An important element of every company is a united team. Project managers and functional units at this stage have to solve a number of specific tasks related to work motivation, conflicts, implementation, control, responsibility, communications, etc. In this article, we will discuss how to support collaboration between security and developers.
Building information security of the company
Every company has information that is confidential. In some cases, the cost of such confidential information is hundreds of times higher than the cost of the entire infrastructure of the company. Leakage of confidential information usually leads to significant financial losses, especially in the development of new technologies and products. Currently, information has become a commodity that can be bought, sold, exchanged.
In addition to the leakage of confidential information, there are other types of information threats, which are aimed at partial or complete shutdown of work processes in the IT company, blocking operational access to necessary external and internal information resources, reducing the performance of network infrastructure or its complete shutdown, physical damage computer technology.
Basic principles of information security by modern systems are:
- the integrity of information;
- confidentiality;
- availability of information.
Thus, the role of the security department is dominant. The main task of these people are:
- to teach employees the main principles of information security;
- minimize possible risks of attack or burglary;
- slow down the attacker and prevent him from getting to the center of IT infrastructure;
- minimize any hacking losses.
Developers in IT
Now let’s move on to the developers – it is thanks to their knowledge and skills that ready-made IT solutions appear. What specialists are on the development team?
- Designers develop an interface design, a product layout, which is later implemented by programmers.
- Programmers are developers directly. Programmers can be divided into several categories: mobile application developers, game developers, front-end developers, back-end developers. What all these professions have in common is that they directly deal with the architecture of the project – these specialists write code, but each has its own specialization.
- QA testers are responsible for testing software developed by programmers. It is the QA team that detects product bugs and shortcomings.
- System administrators are responsible for the proper operation of computer hardware and software.
- Cybersecurity experts prevent data loss, identify potential dangers, and develop systems to counter cyber-attacks.
- DevOps specialists prepare technical support for the placement of products created by the company.
- Full Stack Internet marketers are experts who promote an IT product and have experience in all aspects of marketing, including email marketing, PPC, SMM, UI / UX, as well as SEO.
Basic principles of collaboration
Developers and the security department are the two main axes in the structure of an IT company. But quite often there are conflicts between them.
There are several ways to combine the efforts of these teams:
- teach developers the basics of security
- relocate the person from the security department to the developers.
Whichever option we choose, the main task is to establish communication. After all, each team aims to perform the tasks of its department in the best way without worrying about violating the competence of another department.
For this purpose, the specially designed practice was organized. DevSecOps (development, security, and operations) automates the integration of security tasks across all stages of the software development lifecycle, from design to integration, testing, deployment, and delivery.
DevSecOps allows you to address security issues as they arise when it can be done with less time and cost (before deploying functionality to production). In addition, DevSecOps allows you to share responsibility for the security of applications and infrastructure between specialists in the development, security, and operations of IT systems.