The news of open source Jenkins continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platforms used to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks recently made headlines.

The CVE-2020-2100 bug would have allowed cybercriminals to employ the Jenkins UDP discovery protocol to bounce traffic between servers until they could no longer respond.

Given that many IT departments do not have enough of the right resources to manage the risks on their own, the need for a reliable MSP partner within DevOps departments couldn’t be possibly any stronger.

The iTMethods DevOps Saas Platform is a managed solution that addresses growing cybersecurity risks by embedding security and governance into the infrastructure and provides specialized expertise that is more resource and cost-effective compared to traditional enterprise IT departments.

A Shift in Mindset to Managed DevOps

Mike Vizard, in an article on DevOps.com, writes about the challenges in securing development platforms used by organizations to build their most critical applications.

Vizard states that as organizations deploy more Jenkins servers than ever before to accelerate application development, they should rely on outside expertise to manage the underlying DevOps platforms.

This will allow their IT teams to focus efforts on building and deploying applications rather than on managing infrastructure.

The article quotes Tracy Miranda, director of Open Source Community for CloudBees and member of the governing board for the Continuous Delivery Foundation, which oversees the development of Jenkins. Miranda advocates for the use of third-party providers by organizations as internal IT departments may not have the resources to tackle future cybersecurity issues.

“Given the fact that most IT organizations may not have resources at hand to patch their Jenkins servers quickly, these and other potential future cybersecurity issues are a testament to why more organizations should rely on instances of Jenkins that are managed by third-party providers on their behalf.”

Tracy Miranda, Director of Open Source Community for CloudBees (In DevOps.com)

Prioritizing security throughout the development process is about more than just safeguarding customer or user data. It’s also about protecting your organization.

Embedding DevSecOps for a “Security-First” Mindset

We see significant interest from organizations looking to implement DevSecOps. However, an effective DevSecOps model involves a shift in mindset that leads to security being embedded throughout the development process, instead of being treated as a separate function or an afterthought.

“These days, more organizations are looking at DevSecOps as a best practice. Much of that focus, however, is on securing the applications that DevOps teams create; not nearly as much attention is being paid to securing the underlying platforms on which those applications are being built and deployed.”

Mike Vizard (In DevOps.com)

Product Teams must embrace the idea that security is integral to the organization’s continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) process.

This security-first mentality built into iTMethods’ DevOps SaaS platform involves proactively implementing security into the process and continuously monitoring the threat landscape for risks, rather than applying security when it may be too late.

Managed DevOps for Enhanced Security

As cybersecurity teams increase their participation in the DevOps process, more questions will be asked of IT departments about the fundamental security of the underlying CI/CD platforms.

Increasingly, Technology Leaders recognize that creating and managing a DevOps toolchain securely is a complex and costly undertaking. It requires the hiring of specialized resources and takes focus away from other priorities that are key to driving their business forward.

This is not a viable option for most organizations that would stand to greatly benefit by working with an outside partner that specializes in providing a fully-managed DevOps platform.

With the landscape of cybersecurity threats evolving at a rapid pace, organizations must embed true DevSecOps practices with particular emphasis on securing the underlying platforms on which applications are being built and deployed.

Why DevOps SaaS Platform is the Best Choice Within Ever-Changing Technological Landscape

Taking into account the pressing need for security and controls in DevOps products, our DevOps SaaS platform embeds security and governance from the ground up for your organization’s entire development toolchain.

We provide Single-Tenant hosting and our Transit Hub hybrid connectivity service allow seamless integration to your networks while complying with your multi-cloud and on-premise security controls.

Additionally, our DevOps SaaS Platform is AWS MSP and AICPA SOC 2 certified.

We work in close partnership with your IT and product teams to help them focus on building and deploying applications faster rather than managing underlying infrastructure.

About iTMethods: 

iTMethods helps companies accelerate software delivery capabilities through their Cloud-native DevOps SaaS Platform. The Enterprise SaaS offering features a toolchain catalog comprised of best-of-breed DevOps tools including CloudBees CI (Core), CloudBees CD (Flow), GitHub, Atlassian, Sonatype, and many more. These tools are deployed to each customer’s specific requirements, including security, scalability, and 24/7 customer support. Learn more at itmethods.com.

Read more from iTMethods:

Why You Need DevSecOps

How Your Organization Can Implement DevSecOps

7 CI/CD Best Practices for a Successful DevOps journey