From Design to Production: Automating Cloud Native Application Security

Imagine a senior director of security reviewing your engineers' infrastructure changes nightly to identify and fix security design flaws: in development, staging and production environments. And all this at a low price.

By offering Secure Infrastructure as Code and Cloud Operations from Oak9, Rackspace Technology® provides just that — plus startup speed — while addressing compliance with confidence.

Rapid delivery of high-value cloud native applications is a requirement for many companies. As cyberthreats evolve and cloud adoption accelerates, organizations must shift left and manage cloud risk with cloud native security tools designed to protect cloud data and resources. Secure Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is essential in that it aligns three areas that typically don't cross pollinate: DevOps, security and compliance.

Rackspace Technology's Infrastructure as Code Security Services from Oak9 offers the ability to bridge the worlds (and languages) of DevOps, CloudOps and CISOs under one unified tool. By leveraging Oak9, customers are baking security into the concept phase of DevOps and extending compliance checking and best practice alignment to the production phases of workloads.

Oak9 enables users to build security into existing DevOps processes and orchestration platforms before going live in your cloud environment. Oak9's Security as Code platform automatically locates, analyzes and remediates security and compliance gaps in real-time as changes in IaC and deployed cloud native workloads are detected.

Overcoming Obstacles

In our April 2022 global multicloud survey, we polled 1,420 technology decision makers, including more than 400 chief information and technology officers. They told us that security remains the number one IT challenge for businesses.

Security challenges require IT organizations to adapt their security strategies. It is no longer enough to be reactive; companies must shift left to reduce misconfigurations and minimize vulnerabilities. Without automation of infrastructure as code, security organizations are blind to security threats that pose a high risk of incident or breach.

Business leaders also find it hard to hire and retain tech talent. A staggering 77% of IT decision makers in our survey said a talent shortage is preventing the adoption of new cloud development methods.

Developers are increasingly using IaC to deploy large-scale cloud native applications and architectures quickly. However, they often lack the expertise to ensure their code is secure or compliant. Likewise, security teams don't have time to review thousands of lines of code.

The Oak9 Security as Code platform automatically finds, analyzes and remediates security and compliance vulnerabilities in real time, detecting changes in IaC and deployed cloud native workloads. This security solution meets sprint goals on time, eliminates stack rollbacks, and is accessible to everyone, not just security professionals.

Shifting Left in Testing

DevOps teams are moving fast. Cloud Ops need to know where to respond. They're dependent on the security/CISO function to keep operations compliant and uninterrupted. Integrating these three teams into cloud native application development makes it possible to identify and fix defects much earlier in the software development lifecycle.

This new offering of Infrastructure as Code Security Services from Oak9 enables companies to shift left security, including infrastructure security management, in the development pipeline. This streamlines the development cycle, dramatically improves quality, and allows for faster progression to later stages for security analysis and deployment.

Solving Together™

With Infrastructure as Code Security Services, Rackspace Technology and Oak9 deliver the following benefits:

• Design securely from the start: Access a pre-built catalog of Security as Code blueprints based on applicable frameworks like SOC2, HIPAA, PCI, ISO, NIST and more – which dynamically assess every change in cloud infrastructure.
• Integrate seamlessly in your CI/CD pipeline: Natively integrate with IDEs, code repositories, CI/CD and chat ops tools to gain immediate security feedback through code.
• Detect drift continuously: Read-only access to AWS and Azure cloud environments manages drift from intended app design and ensures app architecture remains secure-by-design.
• Maintain awareness with notifications/alerts: Developers receive pull requests with suggested changes as they commit Infrastructure as Code, allowing them to decide to pass or fail the pipeline.

Learn more about our Infrastructure as Code Security Services by listening to our Cloud Talk Live podcast here: Marrying Security to Your Infrastructure as Code.

Download the Rackspace Infrastructure as Code Security Services datasheet to learn how you can start automating your cloud native application security.