The financial industry faces immense constraints concerning regulation, compliance, and governance. These factors make speedy financial technology integration difficult.
However, with a competitive technological market and the rise of security threats, financial services can’t afford not to adopt the right security services and tools. Financial professionals understand the grave implications. Because of this, despite the constraints, the financial sector has adopted DevOps across projects faster than any other sector.
Modern DevOps practices are transformational for any industry but are perhaps most pressing in finance. When incorporated correctly, it can create more efficient operations, enhance security measures, and lead to quicker delivery of products and services. For this reason, many financial companies partner with third-party DevOps services, like PreEmptive, to quickly onboard features and tools that construct effective approaches for managing apps and services.
There’s a reason businesses invested in DevSecOps to the tune of $4.4 billion in 2022. This number is expected to balloon by 22% between 2023 and 2032.
So why are companies dumping so much cash into DevOps? There’s no single reason. But the underlying draw to DevOps investment is that it increases connectivity and collaboration, allowing businesses to run efficiently and with heightened security for less cost.
As businesses increasingly rely on software and IT for a smooth, profitable workflow, investing in DevOps has become a no-brainer, as it provides massive returns and helps cut costs out of the gate.
These benefits are especially appealing for the financial sector. With digital banking as the new norm, customers expect online services and products that work quickly and securely.
The financial services industry is no stranger to the demanding, fast-paced nature of the tech market and tech users. Digitalization redefined customer expectations, and traditional banking institutions and fintech startups now must rush to incorporate DevOps principles to restructure operations and make them more secure and agile.
Mobile apps, digital wallets, and cloud data hosting are all needed for financial services to survive in the modern world.
DevOps emphasizes collaboration between development and operations to ensure these systems run at their best. Overall, it aims to integrate these services under one protocol and network. It’s a large project, no doubt. But the investment in DevOps comes with numerous benefits.
Integrating DevOps practices accelerates the ability of financial organizations to bring new products and features to market. The reason: automation.
With DevOps tools, financial services can automate a routine development, deployment, testing, and maintenance process. This allows institutions to remain competitive in the dynamic financial landscape, especially with updating mobile app services. It also helps identify security threats as the product is built, reducing the time suck of scouring programs and source code for errors, bugs, or glitches.
One-off security assessments are the way of the past. With DevOps, security is genuinely continuous and immediate.
DevOps practices prioritize security throughout the development process, mitigating risks and analyzing every batch of new code before it’s sent out. Then, organizations can address potential threats proactively by integrating security protocols from the outset.
Additionally, financial institutions can ensure compliance with stringent regulatory requirements. For example, with CI/CD structures, companies can build automated pipelines, reducing the likelihood of human error that results in non-compliance.
It’d be impossible to track all the time wasted on daily maintenance tasks. Worse yet, the process becomes further bogged down as departments struggle to communicate. And don’t even start on the communication lapses resulting from remote workforces. Bid wasted hours goodbye with DevOps.
DevOps promotes collaboration and breaks apart siloes. Ultimately, it instills a culture of transparency and communication. Once it’s initiated, operational efficiency improves, reducing manual interventions, minimizing errors, and enhancing customer experiences.
There’s no excuse for running a faulty or outdated app, as doing so poses stark security risks. Especially in finance, where sensitive information is constantly being passed back and forth.
Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices enable regular and reliable software releases. This approach minimizes disruptions and downtime, allowing financial institutions to respond swiftly to meet customer demands or fix internal bugs and faulty code.
Risk reduction must be the name of the game for financial app security. DevOps helps eliminate the risk of multiple fronts, whether through automated testing, code review, and frequent update releases. The whole point of DevOps is to eliminate the risk of security and downtime before it escalates into disaster.
DevOps offers a ton of benefits. But still, many organizations forsake investing in it, and this neglect can result in significant setbacks for financial organizations.
Increased Security Vulnerabilities: Ignoring secure DevOps practices exposes sensitive financial data to cyber threats. The lack of integration between development and security teams creates an environment where overlooked security threats go unaddressed, exposing code and sensitive data.
Sluggish Innovation: Without a DevOps mindset, financial institutions struggle to meet rapidly changing customer expectations and fail to keep up with the broader market. When companies fail to offer new features or frequent updates, it often results in a mass exodus of customers as they head to services that offer more advanced tech services.
Operational Inefficiencies: Siloes create inefficiency, and without DevOps, businesses are stuck to manual interventions, lengthy release cycles, and miscommunication.
DevOps isn’t a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. Without it, financial companies will find themselves left in the dust, unable to keep up with a market that’s rapidly adopting best-in-class DevOps tools and services. This is why companies must begin accepting DevOps and understanding the best practices to build effective approaches.
PreEmptive is a trusted leader in providing DevOps workflows. We offer solutions that enhance security throughout the development lifecycle and integrate seamlessly into CI/CD pipelines, ensuring that security measures are woven into the fabric of the development process.