Anti-patterns for automated compliance and guardrails

Manual policy enforcement: Relying on manual checks and balances to enforce policies and standards. It's difficult to maintain consistent governance and mitigate risks with manual methods, especially when dealing with high-velocity, constantly changing environments and systems. Use automated tools that enforce, monitor, and audit compliance standards consistently across environments.

Static compliance checks: Only validating compliance during specific phases of the development lifecycle, such as at the end of development, instead of continuously throughout the lifecycle. This can lead to late-stage discoveries of non-compliance, which are costlier and more time-consuming to address. Implement continuous compliance checks throughout the development, including both during and after deployment.

Relying on manual remediation: Manual remediation can lead to delays in identifying and resolving issues, extending vulnerability windows. It can also be an inefficient use of resources, leading to higher costs and increased risk of human error. Build auto-remediation processes that not only detect but also resolve non-compliant findings in real-time.

Over-reliance on preventative guardrails: Solely relying on preventive measures and not considering detective or responsive controls. It's impossible to predict and prevent every potential non-compliance issue making it important to have a balanced mix of detective, preventive, and responsive controls in place.

Manual change validation: With traditional change management, a Change Advisory Board (CAB) meeting would precede a release approval. The CAB verifies that proper actions have been taken to remediate change risk. This includes ensuring that a group of subject matter experts reviewed the change and that organizational requirements for quality assurance and governance are being followed, such as ensuring expected tests were run and that deployments occur within approved change windows. Traditional CAB approval could take from days to weeks to schedule and debate the changes. Use automated governance capabilities to automate these checks as part of the development lifecycle and continuously within your environment.