Develops on Azure: Security in Development!

In today's post, we introduce Develops on Azure, the security culture that ensures smooth development in the cloud with Microsoft consulting firm.

Cybersecurity and data protection are issues that are increasingly present in the daily lives of companies, since, with the increasing use of technologies, new risks and challenges arise to be faced.

And one thing is a fact: no one wants to be caught off guard or surprised by a leak or improper sharing of information! For this reason, in order to avoid possible problems and leaks, many companies have adopted new strategies to protect their data, such as migration to the cloud.

According to a study developed by IDC (International Data Corporation), 53% of companies invest in cloud technologies to optimize their processes and increase revenue. In addition, the migration strategy reduced IT costs in 77% of cases, enabling smoother and safer processes for organizations.

Faced with the new and more complicated challenges to which we are exposed in the digital world, we must be constantly aware. Therefore, Microsoft offers a complete solution to secure the development process through Develops on Azure, a set of integrated practices that aim to:

a) Enable secure application development at all stages of the process, ensuring the security of devas;

b) Intensify collaboration between teams, fostering interdisciplinarity and creative solutions to challenges;

c) Bring a broader view of the cybersecurity status of organizations by recording security events and, from that, provide valuable reports.

In this article, we'll talk about the benefits of enabling Develops on Azure and the development best practices involved in the process. Come on?

How does Develops work?

In general terms, Develops is a set of digital tools and best practices that aims to reinforce security at all stages of the work, from the beginning of development to the final part, making the focus on security extend throughout the entire process. the process.

Alone, DevOps is the union of development and operation, which allows the most diverse dev functions to act in a coordinated and collaborative way. By adopting these practices, companies are able to better respond to customer needs, achieving faster results and increasing confidence in their own applications.

Another positive point is that DevOps organizes and optimizes the lifecycle of apps by impacting, in different ways, all phases of development, including:

a) Planning: as the name implies, the first step is based on defining and organizing how and which resources will be included in the project to be developed by the company. Thus, the DevOps team creates checklists of bugs and activities to be completed, as well as tracking progress at different levels of granularity.

b) Development: At this point, we consider all aspects of coding, in fact, including compiling lines of code, testing, reviewing, and more. Here, the DevOps team works with the implementation of solutions and tools to optimize the development itself, but without sacrificing the quality of the final result.

c) Delivery: the third step consists of deploying the apps in production environments and also configuring the infrastructure that composes them. In it, DevOps teams basically manage and approve the applications and services developed, monitoring everything very closely before delivery to customers.

d) Operation: with the apps and services delivered, the last step consists of monitoring and solving any problems that arise in production environments before they harm customers. In this sense, the work of DevOps teams is focused on ensuring the reliability and availability of systems.

Develops: What is this culture?

Develops is a new way of developing and working in the cloud, seeking to insert security practices in all development processes and not just in the final phase, as was routine a few years ago, but completely inconceivable today.

This culture guarantees the longest durability of the app development cycles and requires the involvement of the entire team, having security as the basis of all stages of the process, reducing failures and the emergence of new threats.

First of all, it is necessary to keep in mind that the Develops culture aims to change the look of security teams, involving all sectors of the company, so that cybersecurity care is continuous and effective.

What are the benefits of enabling Develops on Azure?

When we talk about automating security tools, we refer to a set of strategies and measures whose main function is to ensure the protection of your information.

So it's important to note that Microsoft has a number of tools to harden the security of all its cloud resources, from servers to applications and workloads running on Azure.

Develops takes advantage of the best and most advanced protection practices from a shift-left strategy, also called “turn-to-left security”, whose premise is to reduce risks and value security as the basis of the software development process. software from the early stages of planning and development.

By enabling Develops on Azure, your development team's work becomes much more assertive and intelligent. This is because, with the guarantee that the entire process will be carried out safely, the rework rate related to problems in the production environment, for example, decreases considerably.

In addition, being a culture (and not a tool by itself), implementing it requires a collective effort and a change in mindset on the part of the entire team — thus encouraging collaboration and communication between team members.

It's also worth noting that with Develops on Azure, you receive insights that provide a complete view of your company's security levels, ensuring safer operations and the completion of important projects more firmly.

How to enable Develops on Azure?

Enabling Develops on Azure is done by integrating the Microsoft cloud with special tools that cover every possible edge when it comes to security in app development.

Are they:

GitHub Enterprise : Known for being the fastest developer platform in the world, GitHub has advanced features that help protect your code and other assets in your application using Cadel, an analysis engine that identifies vulnerabilities in your code. Another benefit of GitHub Enterprise is that it uses security alerts and security updates to fix issues in your dependencies.

Azure Active Directory : Azure AD offers single sign-on and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to help protect your business from cybersecurity attacks. Single sign-on simplifies access to your apps from anywhere, and developer tools make it easy to integrate identity into your apps and services. In addition, it is also possible to protect user credentials by implementing access and authentication policies that regulate which people can access which information.

Azure Boards : This tool was developed to facilitate the day to day of your development team. With it, you can track your work using Kanban boards (which have a dynamic and intuitive view), to-do lists, team dashboards and custom reports. Azure Boards can also be integrated with GitHub to improve your team's productivity and adapt them to your needs.

Azure Security Center : Every year, Microsoft invests more than one billion dollars in cybersecurity research and development, aiming to offer the greatest and most complete protection to its customers. Enabling Azure Security Center strengthens your security posture in the cloud and helps protect your data hosted on Azure virtual machines, on-premises or in other clouds by scanning for potential vulnerabilities.

Azure Sentinel : By collecting data from devices, systems, applications, and users, this security information and event management (SIEM) and SOAR solution produces security analytics to intelligently detect and respond to cyber threats.

Develops on Azure: How to bring it to the enterprise?

Now that you know about the possibility of enabling Develops on Azure, it's only natural that you want to make your company's development process even more secure.

To implement it, it is essential to rely on the support of specialized Microsoft partners. Here at Latina Group, we are Microsoft Gold Partners and we have a team of professionals prepared to meet all your demands!