Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

In 2020, a DevOps team at a mid-sized fintech startup almost lost its entire source code. A failed container update caused a cascading failure in their self-hosted GitLab instance. The backup was… somewhere. No one checked it in weeks. The recovery process took three days. The cost was around $70,000 in downtime and customer compensation. The event wasn’t a matter of not having a backup strategy. It was a matter of assuming someone, somewhere, had run the proper function at the right time.

It’s no news that Jira Automation Rules (JAR) sit at the center of how teams choose to streamline work. They triage requests and escalate incidents. At the same time, they keep systems running smoothly without requiring human intervention. For teams managing ITSM, DevOps, and cross-functional service operations, these rules are operational logic with many conveniences.

Welcome to the DevOps multiverse. Here, code is currency, while platforms like GitHub, Jira, and Confluence power critical infrastructure. Here, even the smallest misstep can trigger a chain reaction measured in gigabytes of leaked data, thousands of compromised credentials, and millions of dollars in financial losses, not to mention reputational damage. These risks aren’t theoretical.

Fintech and banking ranked among the top three most targeted industries in 2024, according to the CISO’s guide to DevOps threats. Real-world incidents underscore this trend: Byte Federal, the leading Bitcoin ATM operator in the U.S., suffered a breach linked to a GitLab vulnerability. Meanwhile, financial software provider Iress and crypto wallet company Ginco were both targeted by threat actors exploiting GitHub repositories. Source: 2024 DevOps Threats Unwrapped.

Git, as a version control system, is very popular nowadays. Developers often make mistakes or encounter errors, such as accidentally deleting files. It is convenient not just because you can do many different operations with it, including such git commands as git revert, git push, git reset, git rebase, or many more. But it can also permit you to restore deleted files. Developers can recover from these mistakes using Git’s tools. Fortunately, for us, Git really has the right tools to do so.

Imagine launching the year’s most anticipated game—only to have your screen freeze at the climax. Or waiting for your favorite show’s finale, only to encounter a technical error. In the world of DevOps, where time and reliability are everything, outages on platforms like Azure DevOps, GitLab, GitHub, and Jira don’t just cause frustration — they can paralyze the entire software development process.

Human error is one of the most common causes leading to data loss or data breaches. In the ITIC report, they state that 64 % of downtime incidents have their roots in human errors. If you think that in SaaS environments all your data is safe, you need to think once again.

Once we say Disaster Recovery, we imagine that if something goes wrong – unexpected deletion or other human error, ransomware attack, outage, etc. – we can restore our data immediately. But is it so in practice? Only if you have a reliable backup for your DevOps stack and a tested DR plan for every critical scenario… According to Backblaze’s report, only 42% of organizations that experienced data loss managed to restore all their data.

The transition from DevOps to DevSecOps – and now to SecDevOps – signals more than a change in terminology. It underscores that security can no longer be an afterthought in the software development lifecycle. It must lead, setting the tone and structure for everything that follows. Such a shift is what defines SecDevOps. It’s a model where security is the starting point, not the final checkpoint, guiding the conceptual approach and day-to-day operations.

Consider a typical scenario. Your development department scales along with the company. Your needs grow, so teams plan to adopt specialized tools for different purposes. The decision is to use Jira for product and issue tracking. Elements like version control, pipelines, and deployments will be managed in Azure DevOps (ADO). Each platform excels in its domain, but running them in isolation is a different story.