Pulsebyte Case Study - DevSecOps & Security

Project Context

As federal agencies urgently migrate critical systems to cloud platforms to leverage resilient and scalable infrastructure, outdated manual processes severely hinder speed and increase security risks. Our Team’s comprehensive DevSecOps services enable rapid yet secure continuous delivery by automating provisioning of infrastructure-as-code, build/test workflows, and compliance policy checks. End-to-end pipeline visibility facilitates centralized governance at scale across development teams. Code analysis proactively finds vulnerabilities early while containerization and runtime policy enforcement provide layered defenses. With compliant-by-design automation fully integrated into the toolchain, agencies can now swiftly deliver the innovation that users need while still effectively navigating complex regulations.

Challenge

Customers faced significant challenges in integrating security seamlessly into their development pipeline. Key challenges included:

Infrastructure Provisioning Complexity: Manual infrastructure provisioning processes resulted in inefficiencies and delayed development cycles.

Late-Stage Vulnerability Discovery: Security vulnerabilities were identified late in the development process, leading to costly post-deployment fixes.

Lack of Unified Policy Enforcement: Ensuring consistent policy enforcement across the infrastructure proved challenging due to a fragmented approach.

Solution

Our Team embarked on a DevSecOps transformation by utilizing optimized tools to tackle these challenges:

Automated Infrastructure Provisioning with Terraform: Adopted Terraform for infrastructure-as-code to automate the setup of cloud environments, allowing for on-demand and consistent deployment of infrastructure.

Code Analysis with Checkmarx, SonarQube, and Black Duck: Employed Checkmarx for application security testing (AST) and used SonarQube and Black Duck to detect security vulnerabilities and risks associated with open-source components early in the development process.

Container Security with Twistlock and Falco: Used Twistlock and Falco for scanning runtime vulnerabilities and real-time monitoring of container activities to boost container security.

Policy Enforcement with OPA Gatekeeper: Implemented centralized policy enforcement across the infrastructure with OPA Gatekeeper to ensure consistent policy application.

Key Results & Positive Outcomes

The deployment of these tools resulted in beneficial outcomes for our customers:

Efficient Infrastructure Provisioning: Using Terraform for infrastructure-as-code enabled faster and more consistent provisioning, minimizing development delays.

Early Vulnerability Detection: Tools like Checkmarx, SonarQube, and Black Duck allowed for early detection of security vulnerabilities, reducing risks after deployment.

Container Security Enhancement: Twistlock and Falco offered real-time monitoring, improving the security of active services.

Unified Policy Enforcement: OPA Gatekeeper centralized policy enforcement, ensuring a consistent and compliance-focused approach across the infrastructure.

Boosting Secure Delivery of 156 Tax Season Software Systems

Following the implementation of Our Team’s DevSecOps solutions, the IRS accelerated tax platform upgrades by five times while reducing pre-production security vulnerabilities by 45%. Automated failover to cloud infrastructure minimizes downtime during outages. AI-assisted code scans identify new risks early. Runtime controls prevent unauthorized container access. By replacing inefficient processes with compliance-as-code, reviewers can now concentrate on oversight.

Upon adopting Our Team’s comprehensive DevSecOps toolchain, the IRS achieved a transformative fivefold increase in the speed of delivering upgrades and new capabilities across essential taxpayer-facing tax systems. New tax legislation and forms can now be implemented in weeks instead of months.

Simultaneously, Our Team’s solutions reduced pre-production security defects by 45% compared to manual processes by utilizing AI-assisted code analysis and automated container scanning. Runtime controls prevent unauthorized access to sensitive tax data. Real-time log analysis detects and stops intrusion attempts.

By codifying compliance checks and replacing inefficient manual reviews, Our Team allowed the IRS's limited security and compliance experts to dedicate their valuable time to high-value oversight tasks. Our Team’s expertise in delivering compliant-by-design DevSecOps enabled the IRS to quickly enhance the protection of taxpayers' sensitive data while gaining the agility needed to promptly meet taxpayer needs.