Automating control monitoring and evidence gathering can ensure compliance throughout the production lifecycle. In the same way that Grammarly helps us write more clearly, a shift left compliance approach helps us boost resilience by embedding checks in the production process, explains Adam Markowitz, CEO, and Co-Founder, Drata.
Security policies and compliance requirements frequently hinder efficient production. DevOps, GRC, and software engineering teams often find themselves stuck in a reactive cycle, rushing to fix compliance issues only after code or cloud configuration changes have been rolled out. This problem worsens as companies grow, inadvertently creating new compliance gaps daily.
For many, compliance has become a never-ending cycle of repairing issues and addressing issues after changes had already reached production. This becomes even more challenging as they try to keep up with the ever-changing industry and regulatory frameworks. However, there is another approach: shifting left. With shift left compliance, DevSecOps, GRC, and software engineering teams can find and remediate violations as early as possible and detect threats that target development tools and cloud-based applications. Most importantly, the shift left method for regulatory compliance enables DevOps professionals to automatically test code as it is being created.
The approach also helps engineers and developers to apply best practices by monitoring risk alerts that have been linked directly to compliance frameworks and protocols. Such alerts provide GRC teams with a human element in the review loop, enabling faster and more precise remediation. As a result, what might have required hundreds of hours of manual and repetitive intervention and monitoring has been reduced to a matter of minutes via continuous, automated review, notification, and resolution.
From bolt-on to built-in
The continuous monitoring of cloud infrastructure threats specific to compliance regulations such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR means it becomes priority number one; not a bolted-on afterthought. This helps companies get the appropriate context concerning how various infrastructure as code changes might lead to risks affecting their security and compliance posture. Importantly, this fully integrated, built-in style makes shifting left effortless, regardless of the implicit cultural changes required. Rather than obstacles, drag and opposition, GRC professionals can take advantage of an automated process which provides proactive guardrails built on totally transparent reasoning.
Round the clock GRC review
While shifting left helps contextualise threats in pre-production, it also aligns with the concept of continuous compliance, which noticeably boosts visibility. This gives organisations real-time access to their risk and compliance posture, using automated tests and evidence collection. By identifying non-compliant changes before code goes into production, the potential for any compliance breach and related impact is minimised.
Reducing gaps
On identifying a compliance gap, companies can resolve it instantly and automatically because developers receive feedback throughout the development process, enabling them to fix threats quickly and stop cyclical gaps from forming over time.
Shifting left also means that policies and protocols are applied consistently across multiple environments, including development, staging, and production. Such consistency further minimises the chance of gaps appearing because of differences between environments.
Team collaboration
Historically, GRC professionals would detect a failed check or control issue and send it to the security engineer to get a fix. The security team would then collaborate with DevOps to deploy a resolution. Under the shift left compliance approach, however, the DevOps team receives an alert first and only needs to involve the security folk if extra advice or support is needed. This allows GRC and DevOps to work together more effectively and to solve problems faster in real-time with fewer obstacles and happier teams.
Eliminating silos
By incorporating compliance processes directly into the SDLC, businesses can minimise infrastructure and compliance silos. Through the codification of policies and infrastructure, teams can make sure compliance standards are applied reliably across varied environments. Because compliance is integrated from day one, there is a lower demand for manual audits.
At the end of the day, silos disappear as development, security, and compliance teams act in tandem, working towards common objectives and bridging the chasm between infrastructure and compliance functions.
The future of compliance
Shifting left is a commanding approach which improves resilience and adaptability by helping companies to meet new regulations, standards, and policies. By integrating compliance checks and automated remediation into the development process, problems can be solved without disrupting workflows. Any organisation seeking to speed incident resolution and streamline internal resources knows that shifting left is the future of compliance.
