agile, the network's security is delivered as a service from a centrally managed cloud.

Market Predictions for SASE

With a 20% adoption rate expected by 2023, Gartner claimed that the demand for SASE capabilities would "redefine enterprise network and network security architecture and reshape the competitive landscape". While SASE frameworks won't be implemented in a day, the route to SASE is gaining speed and urgency. Another research by Palo Alto Networks and Gartner predicts the following for the future of SASE:

By 2025, 80% of enterprises will have adopted a strategy to unify web, cloud services and private application access using a SASE/SSE architecture, up from 20% in 2021.
By 2025, 65% of enterprises will have consolidated individual SASE components into one or two explicitly partnered SASE vendors, up from 15% in 2021.
By 2025, 50% of SD-WAN purchases will be part of a single vendor SASE offering, up from less than 10% in 2021.

SASE Architecture and Components:

SASE network architecture provides cloud security to the farthest end of the network without relying on specific infrastructure. It allows users to connect directly to the cloud while enjoying security running on their devices. It enables a secure connection and decrease in latency resulting from backhauling to the data centre's firewall.

SASE services involve cloud-hosted security, zero-trust network access (ZTNA) components, and network services components.

Cloud-hosted Security:
Cloud-hosted security enables devices to be independent of relying on security hosted on a physical data centre.

Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS): FWaaS provides standard hardware firewall services using software in the cloud. Users do not have to connect to a physical firewall & data transmissions are protected through the cloud-hosted software.
Secure Web Gateway (SWG): Secure Web Gateway blocks unauthorized traffic from getting into the network, thus protecting the network from intrusions. In SASE architecture, an SWG is implemented for every device connected to your network.
Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB): CASB is positioned between the user and the cloud-based application they are trying to access. It monitors, implements and enforces an enterprise's security policies.

Zero-trust Network Access (ZTNA) Components:
Zero trust network access (ZTNA), also known as the software-defined perimeter (SDP), is a set of technologies and functionalities that enable secure access to internal applications for remote users. It operates on an adaptive trust model, where trust is never implicit, and access is granted on a need-to-know, least-privileged basis defined by granular policies.

Authentication: Authentication involves verifying the user and device they claim to be. This is usually achieved using multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Authorization and Control: Authorization involves choosing where a user is authorized to access a network. Control includes restricting their movement within the network's environment.
Monitoring: Monitoring in a SASE architecture is critical to security. It involves checking which devices are connected, their activity, quality and volume of data exchange using those devices, etc.

Network Services Components
Network services components facilitate optimized path selection and application-based routing within the SASE architecture.

Optimized Path Selection: Optimized path selection involves ensuring the paths of different traffic brackets are directed to the right resources at the appropriate times. This is usually achieved using an SD-WAN solution that can decide the network traffic routing and its management to ensure low latency and a high-efficiency network.
Application-based Routing: Application-based routing gives the user access to the specific applications they need access to complete their designated work. This allows a SASE architecture to provide seamless & safe remote access to workers anytime and anywhere.

Benefits of SASE:

Traditionally, network security was hosted on the network edge within the corporate perimeter and the data centre, with all traffic routed through the data centre for validation and check. A SASE-based approach moves these capabilities to the cloud, where multiple applications are hosted, reducing the latency between the user and application and backhaul requirements.

Higher Efficiency in Hybrid/Remote Work Model: The legacy and traditional remote security models are increasingly becoming outdated and vulnerable to hackers due to broad use. A unified security service over a single cloud platform eliminates delays as traffic 'trombones' between different point security solutions.
Higher IT Operational Efficiency: One of the benefits of SASE is that IT teams no longer need VPN licenses for each user and troubleshoot network security hardware or provide different security access systems within the same network. This increases the IT team's operational efficiency.
Reduce Hardware Costs: Buying network security hardware is expensive as a standalone device as purchasing network firewalls and DDoS mitigation boxes do not help. The costs incurred are always on the higher side with CAPEX and OPEX involved (installation, warranties, repairs, patch management, updates, etc.). These costs can be eliminated by moving network security to the cloud can create additional savings.
A centralized policy with local enforcement: SASE enables Cloud-based centralized security management with distributed enforcement and decision-making for the network stakeholders and users.
Network Agility & transparency: SASE promises a consistent application experience anywhere & on any device. It also reduces operational overhead by recognizing and updating new threats and policies without new hardware or software.

The approach to adopting SASE:

Juniper Networks recommends the following approach for the adoption of SASE:

Data distribution model: Looking at the data holistically as the data would likely be stored in multiple places.
Protection for data in transit and at rest: Ensuring consistency in policies and procedures over data within the environment (both edge and at rest). Access control, encryption and segmentation of data.
Centralized visibility and policy control: A transparent approach to documenting people within the network, the data shared by them, the connections accessed by them, access authorization, policy towards handling noncompliance, etc. Ensuring attention is focused on the entire network and not just the edge.
Improvement areas, addressing efficiency: Looking cohesively at the current projects & if they would need to accommodate cloud-hosted services in the next 2-4 years, backup services considerations (local or cloud-based), dealing with sensitive services.
Data segmentation over data centre and multiple public clouds: Handling security mishaps at the edge. Adopting a fool-proof approach to protect sensitive data residing at the data centre. Keeping visibility throughout the environment, not just at the edge, keeps the data protected.
Data flow path and migration: Inspecting the current data flow in the organization's on-premises deployment and ensuring smooth flow by making appropriate changes. A comprehensive plan to identify how the data would move to ensure its integrity across environments.

Conclusion:

The focus on adopting SASE and Secure Edge within organizations continues to grow, pushing a broader basket of integrated cloud-based cybersecurity technologies into a more consumable form. The industry would see some consolidation, integration, and M&A in the SASE market over the years as the number of players in the SASE market continue to grow globally. SASE promises to handle vulnerabilities at every network edge: data centre, branch, cloud & mobile. Currently, these solutions come from varied vendors; hence interoperability will be critical for all vendors. This could also drive their consolidation approaches from enterprises & demand for the adoption of unified SASE solutions.

The Intersection of 5G & Artificial Intelligence

Jasveen Singh — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 05:48:13 +0000

Before we delve into the topic, let us first develop a rudimentary understanding of what a 5G network actually is. These are digital cellular networks whose area of service is subdivided into small geographic sections called cells.

5G technology, like 4G, operates on a wide variety of radio spectrum allotments, although it can cover a larger area than existing networks. There are two separate frequency bands in 5G, each of which works in a different way. Sub-6 is the most popular type of 5G; however, there is also mmWave.

Source: accton.com

Sub-6: Encompasses all 5G operations below 6Ghz. Due to existing 4G LTE networks (which run at lower frequencies), all carriers possess a Sub-6 network in some capacity. The Sub-6 spectrum is critical to the widespread rollout of 5G due to the expansion possibilities without building new cell towers and the ability to travel longer distances and penetrate objects. Essentially, Sub-6 is the component of 5G which allows for better coverage and signal strength.

mmWave: Short for millimeter wave, this is the component of 5G offering with supercharged data transfer rates and low latencies through extremely high-frequency radio waves ranging from 24GHz to 100GHz. The caveat with these ultra-short wavelengths is the limited range and inability to pass simple objects. Hence, the idea of these two frequency bands (Sub-6 and mmWave) is to account for the inefficiencies of each other.

(Read: 5G Networks: The evolution and trends today)

AI Solves the Problem of 5G Spectrum Allocation

Traditionally, the radio spectrum has not been allocated in the most efficient manner possible. The government divides it into mutually incompatible frequency bands, after which the bands are allocated to various commercial and government agencies for exclusive usage. While the procedure helps services avoid interfering with one another, the owner of a piece of spectrum seldom utilizes it entirely all time. As a result, at any one time, a considerable portion of the allocated frequencies is unusable.

Agencies such as DARPA have sought to solve this spectrum allocation issue through artificial intelligence. The concern behind the initiative was that the increasing application of wireless technologies carries the risk of overcrowded airwaves that our devices require to communicate.

The idea was to create new communication equipment that does not always transmit on the same frequency. The proposed solution was to employ machine-learning techniques to discover the accessible frequencies. They seek to transition from a system controlled by ‘pen and paper’ to one controlled by AI algorithms autonomously.

How AI can help in spectrum allocation:

Precise Cognition: AI can manage the usage of the spectrum pool and avoid radio frequency interference as it can monitor the situation of all nodes well, even in weak environments.

Intelligent Scheduling: Due to multi-system (4G & 5G) coexistence, the changes in network traffic hotspots are harder to predict. Based on the actual traffic demand, the algorithm can adapt the system capacity between 4G and 5G. This allows all equipment to maintain optimal performance intermittently.

Deployment Efficiency: To support a wide range of business demands, rapid application development, and gain a quick return on investment from users, it’s critical to assist customers in getting the most out of 5G. This can be done by swiftly launching apps using AI’s efficient deployment capabilities. The top planners, operators, developers, infrastructure suppliers, and other stakeholders can work together to achieve rapid deployment through AI.

AI-Driven Data Analytics

Using multidimensional correlation across the place, time, context, and state, AI can expose the linkages, dependencies, co-occurrences, and casualties. Thus, reducing alerts to focused, prioritized actions. Some key dimensions to consider are:

Space: Network and service topology that connects infrastructure to user location and experience
Time: Flow metrics, telemetry, and streaming data from passive and active monitoring
Context: metadata such as customer profiles, sentiment, external events such as weather, etc.
State: Status and configuration of traffic policies, network elements, port and flow statistics

AI can correlate events that would otherwise be separated across siloed systems by examining varied data sets across several dimensions. In other words, it has the ability to expose the unseen.

Other Uses of AI in 5G

By increasing network quality and providing individualized services, AI is already being utilized to improve customer service and increase consumer experience through chatbots and virtual assistants.

The greatest option for recouping the costs of transitioning networks to 5G is to use AI in network design.

AI efforts are also being applied to improve network performance management.

Managing SLAs, product life cycles, networks, and revenue are some areas where cellular decision-makers want to invest in AI.

(Read: Adopting Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) into 5G Networks)

How AI Benefits from 5G

Though AI has widespread adoption, 5G can still help bring advancements to the field of AI. For instance, Machine Learning (ML) models require large data volumes to train, and as these models get more complex and powerful, they will need larger datasets.

The low latency and high speed of 5G will allow analysts to swiftly gather, clean, and analyze enormous amounts of data. This will prompt the development of new analytics technologies in the near future.

For example, driverless automobiles were previously limited and a pipedream due to the significant latency supplied by 2G, 3G, and even 4G networks. However, 5G networks will provide minimal latency and improved information processing in real-time. In fact, more broadly, the biggest impact that 5G will have on analytics is real-time data exchange and insights.

Other AI applications such as automation, smart devices, AR, VR, and many others which form the basis of Industry 4.0 will be transformed with the help of 5G.

5G Network Architecture and URLLC

The 5G architecture is comprised of 3 key service areas:

Massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC): This component supports large numbers of simultaneously connected devices and hence will help transform industries such as IoT (Internet-of-Things) and Smart Cities.
Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB): This component supports high bandwidth demands and can transform industries such as AR, VR, and streaming.
Ultra-reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC): This component will enable low latency and guaranteed connections.

URLLC offers use cases that need high network dependability (above 99.999%) and extremely low data transfer latency (less than 1 millisecond). As safety requirements demand ultra-reliable connections, data would have to be shared in real-time with minimal delay. Because of the considerable danger involved, autonomous driving, for example, would necessitate such a connection.

Autonomous driving has numerous advantages, ranging from time savings to increased safety due to the elimination of human mistakes. However, all vehicles would need to be connected vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure, such as traffic light systems, emergency services, and road maintenance programs.

Smart factories and Industry 4.0 have comparable requirements, requiring real-time interaction between machinery and robotics. They may also need real-time data from other sensors located throughout the manufacturing facility. Low-latency solutions enable these machine-operated systems to improve manufacturing lines in a safe and effective manner.

Other possible use-cases are remote and augmented reality healthcare, such as remote surgery, smart electricity distribution, and cloud-based gaming and entertainment.

(Read: An Introduction to OpenRAN (ORAN))

Source: ericsson.com

Network Slicing

Network slicing (also known as software-defined networking or SDN) will be another important 5G application. In addition to its low latency, it allows telecommunication companies to run several virtual networks on a single physical link. Providers will be able to ‘slice’ the network with 5G, meaning different networks and virtual layers will bring value to the business. Through data monetization, network slicing will enable the creation of new business models.

Each slice functions as its own network, with its own provisioning, security, and service quality needs. As a result, mMTC, which has low security and bandwidth requirements, is isolated from URLLC, which has strong security and reliability requirements. Despite this, all these slices are connected by the same physical network architecture.

(Read: RAN Slicing: Efficiency, Performance, Assurance)

Source: vanillaplus.com

Future Concerns with Increased Connectivity and Way Ahead

As 5G networks adopt AI and thus increase reliance on software, the potential cybersecurity risks related to design flaws (from poor development processes) will begin to matter more. We can already see cases where entities must perform their due diligence to secure their networks. The best example is the ban imposed by many governments on Huawei as a 5G equipment supplier.

Network equipment such as base stations and management functions are becoming more vulnerable to attacks. The dependence of mobile network operators on suppliers means an increase in the possible modes of attack. As a result, suppliers with low-risk profiles will be preferred.

The consequence is that 5G security companies will need to expand to tackle the multidimensional security problem that comes with the next-generation technology. Simply banning a single provider would not be enough.

It will take years to implement fully functioning 5G networks because the connectivity standards have yet to be established, and some aspects of the network have yet to be tested. Some businesses will gradually integrate it into their systems, while other industries, such as Data Analytics, will be quick to embrace 5G. Because it already deals with the challenge of managing petabytes of data that comes with present connectivity, the data analytics business may be the sector where 5 G’s promise will be fully realized. However, with 5 G’s promise of quick and real-time data analyses, the analytics and complex technologies derived from it will bring more potential for improvement.

Understanding 5G Wireless Technology

Jasveen Singh — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 05:40:00 +0000

Communication technology has been evolving at a fast pace for past two decades. During this time, wireless technology has also gone through many changes. From 3G and 4G, now we have companies expecting and preparing for 5G wireless technology. It’s the fifth-generation technology that might not have arrived yet, but OEMs have already started to make 5G enabled equipment.

Understanding 5G Wireless Technology

In simple words, it is the improved wireless internet technology that will allow faster speeds and reduced latency. According to the recent estimates, data speeds using 5G technology can be up to 20Gbps with less than one millisecond latency. However, those figures are only theoretical now. Keep in mind that LTE-A technology can also achieve speeds of 300Mbps on paper, but you mostly end up with less than 50Mbps downloading speeds.

Detailed Understanding of the 5G Technology

A comparison between the 4G and 5G technology can give you a better idea of the changes that have come with the fifth generation wireless. Large cells using high power and generating the signals for the 4G network are now going to get replaced with smaller cell sites. The small stations will not be as high-power as the large cellular towers used for 4G technology and hence they will be located closer to each other. The reason for locating these small cells closer to each other is because installing them far apart would invite signal interruptions due to objects and weather.

Rooftops and the top of the poles will be the perfect places to install the 5G cell stations. The new 5G technology will be energy efficient too. According to GSMA, a connection must fulfill the criterion of reducing 90% of energy consumption to qualify as a 5G network.

How 5G Will Enable Network as a Service

One of the major features of 5G architecture is the end-to-end slicing. The idea of network slicing involves parting an existing physical infrastructure into many smaller virtual sections. Each virtual network will be a complete infrastructure on its own. This feature will allow service providers to create multiple network infrastructures for the varying needs of the customers.

If you look at the current network configurations, a company providing broadband services has the same connection for its customers regardless of their usage differences. Not to mention, internet of things is not even a consideration in the existing networking services. For a customer, internet speed might not be as important as low latency, but the service providers had to no control over this factor with 4G technology.

Network slicing in 5G will allow a network service provider to create multiple virtual networks, segment the customers based on their needs, and dedicate a connection to the customer based on those needs. The new networks or slices will have their own properties, protocols, architecture and configurations.

NaaS for Businesses

While companies and individuals at homes will benefit greatly from the new technology, it is the businesses that will experience the revolutionary improvements 5G will bring with it. The availability of Network as a Service will allow businesses to manage their costs in a much better way. First, they won’t have to own their own network infrastructures now that there will be companies that can take care of this task for them. Secondly, they can have different connections enabled for different segments with their organizations.

For example, they won’t have to use a very high bandwidth connection with tremendously fast speeds for internet of things application. When it comes to IoT, low internet speeds are not a big problem because the amount of data packets to be sent is very low. However, they will need large capacity because there could be hundreds and thousands of devices connected to the same network.

Network service providers now can monetize their service further through slicing. They can introduce different data packages for different applications and sell them separately to their customers. An important thing to keep in mind here is that the presence of many different types of virtual networks will not affect each other’s performances. Every network is a separate entity whose speed and transfer rate will not affect the speed and transfer rate of the other virtual network.

Final Thoughts

If you did not know, large tech companies have already started to invest in 5G technology. 5G has not arrived yet but companies like Samsung, Qualcomm and Nokia have already started to work on various devices that are 5G enabled. Samsung is currently working on introducing a router for household usage that will be ready for 5G wireless broadband. Qualcomm is also putting in the efforts to come up with a 5G-enabled modem. Companies like Ericsson and Nokia are not focusing on end users instead they are targeting mobile service providers by offering them platforms that are compatible with 5G technology.

It is good news that 5G technology is not all about increased speed. It has come with new ways for operators to monetize their services, and features that will lay the groundwork for future technologies like artificial intelligence, internet of things, etc.

Reference

An Overview of ITIL: Framework & Best Practices

Jasveen Singh — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 07:49:22 +0000

ITIL is the acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, which is a framework that encompasses a set of best practices for delivering IT services. ITIL provides a standardized approach to build and manage stable IT Infrastructure that offers lesser risks, higher efficiency, and scalability for growth.

As one of the most popular and widely accepted framework for IT service management today, organizations use the best practices laid down by ITIL for increasing operational efficiency and IT service improvement. The nucleus of ITIL is structured around a Service Lifecycle which consists of the five phases below:

In a practical scenario, organizations use a systematic approach to select, plan, support, and deliver IT services. It is easier said than done since it is a herculean task for an organization to align itself with business. In the real world, it is not simple to offer quality service to customers amongst constraints such as unplanned change management, less proactive helpdesks, and less comprehensive SLAs that lack clarity.

The framework of ITIL is divided into five broad stages or categories:

- Guiding principles
- Governance
- Service value chain
- Continual improvement
- Practices

1)Guiding principles

Guiding principles form the strategy laid down for the management of IT Infrastructure for secure collaboration and increased business value.

Focus on value: Question the current strategy and evaluate the business value. All plans within the strategy should add value to achieve the business objective.
Start where you are: Assess existing process, identify areas of improvement, and seek to enhance it.
Progress iteratively with feedback: Focus onsmall improvement steps and evaluate progress. Select manageable and measurable changes. Once these are embedded, move forward on to the next iteration
Collaborate and promote visibility: Understand end-users and work with them to plan improvements, then review failures and successes together
Think and work holistically: Organization does not limit thoughts to hardware or software but focuses on the latest technology to reduce dependencies
Keep it simple and practical: Focus only on required processes as many things change
Optimize and automate: Emphasize on optimizing process first and then automate to improve inefficiencies.

2) Governance:

Governance is a critical part and more like a Framework to align our organization with the activities. It also allows controlling and ensures that all activities comply with the guiding principles of ITIL to achieve the final goal.

3) Service value chain (SVS):

The SVS is a set of interconnected activities required to realize the value and deliver results to the end-users. There are six main activities within the service value chain:

Plan: Involves creating a layout along with the policies to define the approach needed to achieve the organization objective
Improve: Devise strategies that target to improve the practices, services, and products continually.
Engage: This activity will facilitate the engagement with collaborators to obtain their precise requirements needs and pain points
Design and transition: Create new services and enhance existing services
Obtain/build: Obtain customer specifications and create the service modules for meeting their requirements
Deliver and support: Push out the services that are being used by the relevant stakeholders, meet their specifications

4) Continual improvement:

Implement a continuous improvement across the entire service lifecycle. ITIL 4 offers a Continual Improvement model which is applied to all facets of products and services alike. However, organizations use alternative improvement approaches like Lean, Six Sigma as well.

5) Practices:

Practices are one of the most critical parts of the service value chain that allows us to deliver valuable services to the end-user. ITIL 4 specifications separate practices into four broad categories:

Organizations and people: Define and assess the systems and culture, roles and skills to deliver the services
Information and technology: To deliver services, organizations select the available hi-tech and data at their disposal
Partners and suppliers: Forge strong relationships with stakeholders including third parties for service delivery
Value streams and processes: Define all the processes, workflows, and activities that add value to the service. Thirty-four practices are divided into three management areas (the practices may be referred to in ITIL documentation).
- General Management: 14 practices
- Service Management: 17 practices
- Technical management: 3 practices

To extract maximum benefit from ITIL, an organization need not employ all the practices. The trick to success is to use the ones that add value and align to strategic objectives. For example, many organizations tried to use virtualization and network transformation that needs ITIL Framework, but lack of expertise has resulted in overkill at an extensive cost.
(Also read: Why Businesses Should Adopt Managed Cloud Security Services)

References:

https://www.happiestminds.com/whitepapers/Adopting-ITIL-Framework.pdf
https://www.axelos.com/best-practice-solutions/itil/what-is-itil
http://www.ipedr.com/vol5/no1/8‐H00038.pdf
https://stephenmann.wordpress.com/

6 Software Testing Essentials For Better E-commerce Portals

Jasveen Singh — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 07:37:50 +0000

Are Website Glitches Knocking Down Your Sales?
So, you have an e-commerce portal with payment gateways and shopping carts. Not to forget, you are looking after an extensive set of features like product catalogues, customer data, marketing automation and lots more. This calls for some stringent software testing!

Running an e-commerce portal can be frustrating especially if your website is vulnerable to glitches and doesn’t perform up to the mark. Some of the most common problems eCommerce portal owners come across include:

The failure to satisfy online customers due to overly complicated product categorization and a search panel.
The ability to handle scalability of customer and shopping cart data.
Problems in handling payment processes
Difficulty in managing and verifying customer profiles and transaction reports
Problems in optimizing the sales funnel
Difficult in identifying and running marketing campaigns on the portal
The inability to maintain website standards across different platform, geographical regions and ‘smart’ devices.

The good news is that you can implement software testing of your eCommerce portal to eliminate functional flaws. You can also check the performance and usability of your online portal and at the same time optimize the ‘customer appeal’ of your website.

Why should you test E-Commerce websites?

Sometimes you would make a minor change to your online portal and later find out that the entire content is poorly formatted. Perhaps the worst nightmare for eCommerce owners is when shopping cart changes trigger security alert and the customers are forced to run away.

More and more customers today are using mobile devices to access online shopping portals, and this is exactly the reason why you should invest in a separate mobile responsive website with device friendly templates and HTML coding. eCommerce problems can also appear due to changes in the versions of the Android/iOS operating systems and the variety of screen sizes and mobile devices.

Remember that you should test your eCommerce portal for:

Changes in content – headlines, promotional banners, and slider images
Differences in formatting
Changes in a shopping cart, secure checkout
Addition or removal of links and promotional marketing campaigns
Modifications in site navigation or template
Adding promotional coupons, and discounts
Adding, removing or modifying landing pages and product category pages
Upgrading the operating system or app software
Changes in the Login process
Adding new ad campaigns

(Explore:OTT Video Testing Services)

Checklist for Testing E-commerce Websites:

Some of the critical elements that need to be testing when you are the owner of an eCommerce website are as follows:

(Read:Test Automation Tools for Mobile Applications: A brief survey)

1. Homepage
Your homepage will have a lot going on. Make sure you check the interval at which images will be refreshed and whether the banners/images can be clicked on. Also, the page should load fast and the rest of the content should be viewed correctly across different browsers and screen resolutions. With lots of scripts running on the pages these days, ensure that the images and content are loading fast enough and rich media does not hamper the user experience

2. Search Bar
Search algorithms are important for the success of the eCommerce platform. Your customers should be able to search for products or specific brands or something more specific. More importantly, search results must be relevant.

The most important and relevant features that need to be tested are sorting, filtering and pagination. The search results page should:

Display relevant products
Display product image, information, price and maybe customer ratings
Number of products per page according to the requirement
Results must be sortable based on the typical fields like price, ratings etc.

Pagination checks that all items displayed on a page are different from the previous page. Remember, there should be no duplicates. If there are any ad-based items inserted in the list for promotions, they should be aptly marked so.

Filtering should allow customers to select 3, 4 or 5 different options from your drop-down menu.

3. Products Information Page
This is the most important page which determines whether there will be a sale or not. The product detail page has an image of the product, product specifications, reviews, shipping options, delivery information, check out options, promotional details, stock information, and color variations available. All this information must be correctly verified and should match the correct backend systems related to logistics and stock, also the promotional and current offer running should display on the correct category items.

4. Shopping Cart
The shopping cart can decide the fate of your sales. In fact, this is the stage before the customer commits to the purchase. You should test the following scenarios:

How customers can add items to the shopping cart and continue shopping?
The total number of items in the cart should get incremented as the customer continues to shop
Total price, the number of items and their totals should be displayed clearly in the cart.
Any taxes and shipping charges available should be displayed in the cart
Cart total should reflect all additions/changes a user makes – for example adding items to the item, removing items
Shopping cart page should have the option where customers can proceed to checkout and choose their preferred shipping option
The cart should allow customers to apply coupons, calculate discounts
There should be an option titled “don’t check out.” In this case, customers can close the website and come back later to complete their purchase.

5. Payment/Purchase
Payment page should display different payment options and whether users can simply check out as guests. There must be a separate sign-in for returning customers and new user sign up. If you are storing credit card information, perform security testing and make sure the login session has a specific time threshold. If your session does expire, make sure the user is timed out completely. Any failed transactions are appropriately reported, and any financial transactions should be reversed in such failure cases. The payment history should also be available in the account history and should be verified too.

6. Post Purchase Testing
This involves testing actions users can do after placing their order. For example, they should be able to change their order or review order history. Customers should also have the option to make changes to their user account if applicable.

Other functionalities that can be tested as part of e-commerce platform include recommendations, the database of product, warehouse system and contacting customer care.

(Explore:Unified Test Automation Framework)

To summarize, each feature of an e-commerce website needs to be tested to make sure it is correctly implemented. Moreover, as the business owner, you should perform routine checks so that your website keeps running smoothly. Looking for a software testing partner to help you set up a robust and fully functional eCommerce site? Reach out to us and let us help you in your e-Commerce endeavors.

Growing importance of NetOps in Network Management

Jasveen Singh — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:06:55 +0000

With the continuous adoption of software-defined networking (SDN), the introduction of advanced data center fabric designs, large-scale implementation of hybrid cloud, networks are becoming even more fragmented, complex, and harder to manage. This has been further amplified by the pandemic which pushed enterprise networks to evolve rapidly to serve the sudden growth in userbase which required a broad spectrum of services. As a result of this increased usage, network security threats evolved in parallel. To enhance their network resilience, organizations globally have been adopting NetOps to make their networking operations and functions faster and more accessible.

In a recent survey commissioned by Opengear, 87% of network managers, network architects, and network engineers confirmed that their organizations have increased their investment in NetOps over the past two years, while 48% of organizations revealed that they have increased NetOps spending by around 50% or more.

What is NetOps?

NetOps is much more than just putting together two words, Network, and Operations. NetOps is in essence an evolution of DevOps that prioritizes agility and rapid deployments in network operations. By incorporating techniques like automation, virtualization, and orchestration, NetOps helps organizations create and maintain a highly available and agile network in the deployment and configuration stages. Akin to DevOps, Automation or Software Defined Networking, NetOps also involves the people, skills, and tools that an organization deploys to deliver a network of services for its employees and customers. Thus, it helps break down the silos that exist between network, operations, and data teams.
(Read:DevOps and its benefits)

Evolution of NetOps:

Let us now understand how NetOps evolved.

NetOps 1.0:
The differentiating features of NetOps 1.0 are:

Reactive mindset - put out fires as they occur
Manual intervention/CLI-focussed
Siloed networking teams who focus more on technology
Automation averse

In the earlier days of legacy networks which were hardware-centric, complex, and inflexible, network-related issues would be handled in a reactive manner. Whenever any issue arose, the network tasks required manual intervention and were executed through CLI scripting, with network teams working in isolation from application and security teams. As the focus was more on technology rather than business needs, the network engineers were automation averse. In fact, a Gartner survey confirmed that many network changes were still manually configured as of 2018.

In the pre-DevOps era, maintaining uptime was sacrosanct as availability trumped agility. Temporarily, NetOps 1.0 promotes maximum network availability with minimal disruption. However, it has long-term adverse ramifications as it creates an unrelenting, complex infrastructure that is not amenable to change or scale and is an obstacle to agile development. And this spurred the next phase of NetOps, i.e. NetOps 2.0.

NetOps 2.0:
With the advent and widespread adoption of the cloud, developers tuned in to the intricacies of networking, and network teams sought after developer approaches to adapt to the changing business landscape. Here’s what changed in NetOps 2.0:

Proactive and Analytics driven problem solving i.e. preventing fires before they start
Use of programmatic APIs, intent-based networking, automation, AI/ML, virtualization, and orchestration to automate administrative tasks across a network
Better coordination and collaboration between DevOps and DevSecOps teams
Focus on business goals rather than technology

The topmost priority of all digital enterprises today is to be more agile so that they can match customer expectations. By combining the principles of DevOps into Network Operations such as continuous network automation and validation, network operations can be further simplified leading to an increase in speed, efficiency, availability, and agility while also fostering innovation.

Implementing NetOps 2.0

The success stories of some of the biggest cloud service providers have triggered the enterprise IT businesses to follow their lead by adopting the two pillars of NetOps, i.e. Automation and Virtualization, to optimally ramp up their network infrastructures.

Implementing NetOps2.0 in organizations requires both top-down and bottom-up initiatives. This can include adjustments in cultural values to accommodate managed risk-taking, awarding innovative initiatives, and promoting a spirit of enquiry that challenges the status quo. Effective collaborations between Networking, DevOps, and DevSecOps teams should be encouraged so that everybody is connected and works towards business success.

DevOps + NetOps

One of the primary goals of DevOps practitioners is to automate as many of the software release pipelines as possible. Similar levels of production and programmability are making their way into networking which accounts for the similarity between DevOps and NetOps. Just like DevOps, NetOps can be implemented using technology.

At the same time, NetOps and DevOps teams can come together to deal with network issues by collaborating and sharing tools that can aid and bolster IT as a whole.

Different NetOps tools are designed to help automate network workflows including network implementations and network operations. DevOps teams can make use of these tools to perform configuration changes and update the devices automatically, such as Alarm & Alert detection services and monitoring to avoid overdue estimated network device licensing, renewals, upgrades, and incident management services. Thus, the application of DevOps tools to Networking has brought in agility, availability, and automation in Networks.
(Read:What is SecOps and Its Benefits)
(Read:Role of a SecOps Center, SecOps team, & SecOps with AI)

Benefits of Implementing NetOps in an Enterprise:

89%, who had introduced NetOps, said that it had made their organization’s network more reliable.

Strengthening an Enterprise’s Digital Initiative -Organizations worldwide are adopting NetOps to accelerate their digital initiatives. With faster software development, the new features are quickly delivered to the end-user(s), creating a competitive advantage, and high sales.
Flexibility & Agility -NetOps has two main themes: virtualization and automation. As network teams move away from fixed hardware, they move toward software that provides more flexibility and agility in the network.
Resilience - Enterprises that respond more quickly to unfavorable conditions or unanticipated circumstances will be better position to achieve everyday business objectives. This is further strengthened by an experienced NetOps Engineer who ensures the underlying physical layer is error-free and always available. After all, healthy networks form the backbone of a healthy enterprise.
Transparency -The NetOps approach uses software to monitor network performance by collecting and analyzing usage data. This way, potential problems are spotted early and removed before they become actual issues.
Tool Integration- The legacy networking architectures and tooling were not designed for today’s cloud and digital-centric world. For example, due to the manual practice of making changes one router at a time by using CLI commands, even minor configuration changes can take weeks to implement globally. Now, there are different automation tools integrations for customer networks that provide a holistic view of customer networks for utilization and consumption. This visibility helps in planning network transitions accordingly.

Network & Security:

Security is essential to avoid network downtime, as the consequences negatively affect customer satisfaction and profit. Now, with networks more layered than ever, and subsequently more vulnerable than ever organizations are investing in NetOps to enhance security and reduce the potential for downtime. NetOps tools and practices have helped in remediating and resolving network and system issues by enabling network management and network monitoring.

In a survey conducted by Enterprise Management Associates where 366 IT professionals participated, 83% of organizations said they saw increased collaboration between their network and security teams. The security's team need to analyze network data has fuelled this collaboration. The data-sharing and optimizing incident response times between the Network and Security teams has led to a new thought process NetSecOps. But that is a blog for another day!
(Read:Security as a Service (SECaaS) – A Detailed Overview)

NetOps is a proactive, data-driven approach to Networking that helps modernize networks and increase their resilience. It is more than the integration of new solutions. It entails a mindset shift both top-down and bottom-up of the profeFssionals that work within it. By transitioning into the NetOps culture, enterprises and engineers will ensure effective integration of NetOps with other key teams such as DevOps and SecOps and enable a smoother digital transformation journey.

Automated Deployment Of CI/CD

Jasveen Singh — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 04:41:51 +0000

Introduction

Automated Deployment enables an organization to deploy software releases with a single command or simply by clicking on a control panel. Automation is essential to streamline the deployments in the production environment and reduce the associated risks. Web application deployment needs some well-defined steps to be followed so that the software changes are shipped from the development environment to the staging/ production environment. It is done so that the updated software (which includes new features and corrections) is available for the end-users.

Automated deployment reduces the human effort and avoids any manual intervention required to deploy code to the various environments like DEV(Development), QA (Quality Assurance), UAT(User Acceptance Testing), and PROD(Production). Automated deployment is closely linked to CI/CD (Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery).
CI/CD is one of the current industry best practices to deliver applications to customers more frequently and reliably by introducing automation into the stages of application development.
(Read: What is CI/CD)
(Read:Why DevOps Is Crucial For Your Business)

Automated Deployment Characteristics

Some of the salient features of automated deployment are:

Deployment can be triggered by clicking on a button or running a single command from CLI
There is little or no human intervention from the start to the end
Better visibility, i.e. it shows the deployment progress as it happens
It should be atomic, which means either all the steps are completed, or nothing happens
Uninstallation of previous release or rollback of failed deployment should be easy and quick
Smoke testing should be done after automated deployment to ensure nothing is broken
It consists of pre-defined steps and a series of workflows. The next step should not be initiated until the previous steps successful
It should be transparent with clear indications/notifications to the team about the success or failure of each step

(Read:CI/CD Enabler Framework for Google Cloud Platform)

The Problem To be Solved

As part of the deployment of a new software release, the following tasks are routinely followed:

Manually download software build from the build server to the target platform.
Manually deploy build in the appropriate location/ container (on staging or production server).
Manual smoke test to verify the key functionalities are working fine.

After providing so much manual effort if smoke testing fails then a new build is required and the complete cycle should be repeated. This requires a lot of manual effort again, which can be avoided.

The key shortcomings of the current process are the lack of the following:

Automation deployment
Automation sanity testing
Automation smoke testing

Software development teams should not worry about how code is going into production. They should only focus on the business requirements, design, implementation, unit tests, integration tests, and regression tests. So, by excluding manual tasks and including automated tasks we can reduce a lot of additional efforts.

Solution: Automated Deployment

To achieve automated deployment, use Ansible which is an automation configuration tool. Keep Ansible as a controller entity that is used to interact with the required servers and executes the required shell script on managed nodes to achieve the desired result.

The framework which helps in executing the workflow is as shown below:

Write plays in such a way that Ansible can support N>0 number of servers at any tier.

Ansible verifies the reachability and memory usage of each server before continuing with deployment.
Ansible integration with collaboration tools helps to notify the team about continuous progress.
For each environment inventory files are there i.e. DEV, QA, UAT, and PROD.
In automation deployment, Ansible uses to run smoke testing before deployment of the build.
Ansible uses FTP so that release can be downloaded and deployed to DEV and QA env.
Ansible interacts with Artifactory to download/ deploy release on UAT and PROD env.
To ensure the integrity of the build, Ansible uses to evaluate some of the builds.
Ansible interacts with a load balancer to stop traffic.
Ansible interacts with the database server via the application server to upgrade the database.
Ansible interacts with the application server to download and deploy build.
Ansible does a predefined number of retries and waits for services to come up on the application server.
Ansible stops immediately if anything goes wrong and triggers rollback followed by verification of services.
Ansible interacts with selenium to trigger smoke testing after deployment of build on various environments.

Key Components of Automated Deployment Framework

The diagram below illustrates the key components of the automated deployment:

Deployment tool: Ansible is used as a deployment tool and plays the role of a controller. It decides which steps to execute next, based on the outcome of the previous step. It interacts with various servers to execute predefined steps which are part of Automated deployment.

Bash script: Ansible interacts with various servers and runs a script on the server to accomplish various tasks.

FTP / Artifactory: The location from where Ansible downloads the software release. Based on our needs according to the environment, we can choose any location.
Notification: Automated Deployment framework notifies team in the various slack channel to show deployment progress.

Pre-validation: Framework verifies the services running on the environment before initiating deployment.

Health check: Framework verifies the health of the server with which it will interact. If health is not good, then it does not proceed with deployment and notifies the team about the same via a slack channel.

Post-validation: After upgrading services, the framework verifies services to ensure the software release has been successfully upgraded.

Rollback: Framework has the capability to trigger rollback and restore services if any step fails.

Selenium: Deployment framework verifies services in pre-validation and post-validation by initiating selenium scripts.

Server reachability: Before initiating deployment, it verifies if all servers are reachable to avoid any risk during deployment.

Benefits:

The automation of the deployment has helped us achieve the following direct benefits in some of our customer's projects:

Planned downtime in production for new build deployments is reduced from 3 hours to 1 hour.
No manual testing required after software release up-gradation.
Parallel deployment can be initiated for multiple sites.

References
https://stackify.com/what-is-cicd-whats-important-and-how-to-get-it-right/
https://semaphoreci.com/cicd
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an-introduction-to-ci-cd-best-practices
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/intro_inventory.html
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_best_practices.html
https://galaxy.ansible.com/
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_reuse_roles.html
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-tower/

Need for Security Testing of Mobile Apps

Jasveen Singh — Mon, 30 May 2022 05:11:11 +0000

Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policy is hardly a novelty these days as enterprises now allow employees to access sensitive business data on their personal mobile devices. Hence, a large percentage of users utilize the same mobile devices for both business and own purposes. Also, they store a variety of personal and business data on their smartphones and tablets. With the WhatsApp security breach fresh in our minds, it is not incorrect to say that mobile apps are vulnerable to critical security attacks. This, in turn, makes security testing of mobile apps imperative.
(Bonus Read: Managing Enterprise Mobility Through Mobile Device Management)

Users all over the world opt for mobile apps that enable them to accomplish specific tasks. Simultaneously, they do not want to compromise the security and privacy of the data stored on their mobile devices. Businesses must incorporate robust security features and perform elaborate security testing while developing a mobile app. It enables them to secure the personal and professional data of users despite targeted malware attacks and the presence of a virus on the devices. Security testing helps the testing professionals check the vulnerability of the app to targeted security attacks. It also helps to identify the loopholes that make the app vulnerable to targeted malware attacks. Hence, security testing results enable enterprises to enhance the credibility and profitability of the mobile app in the longer run. There are also several reasons why each enterprise must perform elaborate security testing of mobile apps.

Why Must Each Business Perform Elaborate Security Testing of Mobile Apps?

Eliminate Common Security Vulnerabilities

Several studies have shown that each mobile app contains some form of security vulnerabilities. A large percentage of modern mobile apps even contain the most commonly identified vulnerabilities. The testers must locate and eliminate the commonly identified vulnerabilities to protect the application from both existing and emerging security threats. Security vulnerabilities can also be fixed easily before the commercial launch of the mobile app.

Secure the Application Code

Many cybercriminals execute targeted malware by taking advantage of the loopholes in the source code of the mobile app. The malware helps them take control of the user’s device and subsequently access the data stored on it. While performing security testing, the testing professionals assess the quality of the entire application code. This helps them to identify the weaker pieces of code that make the app vulnerable to security attacks. The three common methods to do this are:

Static analysis: Using code or application binary. Several tools are available for both Android and iOS

Dynamic analysis: Analyzing the application when it’s executing on the device, communication with servers/web services. Typically done by proxy-based tools, analyzing and interpreting communication of use with the external world

Forensic analysis: Checking the residual files, data that has been left behind after the application has been run. Database based or simple tools like Android debug bridge (ADB) can be used for this purpose

Prevent Data Leaks

As noted earlier, a user nowadays stores both personal and business data on the same mobile device. Most apps access the personal information of the user to deliver a more personalized experience. Hence, the vulnerabilities in a mobile app can result in data leaks in the future. The testing professionals eliminate the chances of data leaks by evaluating the hard-coded data. This includes the application code, the personal/business data stored on the device, and data in transit.

Prevent Real-Time Security Attacks

Many cyber criminals nowadays distribute malware that attacks the mobile app at the time of execution. The malware tries to modify the functionality of the app by submitting malicious input at runtime. Hence, enterprises must explore ways to protect their mobile apps from real-time security attacks. The testers can easily identify the malicious input submitted at runtime by using robust technologies like runtime application self-protection (RASP). This would help them prevent the malware from modifying the app’s configuration.

Eliminate the Impact of Trojan Apps

Many hackers nowadays distribute malware through mobile apps and games. The users fail to identify the malicious functionality of the app or game and install it on their mobile apps. The Trojan apps are explicitly designed to accomplish tasks like retrieving user data, changing the configuration of the app, monitor user activities, make unauthorized calls, and send unauthorized text messages. While performing security testing, the testers check how the application behaves in the presence of malware in the system. This knowledge helps them identify ways to make Trojan apps ineffective.

Secure Third-Party APIs And Services

Nowadays, developers enhance the mobile app’s performance by integrating a variety of third-party APIs and services. Some of these APIs are provided by reputable companies, while others are open source and uploaded by the community. Hence, the quality of individual third-party APIs or services differ. Testers assess the security of third-party APIs independently after they are integrated into the app to evaluate the security of a mobile app. Also, they monitor and assess data transmission to keep the user data safe and secure.

Implement Corporate Policy

In addition to implementing the BYOD policy, enterprises also allow employees to access business data on their personal mobile devices. But the enterprises do not have full control over the app installed by employees on their own devices. Hence, it becomes essential for enterprises to implement a robust policy to ensure that the business data is accessed only by an authorized employee. The employees also have to comply with the required authorization and authentication process. The testers will assess the security, authentication, and authorization features of the mobile app while performing security tests. It helps them to ensure that any unauthorized user does not access the business data.

Get Higher Returns

Each business has to invest in robust security testing tools and experienced testing professionals to get more reliable security testing results. But according to several studies, most users will switch to a more secure mobile app without any delay. Hence, the initial investment will help the business to enhance the app’s popularity and profitability in the longer run. Also, the business can get all security loopholes in the mobile app fixed before its deployment to beat the competition in the long-run.

Usually, experienced testing professionals can think like a hacker and identify all critical security vulnerabilities in the app. At the same time, the security testing tools will enable the testers to assess the security of the mobile app under different environments and within a shorter amount of time.

Conclusion

Coming back to the recent WhatsApp security lapse and the Facebook security breach which happened a few years ago, security experts say that even the most vaulted applications can also get hacked. The mobile network has made our lives comfortable by empowering users to do any transaction viz. social, financial, and business. However, as end-users of mobile applications, it is always advisable to update all the apps with their latest security patches. Mobile app companies have been continuously testing their mobile apps under stringent conditions. Security testing of mobile apps helps to prohibit hackers from stealing our personal information and maliciously utilizing them.

Managed Cloud Security: Benefits & Services

Jasveen Singh — Tue, 17 May 2022 04:55:31 +0000

According to a research conducted by Gartner, the average cost of downtime could be as costly as $5600/minute.

While Cloud adoption is increasing across many industries, security is still one of the major hindrances. So, is cloud adoption really secure?

Security is frequently viewed as the largest impediment to a digital transformation journey, but it can also be its greatest enabler.

A lack of a strong cloud security system in place is like a time-bomb waiting to explode. There are various potential issues with not having a solid security system such as:

Operational Inefficiency
High Cost
Potential Harm to a Company's Image in case of a breach
Regulatory Compliance Challenges

All these difficulties are addressed by using Managed Cloud Security Services. It also allows the company's internal IT team to focus on new business initiatives while an external security team with extensive experience manages all elements of providing enterprise-grade cloud security.
(Read:Importance of cloud migration)

Some of the advantages a business avails from Managed Cloud Security Services are:

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR)
Automation
Overcome Business Specific Challenges
Accelerate Innovation
Cost-Effective
Overcome Compliance Challenges

What are the major security services offered in the cloud?

SECaaS (security-as-a-service) is a fast-expanding area that provides cybersecurity services that complement the traditionally managed security service provider.

9 of the major security services offered are:

Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Data Loss Prevention
Web Security
Email Security
Security Assessments
Intrusion Management
Security, Information and Event Management (SIEM)
Encryption
Network Security

(Bonus read: A detailed blog about SECaaS)

Any cloud computing service must be sufficiently secure. As more organizations move their vital data online and into the cloud, the risk of security breaches or cyber-attacks is growing. Maintaining a responsible cloud presence entails meeting strict security and compliance regulations as well as employing smart security techniques.

DevOps and its benefits

Jasveen Singh — Mon, 09 May 2022 07:01:21 +0000

In 2015, Brett Hofer, in his 4 part blog series, Art of DevOps, drew a parallel between the Art of War and Art of DevOps. He wrote,

"Ultimately, we're fighting for the absolute best services and features that we can deliver to our customers as quickly as we possibly can. We seek to be victorious over our competition, successful in informing and meeting or exceeding the expectations of our commanding officers while preventing and mitigating casualties caused by critical issues and poor performance."

So what exactly is DevOps?

DevOps is Devlopment+Operations. It is the working of the development and operations teams to enable faster development and efficient maintenance of deployments.
By Wikipedia definition,

"DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality."

To understand why DevOps is different, we need to understand what used to happen before the DevOps methodology was in place. So, before DevOps, we had something called a Waterfall Model. In the Waterfall model, everybody worked in silos- the developers worked on writing code for an application, the QA team worked around the code's flaws and quality, and then the system admins had the job of making sure everything ran smoothly during deployment. In general, the communication between the teams was limited as they worked in their separate environment. So, whenever any error or bug arose, it became very chaotic:

The developers would sort the bug out.
The QA team would again check it for quality.
The changes would be pushed again for deployment.

Even a small issue would create a substantial amount of mess. When the number of releases increases, the situation would spiral out of hand. And the blame game would start, with each team blaming the other one.

DevOps methodology breaks these silos and makes sure that developers are consulted and kept in the loop during deployment; QA guys do more than testing, and system admins can write scripts. All of this is possible as DevOps makes sure that a proper communication channel is maintained between the teams. This way, all the teams understand the issues faced by other teams.

Some benefits of DevOps Methodology:

Improved software quality enabled by automation
Improved monitoring and quicker service recovery -Quicker turnaround of change requests -Greater synergies between development, testing, and operations teams
Continuous and iterative deliveries
Reduced Operational Costs

To enhance DevOps, security is introduced during the early part of the SDLC. Security + DevOps= SecDevOps or simply SecOps.
(Read about the role of SecOps centre)
(Read:Automated Deployment Of CI/CD)

Role of a SecOps Center, SecOps team, & SecOps with AI

Jasveen Singh — Wed, 04 May 2022 06:22:07 +0000

Read what is SecOps and its benefits.

Role of a SecOps Center

Constant Network Monitoring-

SecOps teams monitor the network around the clock to immediately be aware of impending security threats. Advanced tools are used to point out statistically inappropriate behaviour in the systems.

Incident Response and Remediation-

One significant role of a SecOps team is to respond to any incurred threat immediately. Network monitoring tools generally detect the incidents before the ill-effects spill onto the end-users. The team is expected to take remedial actions and perform damage control (restore lost, affected and compromised files).

Forensics and Root Cause Analysis-

After a security breach or another unexpected event, it is imperative to make sure why it took place. This investigation is necessary to avoid any such attacks in future. Various log data and other pieces of information are thoroughly analyzed to determine the source of the breach.

Threat Intelligence-

To keep attackers at bay, the team needs to be prepared at all times. It must possess the knowledge of the newest security technologies and trends in cybercrimes. Cybercriminals are ever innovating, and the team needs to be a step ahead of them to have an actionable plan to counter the attacks. This preparation method involves SecOps teams collaborating within as well as with other teams of various industries.

It is also essential to have methods in place to prevent and proactively respond to threats. Thus, it is necessary to periodically maintain and update the existing security systems and security policies.

Key roles/positions on a SecOps team

The structure of an organization's SecOps team defines its success in preventing cyber-attacks. Putting roles together piecemeal without an overall strategy will lead to an incoherent response. Instead, an organization requires a well-coordinated SecOps team with defined roles covering the full spectrum of cybersecurity threats and attacks.

5 key roles for every Security Operation Center (SOC) team:

Incident responder:

Is the 1st responder to hundreds of security threats/alerts received every day. He is responsible for configuring and monitoring the security tools.

Security investigator

Is responsible for identifying affected hosts and evaluating terminated processes. It is also a part of his duty to identify sources of attacks and methodologies used.

Advanced security analyst

Is responsible for conducting vulnerability tests and performing security analysis. He is responsible for assessing the security framework and fixing potential security lapses.

SOC manager

Is responsible for hiring and training the staff. As a manager, he is also in charge of allocating resources and managing the team.

Security engineer/architect

Is a specialist whose responsibility is to maintain security aspects in the design of the information systems.

SecOps roadmap with AI tools Integration

Automation and Artificial Intelligence AI have found their way into SecOps tools, and organizations should aspire to automate as many functions as possible.

There are numerous SecOps and SOC automation use cases, including incident detection, response, analysis, landscape analysis, emergent threat mitigation, human SOC analyst augmentation, and security training gamification.

Teams can use automated functions to compile data on security incidents, assign risk scores, cluster for similarities, differentiate and prioritize distinct kinds of threats, recommend response or remediation steps, and more.

SecOps teams benefit from automation by achieving awareness of the current state, understanding what could happen, and a plan of action. Increased threat vectors, such as IoT devices, necessitate SecOps teams having the outlook that AI can provide – insight that assists in detection and prevention. Automation also frees humans from time-consuming, manual tasks, focusing more on SecOps strategy.

More and more enterprises are now adopting SecOps as a cost-effective way of developing applications. Companies incorporate security into their entire business process by implementing SecOps from the start. This approach ensures that requirements are fulfilled, and systems are designed with safety. This "shift left" enables security to work together to set up a security system. It also pushes members of the operations team to reconsider how they create and develop.

Bonus read-
Growing importance of NetOps in Network Management

What is SecOps and Its Benefits

Jasveen Singh — Mon, 02 May 2022 07:40:27 +0000

There was a time when cyber-attacks were unheard of, and cyber-criminals weren't innovating continuously to find novel ways of breaking into an IT system. But today is different. As security attacks grow, the need to combine Security and Operations teams to provide a comprehensive security framework has become paramount.

Although combining Security and Operations (SecOps) is the step forward, it still isn't widely followed. A report by Dark Reading found that 28% of the organizations bring the Security team at the beginning of the projects only when the project is critically important. Furthermore, most of the respondents agreed that the security teams are often not consulted at all during the initial phases. But this doesn't mean the trend towards adoption of SecOps is in anyways receding. A Forbes Insights report concluded that almost half the surveyed companies planned to combine security and operations teams to fortify the security of their essential applications.

What is SecOps?

SecOps is a collaborative effort between IT security and operations teams that unites tools, processes, and technology to maintain enterprise security while reducing risk. As a perceived harmful cyber-attack can affect an organization's best security tools by restricting or shutting down essential application's running time, it is crucial to address security threats that may undermine the working of an organization. SecOps is a methodology that aims to do just that by operationalizing and hardening security across the software lifecycle.

Generally, cloud-hosted applications have a development team, an operations team, and an IT security team. IT organizations face numerous problems, the most common is establishing an effective collaboration between these teams. The role of a development team is to build new updates and program patches; the operations team is responsible for performance management, whereas the security team maintains the security framework to preempt security risks. Since the roles of these teams are very different from each other, it is very easy for these teams to work independently without much collaboration with each other. This working in silos leads to various security and operational issues. Let's understand this by an example- If a development team works without any collaboration with the security team, it can build an unstable patch. The operations team will then be left to manage the performance of a sub-optimal patch update. And in trying to push a sub-optimal patch, they might create various security issues.

Benefits of SecOps:

Adopting a SecOps methodology has many benefits:

Return on investment:

Compared to the traditional security environment, SecOps provides a higher Return on investment.

Security and operations become streamlined:

Priorities are managed and consolidated more effectively, communication and information are integrated, and tools and technology are linked.

Reduced resources:

Key security protocols are done automatically for all streamlined security plans, and effective responses are orchestrated.

Fewer cloud security issues:

Fewer security breaches, vulnerabilities, and security distractions contribute to a safer security environment.
(Read: Is Cloud really secure?)

Fewer app disruptions:

Lesser configuration errors are caused, and modifications in application code are linked to deployment rules.

Better auditing procedures:

Vulnerabilities that were observed can be addressed proactively. Policies for adhering to appropriate standards are checked and enforced automatically.

Earlier detection and prioritization:

SecOps prefer to check smaller, more constructive sections rather than large batches or entire programs all at once

Increased transparency:

Increased ties and collaboration among development, security, and operations can lead to increased transparency.

Security improvements:

SecOps enhances security to DevOps' programming and operational elements.
(Read: Security as a Service)

Read the full article here