Implementing DevOps practices in highly regulated environments

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss implementing DevOps practices in highly regulated environments (HREs). DevOps has become a standard option for entities seeking to streamline and increase participation by all stakeholders in their Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). For a large portion of industry, academia, and government, applying DevOps is a straight forward process. There is, however, a subset of entities in these three sectors where applying DevOps can be very challenging. These are entities mandated by policies to conduct all or a portion of their SDLC activities in HREs. Often, the reason for an HRE is general security and protection of intellectual property. Even if an entity is functioning in a highly regulated environment, its SDLC can still benefit from implementing DevOps as long as the implementation conforms to all imposed policies. In this paper, we discuss the process of performing a DevOps assessment and implementation in an HRE which we refer to as HRE-DevOps.