An introduction to Zero Trust, the best practice security methodology
The rise of hybrid working has completely changed the security perimeter for good. Security perimeters used to be defined by your organisation’s location, as that’s where your desktops, servers and employees were. But in the hybrid workplace, this extends beyond your offices to any access point that hosts, stores, or accesses corporate resources and services. In the new world of working, employees need secure access to their resources, regardless of where they are working.
Now’s the time to rethink your security strategy. Cyber-attacks have become increasingly sophisticated, and the old castle-and-moat approach is no longer an effective method of securing your environment.
Time to ditch the castle-and-moat approach
We all know the castle-and-moat approach – defend your perimeter while assuming everything that’s already inside doesn’t pose a threat and is already cleared for access. Well, if you’re still using that mentality, it’s time to leave the castle-and-moat approach in the past. Why? It’s been proven time and time again that it doesn’t work in the modern workplace. There’s been endless data breaches as hackers have gained access inside of the firewalls and were able to seamlessly move through internal systems with minimal resistance.
Traditional security practices, such as the castle-and-moat approach, are unable to keep up with the complexity of the ever-evolving workplace. Gone the days where the ‘castle’ works in isolation as it used to. Businesses no longer have data centres for a contained network, but instead, have applications both on-premise and in the cloud with different users accessing them from multiple devices and locations.
It’s important you have a security strategy in place that’s aligned with the modern, hybrid work environment which will look at keeping anything inside and outside your perimeter safe. This is why we want to introduce you to Zero Trust, an end-to-end security strategy that’s been adopted by millions of organisations across the world to protect their technology ecosystem.
What is Zero Trust
Zero Trust Network is a security best practice model which was created back in 2010. Over a decade later, IT managers across the world are implementing Zero Trust as their security strategy. It’s never been easier to adopt a Zero Trust approach as more common technologies, such as Microsoft’s security solutions, are supporting it. Simply put, the Zero Trust concept is built on the belief that businesses shouldn’t trust anything inside or outside its perimeters and must verify anything and everything to connect its systems before granting access.
What does this mean for you? It would require a change in mindset – instead of assuming everything behind your firewall is safe, assume breach and the need to verify each request as it comes from an open network. Zero Trust encourages you “never trust, always verify”, meaning no cyber attack slips through the gaps. Having a Zero Trust security strategy means:
- Any access request should be authenticated and authorised before granting access.
- You should utilise analytics to detect and respond to any anomalies in real time. Mitigating any risks before they become a real threat.
- Microsegmentation and least privileged access principles are applied to minimize lateral movement
- Leverage analytics to identify what’s happened, if anything was compromised and how to stop it.
The three guiding principles of Zero Trust
There are three principles that a Zero Trust strategy is built on; verify explicitly, use least privileged access, and assume breach. When you have a Zero Trust strategy in place, these three principles should be at the heart of your IT and at the forefront of your mind.
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Verify explicitly Always authenticate and authorise data points. This includes identity, location, device and workload. |
Use least privileged access
Limit user access in order to protect your data. |
Assume breach Verify that all end points are encrypted end to end. Leverage analytics to get visibility, drive threat detection and improve defences. |
These principles will help you build solid foundation to start defending the six elements Zero Trust helps you defend.
Six elements to Zero Trust
The Zero Trust security methodology is made up of six core elements: identities, devices, apps, data, infrastructure and networks. Think of these six elements as the pillars to building a Zero Trust environment. They need to be defended in order for you to stay secure, and you can do this by assuming breach.
Why you should consider adopting Zero Trust
Adopting a Zero Trust strategy will benefit your business in other ways than just protecting your business. For starters, you’ll have a true sense of how secure you truly are and will be able to better manage your overall security posture.
You’ll also have the opportunity to scale back on any overlapping security spend. Businesses can often buy security products for tactical reasons that will often work in isolation to look after a single aspect of your security. Overtime there often becomes a pileup of products that aren’t delivering optimal coverage or value for money. Adopting a Zero Trust method will help you unify your security and ultimately help you save on costs as you streamline your technologies.
Finally, there is currently a huge skills gap when it comes to cyber security, and that gap is only going to grow. As more businesses identify they can no longer trust everything within their network, and realise they need to adopt a Zero Trust approach, this can often highlight a industry wide issue that businesses across the UK are currently facing a massive skills gap when it comes to Cyber Security. But Zero Trust can help this as the methodology will help give you a clear foundation to follow. Plus. if you don’t have the in house capabilities available, then you will have the option to draw upon the expertise from a company who specialises in security. Psst… we’re a Microsoft Gold Security Partner and have a Zero Trust Assessment available, which brings us nicely onto wrapping up this blog post.
Looking to implement Zero Trust
The truth is, building Zero Trust within an organisation doesn’t happen overnight. There’s a lot of planning that’s involved. Microsoft suggests you start by evaluating your current environment, available resources and priorities. From there you can start pulling together a plan to implement a Zero Trust strategy that meets your business needs.
Implementing Zero Trust in your organisation can often seem overwhelming. The best first step is to ensure you have the right technology in place to help you enable Zero Trust. Microsoft Technologies have the security tools and features you need to implement Zero Trust – Enabling you to gain control over your organisation’s security. Head over to Microsoft’s website to find out how Bridgewater leveraged Microsoft 365 to deploy a Zero Trust security model.
As an Azure Expert MSP and Microsoft Security Gold Partner, we’re in a unique position to help you adopt Zero Trust within your organisation. Not only could we help you deploy Microsoft technologies, but we’ll also help you implement the Zero Trust best practices and framework. Simply get in touch to find out more.
According to a recent study by the Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, two in five businesses reported having cybersecurity breaches or attacks in the last 12 months. Of these, one in five respectively ended up losing money, data or other assets. With security breaches happening more frequently, it’s increasingly important that your business stays resilient.
When it comes to improving your business’s security, Microsoft has got your back. They invest over $1billion in security annually. Want to learn what this means for you? Discover four ways Azure can improve your security in our recent blog post.
One of the tools Microsoft has created is the Azure Secure Score, which has been designed to sit at the heart of your security. Microsoft created the Azure Secure Score to help give you guidance on their security best practices.
Firstly, what is the Microsoft Azure Secure Score?
All Microsoft Azure customers have access to a Secure Score that can be located within the Security Center. Your Secure Score will help you to not only gain an understanding of your current Azure security but also identify ways in which you can improve your overall security posture. Your score will be displayed as a percentage, making it easy to understand and measure.
But how is your score calculated? The Secure Score considers your entire Azure security set-up and analyses what controls you’ve enabled and set up. The percentage itself is calculated using the formula below. You can find out more about how this is calculated on Microsoft’s website.
Alongside your score, you’ll have a list of recommended actions that can help improve your security rating. The recommendations will highlight the maximum score you’re able to achieve for each control and how those improvements could potentially increase your overall Secure Score. Thus, allowing you to identify which improvements will have the biggest impact on your overall security. It’ll also show you the number of resources affected by each control and each resource’s impact on your overall score.
How to start improving your Azure Secure Score
Whilst Microsoft provides a list of recommended improvements along with the impact they will have on your overall score, these improvements are simply based on best practices and won’t always be the best option for your business. It is therefore important that you really take some time to interpret the recommendations in the context of your business or speak to an expert about it (Psst… That’s us!).
When looking to improve your score, it’s best to work with an Azure Expert MSP to help you identify which Microsoft recommendations are best aligned with your organisations policies. As an Azure Expert MSP, we’ve helped numerous businesses improve their security, and we can help you too.
We’re currently running Secure Score workshops where our experts will analyse your security and help you create an enhancement plan. Want to find out more? Talk to our experts and sign up today.
When migrating to the cloud it can be easy to jump in headfirst. But you must take a step back and review things before you start your cloud journey. Migrating to the cloud provides you with the chance to think ahead and create an environment that allows you to scale and innovate with ease.
Whilst some workloads can be easily migrated to Azure with little adaption – these are the ones we target in our first phase migration – many will need to be re-configured for performance and cost optimisation.
To realise the true potential of Azure and build a scalable base, you should start with Azure Landing Zone. They are the fundamental structures that put security and optimal performance at the core of your cloud environment.
What is an Azure Landing Zone?
A Landing Zone is a key concept of Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework that allows you to build a secure foundation to scale and innovate with ease. Not familiar with the Cloud Adoption Framework? Fear not as we have a beginner’s guide that covers everything you need to know. Microsoft has created the Landing Zone based on best practices and cloud services for you to leverage as part of your migration, mitigating any complexities you may face.
A Landing Zone can be deployed at any stage – whether you’re in the process of deploying your first production application in Azure or operating a complex portfolio of tech platforms and workloads. Landing Zones have been created to be both scalable and modular – you’ll have repeatable environments with the same configuration and controls allowing you to scale but also have a modular environment thanks to its common set of design areas that can be extended to support specific technologies.
Why you should deploy a Landing Zone
It should be clear by now that to ensure a safe take-off in Azure you need a Landing Zone in place, enabling you to have a faster, more secure and efficient migration. Which is ultimately what you’re trying to achieve, right? Having a Landing Zone in place before you start migrating your infrastructure provides you with a solid foundation for you to future-proof your IT. Plus you’ll have access to Microsoft cloud services and best practices that set you up for success. But that’s not all. You’ll also be able to benefit from:
Increased speed | Increased scalability |
Best security and performance |
Five principles for deploying a landing zone
Microsoft has put together five key principles that you should be leveraging when deploying a Landing Zone.
- Utilise Networking Services – Add or remove workloads without disrupting the rest of your environment and leverage connectivity to bring your applications together.
- Identity Management – Within a Landing Zone, you’ll be able to set identity rules so only certain employees will be able to access data – providing you with better user management. You’ll be able to leverage Single Sign-On, Role-Based Access Control and Authentication to enable effective identity management.
Once you have the first two principles in place, you’ll be able to start migrating low-risk workloads. When you’ve migrated any low-risk workloads, you’ll then be in a place to start looking at the next three principles.
- Governing your environment – Microsoft will enable you to govern your environment with compliance policies to ensure you’re meeting industry regulations.
- Leverage Microsoft security – You’ll be able to leverage Microsoft security controls to protect both data at rest and in transit, allowing you to detect threats before it’s too late.
- Manage your environment – Once you have your Landing Zone in place you’ll not only have a secure space for your environment but also the tools in place to effectively monitor performance.
When you’ve got all of these three principles in place, you’ll be able to accelerate your migration and now have a secure foundation to move any business-critical workloads into Azure.
Ready to deploy a Landing Zone?
As an accredited Microsoft Azure Expert MSP and Cloud Adoption Framework ready partner, we’re able to help you deploy a landing zone. Simply get in touch with our experts.
Set yourself up for success with a clear Azure migration strategy
According to a recent study the Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has run, two in five businesses reported having cybersecurity breaches or attacks in the last 12 months. Of these, one in five respectively ended up losing money, data or other assets. The most common attacks were phishing emails, followed by instances of others impersonating their organisation online, viruses or malware including ransomware.
With security breaches happening more frequently, it’s increasingly important that your business stays resilient. This doesn’t mean looking at short term security solutions – instead, you should be looking at creating a secure foundation for your business that helps you stay resilient. Thousands of businesses across the world, such as AI corporation, First Great Western and Mishcon De Reya are using Microsoft Azure to mitigate security threats. Microsoft has built Azure to provide a secure foundation, it comes with built-in security controls to help you quickly configure security, and has unique intelligence at cloud scale to help you safeguard data and respond to threats in real-time.
Here are four ways you can leverage Azure to transform security:
1. Azure protects your most valuable asset – data
We all know that data is most companies’ most valuable asset in 2021, making it vital you keep it secure. Azure can help you with this. Microsoft has created several tools that help you stop external sources accessing your information and data, such as; double encryption, Azure Firewall and Azure Information Protection (AIP). Let us explore how these three tools will enable you to protect your data.
Azure uses double encryption, which is when you have at least two layers of encryption to protect both your data at rest and data in transit. Using double encryption on your data will mean threats have to break through two barriers to access your information.
Then there’s Azure Firewall, a cloud-native network security to help protect your Azure Virtual Network resources. You’ll have intelligent filtering for your firewall, which in sort will deny traffic from any malicious IP address and domain sourced from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence feed. Azure Firewall will help you ensure that only the people you trust get access to your resources.
Finally, there’s Azure Information Protection (AIP) which enables you to better protect your sensitive information. AIP will help you better control and secure any emails, documents or other sensitive data that’s shared outside your organisation through classification labels and permissions.
2. Get your user and identity management on track
One of the easiest ways to maintain high levels of security within your organisation is to start with your employees. Make sure their accounts are protected to avoid hackers gaining access and ensure they only have access to what they need to avoid any accidental data theft or breaches. Using Azure will enable your business to gain better user and identity management with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is when you assign Azure roles to control what access users have to different resources. Azure already comes with several built-in roles, but you’ll also have the ability to create your roles based on your organisation’s requirements – plus it will help you ensure employees only have access to the data they need. Once you’ve identified your roles, you then need to set out the Scope, which is essentially the resources that the role will have access to. You can add as many or as few resources as you’d like. Once you’ve mapped all of this out, you’ll have a list of roles with resources they can access, for example, the Virtual Machine Contributor role allows a user to create and manage virtual machines.
We then have Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), which is a process where a user needs an additional form of identification when signing in, e.g. enter a code that was sent to their mobile or provide a fingerprint scan. Gone are the days when users would only use passwords to log in – it leaves you vulnerable for an attack if employees use a weak password. Doubling up on your authentication upon logging in will significantly reduce the risk of hackers accessing and compromising your employee’s accounts.
Enabling RBAC and MFA are quick wins to help you gain greater control of your users and what they can do.
3. Intelligent security monitoring
Microsoft has created their very own cloud-native Security Information and Events Management (SIEM), Azure Sentinel, that leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) to proactively monitor and stop any threats before they harm your business. The SIEM will identify legitimate security threats with its built-on machine learning and knowledge. Meaning, you don’t have to spend hours reviewing which security threats are legitimate and not and instead can focus on doing what you do best.
One of the true benefits of Sentinel is that it’s continuously collecting data. Not just the odd bit here and there, but sheer amounts of data at scale across users, devices, applications and infrastructure. It’ll then use that data to detect threats and false threats using the data it’s collected, plus the threat intelligence Microsoft has.
Often, by the time you’ve identified a threat, it could be too late to respond. Not with Sentinel. Microsoft will allow you to rapidly respond to any threats with built-in automation of common task. For example, you could stop compromised users from moving around your network and stealing information through an automated, multifaceted response to incidents generated by rules that detect compromised users.
We’re hosting a webinar, Making Sense of Sentinel, that runs through all of the data Sentinel provides, and how you can start making sense of it. Sign up to discover how to leverage Sentinel’s data.
4. Make continuous improvements
Security threats don’t take breaks – they’re constantly evolving as hackers and technology are getting smarter. You must be actively improving your security to protect your business from these attacks. Trying to identify these improvements has been proven to be quite a challenge if you’re manually trying to identify them. If you’re looking for someone to help improve your security then look no further.
Microsoft is constantly looking out for your business by proactively identifying security improvements and recommendations with their Secure Score. The Secure Score will show your overall security posture as a percentage value, and to increase it you’ll be presented with a list of recommended actions to help raise your score. Each of the recommendations presented to you will include clear instructions for you to improve your security and the points your score will increase by.
As your Secure Score is displayed as a percentage, it’s easy to make this a regular KPI for you to improve – pushing your team to regularly review and implement the improvements suggested.
You can find out more about the tool in our Beginners Guide to Microsoft’s Secure Score.
Want to find out how Azure can help keep your business secure? Talk to the experts
As an Azure Expert MSP, it’s safe to say we know a thing or two about Azure. We have our very own in-house security experts to help you leverage the power of Azure to protect your business. Ready to find out how? Get in touch.
The past year has fundamentally changed where, when and how we work, and more than ever we’re reminded that work is something you do, not somewhere you go. With the rise of hybrid working, flexible working patterns will soon become the new norm, with employees spending some days at the office and some days at home.
It’s crucial that businesses take the time to look ahead with strategic focus and find answers to the following questions: How will you accommodate flexible working patterns, and do you have the technology in place to fully capitalise on the benefits of hybrid working?
In this blog, we’ll dive into what we believe to be a core piece of the hybrid working puzzle: Azure Virtual Desktop (WAD).
What is Azure Virtual Desktop?
Azure Virtual Desktop is a complete desktop and application virtualisation solution that runs on the cloud. In the past, virtual desktop solutions have been complex and expensive to set up and manage, making them inaccessible to most small and medium businesses.
By utilising the cloud, WVD changes that. Instead, it’s a cost-effective solution that is easy to deploy, configure and scale. And like all Microsoft Cloud Services, it’s completely flexible to your business needs. Making it the perfect solution for your Hybrid workplace.
What are the benefits of using WVD as a hybrid working solution?
Set your business up for remote working success
The Hybrid Workplace will be built on having the power to work from anywhere – whether that’s at the office, a coffee shop or home. Allowing employees to have the flexibility to work from any device used to be a headache, but not anymore. As long as employees have an internet connection, they can power up, log in to their desktop and they’ll be equipped with any business-critical applications, regardless of their device.
WVD gives you the ability to choose what Azure VM will meet their team’s needs and leverage the Windows 10 multi-session that’s exclusively available in Azure. Windows 10 multi-session means you can run multiple concurrent user interactive sessions easily with the same deployment for more cost-efficiency.
Secure your most valuable assets – data and applications
Gone are the days when a business’s most valuable IT asset was their hardware – in more recent years we’ve seen this shift to data and applications. Whilst a Hybrid workplace is a great way to provide employees with the flexibility of working where they want, you need to make sure you have the right security in place, so you don’t put your data and applications at risk.
Microsoft kept this at the forefront of their mind whilst developing Azure Virtual Desktop, and you’ll be able to benefit from the $1 billion security investment Microsoft makes every year. You’ll experience this through:
- Being able to store all employee and company data within Azure
- Benefitting from Azure security features including; Sentinel, Azure Security Center and Microsoft Defender ATP
- Have employees use a secure login with multi-factor authentication
You’ll also reap the benefits of the Azure Virtual Desktop compliance certifications including ISO 27001, 27018 and 27701, PCI, FedRAMP High for Commercial and HIPAA.
Scaling up and down has never been easier
WVD allows you to scale your infrastructure up or down quickly and easily based on your business needs. Allowing you to not only save resources but save on costs too. Within Azure Virtual Desktop you’ll have a centralised portal where you can configure networks, deploy desktops and enable security for employees in just a few clicks.
What’s best is you’ll be able to focus on your desktop apps and policies whilst Microsoft manages the rest. Find out more about scaling up and down with Azure Virtual Desktop on Microsofts website.
Leverage what you already have
Already using other Microsoft products, like Azure or Microsoft 365? You’re going to love hearing this. Azure Virtual Desktop enables employees to benefit from the seamless Microsoft Teams and Office experience they’re used to on a local device. Plus, you’ll be able to utilise your current Microsoft licencing if you have Microsoft 365 Business Premium or above.
Want to find out more about Azure Virtual Desktop? Talk to the experts.
The benefits of Azure Virtual Desktop are endless – especially when it comes to providing a flexible work environment. If you want to find out more about Azure Virtual Desktop or have any burning questions, then you’re in luck. Microsoft has identified us as one of a handful of Azure Virtual Desktop Specialist Partners. Simply get in touch to talk to one of our experts.
With new threats evolving it can be challenging for your organisation to stay protected. It’s time to review your security posture with the Microsoft Secure Score.
Do you want to know how secure your organisation truly is with Microsoft 365 (or Office 365 – PS did you know the licence names changed in 2020)? The Secure Score provides Microsoft 365 users with a security metric, providing an insight to their current level of protection. The score is calculated by analysing your regular activity and security settings in Microsoft 365, showing how aligned your organisation is with Microsoft’s best security practices by providing recommended steps to improve your security position in Microsoft 365. To view your Secure Score, you must have an administrative role within your organisation’s Microsoft 365. You can then view your score here.
Organisations utilising their Secure Score have seen it increase five times more than organisations who aren’t. Microsoft’s Secure Score will encourage you to utilise the security features that are already available, but you may not be aware of.
What’s best is you don’t need to set anything up in order to view your score. It’s instantly available. Plus, if you have Microsoft Defender for Endpoint enabled, you’ll be able to view your Secure Score for Windows. Your Microsoft Secure Score is presented to you in a dashboard that’s made up of three key parts – your score, recommended actions and score analysis. But what do they tell you about your score?
Your Secure Score
Within your dashboard, you’ll be able to view your Secure Score, and how you compare against the industry average. Alongside this, you’ll be presented with a target score you can alter depending on how quickly you’re aiming to increase security. You’ll have the ability to increase your Secure Score at your own pace by setting your own target score through a slider. The higher you set your target score, the more recommended actions you’ll have. Have the flexibility you need to increase security.
Secure Score Recommendations
As mentioned above, you’ll be presented with a list of recommended actions in order to reach your target score. You can filter the actions by user impact, implementation cost and action type. This will help you prioritise actions based on your organisation’s security needs. To find out more about a specific recommendation, simply click on it to discover what the action is helping you solve, how it will increase your overall score and what you’ll need to do to complete it. By implementing the recommended actions you’ll increase security in your organisation in no time!
Score Score Analysis
Everyone loves to see the progress they’ve made. In your Secure Score dashboard, you’ll be able to analyse how your score has changed over time, and how you compare to the average Secure Score. You can easily change the date ranges and view actions you took on specific days. Want to share your actions with other staff members? In Score Analyser, you can easily export the recommended action list for a specific date.
New security threats are on the rise, and keeping your business protected from these threats can be challenging. Utilising your Secure Score is the first step in the right direction to increase security within your organisation. It will help provide you with clear guidance to increase your security level – reducing the overall risks your business may face. The workplace is constantly evolving and whilst you’re keeping up with these trends, it’s important you do so securely – whether it’s implementing remote working or new online communication methods.
Migrating to Microsoft 365 Business will instantly increase your score by over 100. It comes with security features that Office 365 doesn’t have, including:
- Advanced Threat Protection
- Windows Defender
- Mobile Device Management
Think of Microsoft 365 as an extra security fence around your organisation.
Secure Score Webinars
We’ve hosted a range of webinars around the Secure Score. If you’re looking to discover a thing or two about improving your Secure Score, then please download a copy of the relevant webinar below.
Talk to an expert
So, what are you waiting for? Start improving your security today.
Our team of experts are here to help your organisation stay protected. We’ve put together Kickstart packages which are designed to help you increase security with Microsoft 365. To find out more about improving your Secure Score, get in contact with a member of our team today. We will be here to support your organisation’s first steps to increase security.
DevOps has evolved over several years to become the go-to methodology for developers. It’s been adopted by some of the worlds most successful companies – Netflix, NASA, Etsy and Hertz. The rise in DevOps has been thanks to more companies adopting an agile development process. And technology is evolving to keep up with this trend too – look at Microsoft for example, they’ve created Azure DevOps which comes packed with industry-leading features such as Azure Pipelines, Azure Boards, Azure Repos and much more. If you’re looking to find out exactly what DevOps is, how it compares to traditional methods and how you can adopt it to benefit from some of these new technologies then you’ve come to the right blog.
What is DevOps
Microsoft defines DevOps as; A compound of development (Dev) and operations (Ops), DevOps is the union of people, processes and technology to continually provide value to customers.
Adopting a DevOps culture alongside practices and tools, your team will be able to efficiently respond to customer needs and build applications quicker than ever. DevOps brings together siloed jobs such as IT operations, development teams, quality assurance and security to create a more fluid way of working that encourages collaboration. Which allows you to produce better applications or software by having all of those roles working towards a common goal. As all of those roles are working towards the same goal, right?
How do traditional development methods compare to DevOps?
We have answered some of the most popular questions we get asked on how traditional development methods, such as waterfall, compare to DevOps.
How efficient are the development cycles?
- Traditional methods often focus on planning big releases, which are much riskier due to the amount of work involved. When working in longer cycles with infrequent releases things can often become complex quite quickly. You’ll be up against hard deadlines compiled with a list of added features. Whilst the big releases look impressive, they are often an inefficient way of working.
- DevOps on the other hand takes a different approach. They run with smaller releases that are often much easier to understand and test – making the release a lot less risky. It’s also easier to manage if things don’t go to plan as there isn’t so much to fix. By running more frequent smaller releases, DevOps enables your business to quickly respond to any new customer needs or requirements.
How do they manage scheduling?
- Traditional methods often use planning and scheduling systems, to help manage any development. Within traditional methods there are typically a lot of moving parts to a development cycle, making scheduling quite a challenging task.
- DevOps is built on continuous smaller releases and automation from a dedicated team, making it much easier to schedule. You’ll be planning for the coming weeks as opposed to a few months, giving you better visibility of your team’s time. Plus, by having a dedicated team working on this, you’ll be able to coordinate everything effectively rather than having to schedule different people in different roles.
What’s the big deal?
- Traditional methods often make an event of their upcoming release or update. A lot more work would have gone into a single release when a company uses traditional methods – meaning there’s a lot more at stake and much higher risk. Have you ever seen developers locked in a room for hours on end before a big launch? That’s because they’ve been working weeks, if not months for this release and are spending the final push fire-fighting any last-minute issues to hit their hard launch date.
- DevOps works in much smaller, more frequent cycles, meaning they don’t go popping the confetti every time they launch a release or update. There’s a lot less risk involved as not as much work would have been required since the last cycle. Plus, with automated testing in place, they can rest assured knowing that their environments are in sync. DevOps only promote from one stage to another if they are confident it will work. Thereby, eliminating the release window so they can move new functionality into productions at a faster rate.
How easy is it to turn data into actionable improvements?
- Traditional methods will typically have to get numerous different parties involved when trying to collate information and data, which often ends up in a wordy report that’s shared with management. Lengthy reports can typically become a bottleneck as it’s not clear on what data is relevant and can result in unactioned tasks.
- DevOps enables you to quickly react to data thanks to the automated processes within the team. Meaning, you won’t have to sit and scroll through pages of information. By having a dedicated team gathering data from the application, you’re able to ensure that everyone within that team has a better understanding of the relevant information and data. This not only eliminates the time taken to gather the data but also to get sign-off from management.
What type of culture do they encourage?
- Traditional methods are often risk-averse. The culture is built around trying their absolute best to not harm the business, which results in them having a lot of pressure to get things perfect. When in reality, is anything ever perfect?
- DevOps creates a culture very different from this. They adopt a ‘fail early’ culture, understanding that failure is inevitable. That’s why they’ve created a strong structure and process around controlled failure through continuous testing, smaller deployments and automation. The team adopts the mindset of the sooner you fail, the smaller the impact and the quicker you recover.
What metrics do they use to measure success?
- Traditional methods use a cost and capacity model which looks at how much they get done for the least amount of money. The key challenge with this model is that it can be difficult to cut costs but still maintain the same capacity – which is why a lot of companies using traditional methods have to regularly outsource tasks.
- DevOps has taken this model one step further by adding in ‘flow’ since new applications should be measured by the time involved. This encourages them to review the end cycles time to identify any areas of waste by calculating true productivity so they can focus on the activities that add the most valuable.
What do they define as a completed task?
- Traditional methods often complete a task by doing their part and passing it onto the next person. They’ll be so focused on completing a task by meeting the deadline rather than making sure what is done is deployable. Using this method can often lead to a loss in quality and a lack of accountability.
- DevOps on the other hand focuses on creating a cross-functional team where everyone’s accountable for the task being completed. All team members will be working towards the same goal and will therefore have the same definition of a completed task, which is creating high-quality software. They are driven by the bigger picture rather than focusing on the specific tasks they need to carry out.
Looking to modernise your DevOps practices?
Are you keen to start using DevOps practices to adopt new technologies? We can help. Microsoft has created Azure DevOps, which provides you with the tools you need to adopt a DevOps culture effectively. As an Azure Expert MSP, we can support you in transforming the way you work. Get in touch to talk to our experts about improving the way you create applications.