Category: Security Testing

The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe) is an online knowledge base of Tested principles to apply Lean-Agile (continuous delivery and improvement) at enterprise level. It provides a simple and lightweight experience for the software development team.

SAFe is most-popular among enterprise organizations as many of its facets focus on eliminating the common challenges teams face when scaling agile. Developed in the year 2011 to help software development teams bring better quality products to market at a faster pace. It was originally called the “Agile Enterprise Big Picture” by software-industry veteran Dean Leffingwell, who published the bestselling book Agile Software Requirements Before SAFe- when we used to build large and complex systems using Agile Methodology, the results were delayed delivery and the quality was not that great, as a result, the customer experience was also not great. SAFe tries to address these issues and software testing companies who have adopted these frameworks have shown amazing result.

When to Use Scaled Agile Framework

To fix the following inefficiencies SAFe is used.

• Difficulty in coordinating multiple teams working on a large-scale project
• Coping with longer planning horizons
• Increased effort in keeping track of multiple sources of requirements
• Un-mapped dependencies creating unexpected issues and obstacles

SAFe Core values

1. Alignment: It is necessary to keep up with the rapid change. More importance should be given to enterprise business objectives over team goals. .

2. Built-in quality: Ensures every element and increment that’s being built is of same slandered of quality.

3. Transparency: To achieve best results transparency within the organization is really important. Transparency & trust ensure that the business and development can confidently rely on another, particularly in times of difficulty.

4. Program execution: Leaders participate as Business Owners in Program Increment (PI) planning and execution, while aggressively removing impediments.

SAFe Principles:

• Take an economic view
• Apply systems thinking
• Assume variability; preserve options
• Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
• Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
• Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths
• Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning
• Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
• Decentralize decision-making
• Organize around value

Highlights of SAFe

• Agile Release Train: Is a long lived team of Agile teams, which, along with other stakeholders, incrementally develops one or more Solutions in a value stream.
  
• Continuous Delivery Pipeline: Describes the workflows, activities, and automation needed to provide a constant release of value to the end user.
  
• Customer Centricity: Is a mindset that focuses on creating positive experiences, such as the customer journey, which takes buyers through the full set of products and services that the enterprise offers.
  
• Program Increment (PI): Is a time box in which an ART delivers incremental value. PIs are typically 8 – 12 weeks long, and the most common pattern for a PI is four development Iterations followed by one Innovation and Planning (IP) iteration.
  
• Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration: Provides the teams with an opportunity for exploration and innovation, dedicated time for planning, and learning through informal and formal channels.
  
• ScrumXP: ScrumXP uses the Scrum framework for managing the team and their work as well as XP derived quality practices.
  
• Team Kanban: Is a method that helps teams facilitate the flow of value by visualizing workflow, establishing Work in Process (WIP) limits.
  
• Built-In Quality: Ensures every solution increment is high in quality and can readily adapt to change.

Challenges with SAFe:

As explained above SAFe agile is to overcome Agile’s pitfalls, however every model have some challenges and so does SAFe. A few of them can be as follows:

• Primarily Top-Down Decision Making: Due to which it Possesses Similarities to waterfall model.
  
• Terminology Heavy: There are 4 levels in SAFe. Coupled with its use of Lean, Agile, and;
  
• System Thinking: It does end up with a significant amount of terminology and body of knowledge.

In short, SAFe is a framework which gives us alignment not only with the team(lower level) and program level(middle) but also helps us align to with organization strategy(top level) and how a team’s works in adding value to customers right from the top level. It is available in different configurations, and companies can take advantage of it.

SAFe comes in various configurations, depending on the specific needs of an organization. These configurations include Essential SAFe, Large Solution SAFe, Portfolio SAFe, and Full SAFe, each offering different levels of guidance and complexity to address different organizational contexts.

It’s important to note that while SAFe is widely adopted in many enterprises, it’s not the only approach to scaling Agile practices. Organizations should carefully assess their own context, needs, and culture before deciding on the best approach to scale Agile within their organization.

Digital transactions and Security Compliances are increasing rapidly and more people than ever are using these platforms. Statutory & Regulatory bodies across the world are continuously protecting this digital information of the users from mishandling or theft. Data Protection law in European Union is even more stringent now after GDPR compliance came into force. Purpose of all this being to safeguard interest of the end users.

At a Glance

Compliance Frameworks are sets of guidelines and best practices. Organizations follow these guidelines to meet regulatory requirements, improve processes, strengthen security, and achieve business objectives. Non-Compliant organizations face security breaches. When a company suffers a security breach, it is often difficult to quantify the totality of the damage, in part because there are so many potential financial consequences. Some of the biggest security breaches in recent years are:

• Leading Pharma firm slapped with $4.3 M penalty for HIPAA violations.
• Marketing firm leaked a personal information database with 340 million records.
• Leading Airlines was fine $230m for data breach
• Leading Hotel chain was fined for $124m for data breach of 500m customers

Know the Security Regulations

Payment Card Industry Data Security (PCI-DSS) : Organizations that handle cardholder information for major debit, credit, prepaid, e-purse, ATM and POS cards fall under this regulation. These compliances results in tapping the financial frauds, primarily through protecting debit/credit card and account information of the customers. Noncompliance to PCI-DDS can cost between $5,000 and $100,000 per month as fine.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ( HIPAA): This bill puts in place many regulations regarding the security of patient data. Companies that handle healthcare data, from hospitals and clinics to insurance companies, are required to comply with HIPAA regulations. Penalties for non-compliance and Security Compliances can range from $100 to $50,000 per violation, with a maximum penalty of $1.5 million annually

Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) : It is designed to protect investors and the public by increasing the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures. This act requires companies to maintain financial records for seven years. Affected companies include U.S. public company boards, management and public accounting firms.

Federal Information Security Management Act ( FISMAA) : The Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 treats information security as a matter of national security for federal agencies. Comprehensive framework for ensuring the effectiveness of information security controls over information resources. It requires each federal agency to develop, document, and implement an agency-wide program to provide information security for the information systems that support the operations and assets of the agency.

General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) : It aims to protect citizens in the European Union (EU) from data breaches. The GDPR applies to all companies processing personal data for people residing in the EU, even if that company is not physically located or based in the EU. Companies that fail to comply can face massive fines equaling four percent of their global turnover, or 20 million euros, whichever is higher.

Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA) : This Security Compliances is a United States federal law that requires financial institutions to explain how they share and protect their customers private information. It requires financial institutions that offer consumers financial products or services like loans, financial or investment advice, or insurance to explain their information sharing practices to their customers and to safeguard sensitive data.

Why Organizations need compliance?

Enhanced risk management framework: Compliance regulations help in defining a proactive security and risk posture for any organization, and then translating that posture to actionable security controls.

Reassure Customers: Compliance regulations help in protecting customer data which helps in achieving customers trust and contributes to brand reputation.

Avoid breaches which in turn minimize losses: Regulations prevents breaches, which can cost millions of dollars and dent organization’s exchequer. Due to the data breach, many companies end up losing revenues in sales, additional repair costs of the application and legal fees, all of which can be avoided with the right preventive measures.

Security Compliance grows even more challenging

Organizations have been earnestly taking precautionary measures against risks, continuous compliance of their environment and proactive IT operation processes. Since each major security standard involves an evolving set of specific requirements, achieving security compliance can be complicated, costly and challenging.

• Key Challenges that organizations must address in order to optimize their security and compliance programs:
• Continuous monitoring of the compliances adherence for geographies where it operates over evolving technologies
• Recognize the impact of a security breach.
• Create a security strategy that’s at pace with the ever-changing security and technology landscape.
• Adjust to the rapid growth in Endpoints which can drive up the challenge for any organization’s ability to make sure each device is compliant with industry standards.
• Acquire skilled resources to apply these compliances

Achieving compliance within a regulatory framework is an ongoing process. Organizations, environment is always changing, and the operating effectiveness of a control may break down. So, choosing an appropriate compliance policy, applying effective controls, regular monitoring and reporting is a must. An automated compliance monitoring can be the solution. Data analytics are now well established as a very effective way to monitor and test many forms of transactions and other activities that are impossible to examine manually.

Consideration while Implementing compliance framework

• Accurate assessment of the business’s needs relative to IT and IOT using a risk-based orientation.
• Adoption and application of an appropriate standards-based framework.
• Creation or adjustment of your security and compliance architecture.
• Selection of strategic vendors/partners whose technical abilities, strategic vision, and commercial strength and viability, will support any architecture and it’s core capabilities will address the challenges these trends present to an organization.
• Development, phased implementation and deployment of security and compliance plan, prioritized by business risk.
• Implementation of continuous automated monitoring programs.

In summary, we understand that security non-compliance can cost heavy to business and its reputation. So, to the online platform this is not a choice anymore. Based on the nature of business and the geographies of operation though analysis is needed to understand and apply the security compliances. Continuous evolving strategy should be planned to ensure the business is always complied to the latest compliance and technology needs.

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