In the fast-paced world of software development, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) have become cornerstones, enabling teams to deliver high-quality software faster than ever. However, the rise of rapid innovation, increasing use of third-party libraries, and AI-generated code have accelerated vulnerabilities and risks. Therefore, addressing these issues early in the development lifecycle is essential so that teams can launch their products quickly and confidently.
The introduction of Checks privacy compliance CI/CD tooling feature represents a significant stride towards addressing these concerns, by reducing manual intervention and automating compliance and privacy standards as part of a release cycle.
In this post, we explore the meaning of CI/CD for compliance team members unfamiliar with this technology and how Checks can weave privacy and compliance protection practices into that pipeline.
Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) are foundational practices in modern software development. They enable development teams to increase efficiency, improve quality, and accelerate delivery.
Continuous Integration (CI) automatically integrates code changes from multiple contributors into a software project. This practice enables teams to detect problems early by running automated tests on each change before it is merged into the main branch.
Continuous Deployment (CD) takes automation further by automatically deploying all code changes to a testing or production environment after the build stage. This means that, in addition to automated testing, automated release processes ensure that new changes are accessible to users as quickly as possible.
The automation of CI/CD processes is typically called “pipelines.” CI/CD pipelines automate the steps software changes go through, from development to deployment. These steps include compiling code, running tests (unit tests, integration tests, etc.), security scans, and more. If all automated tests pass, the changes go live without human intervention in a specific environment, such as testing or production.
These pipelines are designed to catch issues as early as possible, embodying the practice known as “shifting left.” The benefits of “shifting left”, particularly when applied through CI/CD pipelines, include:
Checks CI/CD tooling seamlessly integrates app compliance scanning into CI/CD pipelines via plugins for GitHub, Jenkins, and FastLane. You can also use Checks in any other CI/CD system that supports custom scripts, such as GitLab, TeamCity, Bitbucket, and more.
When Checks scans an app, the binary undergoes dynamic and static analysis to understand your data collection and sharing practices, including app dependencies such as SDKs, permissions, and endpoints. This data is then tested against global regulatory requirements, store policies, your custom Checks policies, and your privacy policy to find potential issues and opportunities for improvement.
By adding Checks as a step in your CI/CD pipeline, you can automate app and code compliance scanning as part of the development lifecycle.
The top 5 benefits of integrating Checks in your CI/CD are:
Getting started is simple. Start by first signing up for Checks and then adding Checks to your CI/CD pipelines with these simple configuration steps. Once configured, Checks is ready to perform a variety of privacy and compliance verifications.
This proactive approach to privacy and compliance safeguards against potential risks and aligns with regulatory compliance requirements, making it an invaluable asset for any compliance and development team.