GitLab announced the general availability of GitLab Duo with Amazon Q.
In many ways running the gauntlet of audit is like playing out the "Do You Feel Lucky" scene from the movie Dirty Harry. Even if organizations have bridged the chasm between Dev and Ops, their go-fast efforts can be shot to pieces by those darned list-wielding and trigger-happy compliance police.
Maverick cops aside, compliance is more critical than ever, especially given the increase in cybersecurity threats and potential for data breaches. What's more, as physical and digital becomes inseparable, organizations have an added responsibility – keeping customers secure and safe as they design, build, test and release software.
So perhaps the old-school approach of loading up the audit list "Magnum-44" and firing off at the end of a development cycle is the best way to mitigate risk. Better that than have all this new-fangled continuous delivery and silo-busting talk (no separation of duties - shock-horror) threaten the foundations of governance and regulatory control – or worse, result in customer harm.
But it doesn't have to be this way. Audit needn't kill innovation, just as DevOps shouldn't cause undue consternation for auditors. Each can and should benefit the other; it just takes some work and plain old common sense.
Mutual Respect and Early Engagement
The earlier DevOps practitioners engage audit the better. Good auditors have broad perspectives regarding the world of business operations, which can be invaluable during application design, development and testing. Remember too, most auditors will be unfamiliar with modern DevOps practices, so education in context of how the new tools and automated processes benefit the auditing function is critical.
For example, take synthetic test data generation. All well and good for supporting our velocity goals, but also key evidence that a control strategy is in place to address a specific business risk – protecting customer information and sensitive data.
Many DevOps practices won't just be unfamiliar to auditors, they'll also be counterintuitive. Get ready for some friction (and more auditing) if a request for documented change control procedures is glibly rebuffed by developers stating that they don't exist, because – wait for it - they can deploy straight to production.
But there's no need to hit the panic button. The most important thing DevOps practitioners can do is to illustrate how internal procedures are still supporting controls' objectives – which can actually be easier when development and operations silos are removed. Like for example automatically initiating static-code analysis with a software build to ensure incorruptible code is moving through the pipeline – or development and IT operations working together during code reviews to ensure comprehensive application and infrastructure monitoring is established before production deployments.
Continuous Testing – the Auditing "Enforcer"
Impressing the value of DevOps practices (especially continuous testing) to auditors can also be beneficial. The communication and collaboration stimulated by automated testing can help auditors understand how business risks are being systemically managed.
For example, if security vulnerabilities are detected through an automated test during a software build, then the practice of failing the build becomes a key control surfaced by automation. Combine this with a rule that no production deployments can be made until the problem is fixed and the control becomes even better.
Of course it won't always be plain sailing. New automated methods of software validation may require more education, especially when they negate the need for the more traditional and familiar auditing controls. Be prepared to evidence how practices such as test-driven development (developers writing tests before coding) or requirements-based design (automatically generating test cases based on business requirements) are ensuring services deployed to production incur less risk.
It'll also be necessary to demonstrate how DevOps practices deliver controls that cater for production failures. For example, providing developers immediate access to application performance information specific to their code changes so they can quickly troubleshoot problems. Then by applying code fixes to the continuous delivery pipeline, tools such as release automation can demonstrate how resolutions are being applied faster or environments rolled back to a known good state.
From Box Ticking to Continuous Improvement
DevOps practices and auditing are not mutually exclusive; they're equally important in any business improvement program. By automating risk mitigation controls with DevOps and establishing bi-directional feedback loops, DevOps practitioners can quickly impress how new methods reduce business risk and support compliance goals – faster and with lower cost. Get this right and audit will view DevOps as less "tick in the box" and more as a value-added function.
In many ways audit is a real litmus-test for DevOps. It requires developers and IT operations purposefully collaborating and coordinating activities towards a top of mind boardroom issue – business governance. Sure, DevOps speed always grabs the headlines, but let's not forget the responsibility teams have in supporting many other corporate stakeholders and systems – including audit, risk management and compliance.
So the next time you get a visit from auditors – don't dread it or duck for cover – engage and demonstrate how DevOps supports shared business goals.
Industry News
Perforce Software and Liquibase announced a strategic partnership to enhance secure and compliant database change management for DevOps teams.
Spacelift announced the launch of Saturnhead AI — an enterprise-grade AI assistant that slashes DevOps troubleshooting time by transforming complex infrastructure logs into clear, actionable explanations.
CodeSecure and FOSSA announced a strategic partnership and native product integration that enables organizations to eliminate security blindspots associated with both third party and open source code.
Bauplan, a Python-first serverless data platform that transforms complex infrastructure processes into a few lines of code over data lakes, announced its launch with $7.5 million in seed funding.
Perforce Software announced the launch of the Kafka Service Bundle, a new offering that provides enterprises with managed open source Apache Kafka at a fraction of the cost of traditional managed providers.
LambdaTest announced the launch of the HyperExecute MCP Server, an enhancement to its AI-native test orchestration platform, HyperExecute.
Cloudflare announced Workers VPC and Workers VPC Private Link, new solutions that enable developers to build secure, global cross-cloud applications on Cloudflare Workers.
Nutrient announced a significant expansion of its cloud-based services, as well as a series of updates to its SDK products, aimed at enhancing the developer experience by allowing developers to build, scale, and innovate with less friction.
Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. announced that its Infinity Platform has been named the top-ranked AI-powered cyber security platform in the 2025 Miercom Assessment.
Orca Security announced the Orca Bitbucket App, a cloud-native seamless integration for scanning Bitbucket Repositories.
The Live API for Gemini models is now in Preview, enabling developers to start building and testing more robust, scalable applications with significantly higher rate limits.
Backslash Security announced significant adoption of the Backslash App Graph, the industry’s first dynamic digital twin for application code.
SmartBear launched API Hub for Test, a new capability within the company’s API Hub, powered by Swagger.
Akamai Technologies introduced App & API Protector Hybrid.