A global Cyber Security firm’s journey towards CI-CD

Development of CI-CD pipeline to enhance the organization's software delivery procedures and enable quicker releases.

Business Vertical:

Cybersecurity

Region:

USA

Main Challenge:

Continuous Integration and Deployment

Overview

The client is a US-based cybersecurity firm that specializes in providing security services to the healthcare sector. Their services include risk assessment and cybersecurity strengthening for healthcare organizations.

According to a study by Dora, organizations that apply DevOps principles are able to deploy software 208 times more frequently than low performers. This high frequency of deployments can lead to increased levels of customer satisfaction, as organizations are able to quickly deliver new features and updates to their products, and improved operational efficiency, as DevOps practices prioritize automation and collaboration among teams. Additionally, the study found that high-performing organizations were also able to achieve lower change failure rates and faster recovery times in the event of a failure.

Business Need

The client needed to enhance their software delivery procedures by embracing Continuous Delivery principles, in order to achieve quicker releases, better software quality, and more efficient engineering workflows. Some of the objectives of this project included reducing code complexity, possible vulnerabilities, and code duplications, improving collaboration between teams, reducing deployment failures, rollbacks, and time to recover, reducing time to market, and releasing mobile apps to multiple environments and stores.

Challenges

The client's widely used iOS and Android applications require regular updates due to the expanding business requirements of their users. The internal team was having trouble setting up efficient automatic quality gates for the CI-CD pipeline's Continuous Integration section. The client's objectives also included growing their company, establishing a DevOps culture, establishing benchmarks for engineering teams, and automating manual deployment and code review procedures.

Solution

Our team of DevOps Engineers created a robust CI/CD pipeline using Bitbucket as a source code repository, Jenkins as a CI, and Fastlane as CD automation tools. We also employed SonarQube and quality gates recommended by the industry to speed up the deployment, testing, and to produce the highest-quality code. The mobile app delivery lifecycle includes building, unit testing, monitoring each stage via Slack notifications, and addressing every aspect of continuous delivery.

Some of the key components of the solution include dedicated alpha and beta environments in the Apple and Play stores, integrated Unit and Smoke tests within the Pipeline, and quick detection of errors, vulnerabilities, code duplications, and bugs. Pipeline stage monitoring ensures that each stage is monitored and addressed during the continuous delivery process.

CI-CD solution Architecture

Technologies Used

Jenkins, SonarQube, Fastlane, Bitbucket, EC2 MAC instance, Slack

Result

The implementation of a fully automated CI/CD system has significantly improved the development cycle by speeding up the deployment process and eliminating the risk of manual error. As a result, 30% of developers’ time is now invested in coding instead of manual deployments and resolving bugs. The entire process that would have taken around 3-4 hours with manual implementation for a CI/CD solution is now completed in just 10 minutes.

The solution has also led to a 25% reduction in code duplication and improved code coverage from 25% to 90%. Furthermore, 98% of the code smells, vulnerabilities, bugs, and hotspots were removed. The implementation of the solution has helped the client achieve their objectives, including establishing a DevOps culture, growing their company, establishing benchmarks for engineering teams, and automating manual deployment and code review procedures.

Ready to elevate patient care and operational efficiency? Reach out to us today and embark on a journey towards a better healthcare future.

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