How do you deliver Digital Transformation and Secure Software within Public Sector organisations?

The public sector has been following a measured transition from physical services for citizens to a more digital delivery model. Like everything else, Government services at all levels have been moving online as part of an ongoing digital transformation.

The last 18 months have supercharged this movement towards digital service delivery. Almost overnight, the use of physical interactions between citizens and Government agencies at all levels stopped due to Covid-19 restrictions. This placed a burden on public sector IT teams who had to scramble to makes sure the public could access the services they needed, and at the same time, ensure that public sector employees could work from home. Most IT teams in Government departments rose to the task admirably, and we should thank them for their work.

The general public in Ireland and the UK are pretty comfortable with online services. As demonstrated by the significant numbers who use online shopping and banking services. However, the applications they get to use on the web and mobile devices for commerce activities means that they expect a similar level of functionality and polish from online Government and health providers services.

Pressure on Application Development Teams

These expectations from online shopping and other private sector services place more burdens on already stretched developers working on getting services online and keeping them useable and secure. Inevitably there is pressure from multiple directions on these developers, and others in the IT operations team, to add new features to applications. These pressures mean that development teams will be looking to get application updates delivered to production as quickly as possible.

Many development teams do this by using DevOps continuous development processes and third-party code libraries to reduce the code they have to write to get updates flowing through development, testing, and then into production. This introduces risk at all points along the chain. Risks from new in-house code that may have vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can exploit. Risks from vulnerabilities in third-party libraries that are linked into applications to make the process quicker. And risks from issues not discovered in development and user acceptance testing (UAT) if the process isn’t comprehensive.

Delivering Secure Application Code

Incorporating security into application development from the start of the design process is crucial to delivering secure applications that underpin the digital transformation in public sector services. Integrating security with development and then operations is frequently referred to as DevSecOps.

The skills needed to ensure that security is core to the development process, and that code written in-house or incorporated from third-party sources is secure, are in short supply. The industry has recognised this, and vendors such as Checkmarx have stepped in with tools and automated processes that make secure development processes available to all.

Checkmarx is the global leader in software security solutions for modern software development. They provide the most comprehensive Software Security Platform that unifies with DevOps to provide static and interactive application security testing, software composition analysis, and developer AppSec awareness training in real-time at developers desks. Almost half of the Fortune 50, including leading organisations like SAP, Samsung, and Salesforce, use Checkmarx to deliver the Sec in their DevSecOps processes.

Download our Digital Transformation eBook

Checkmarx has the tools to allow all public sector organisations to develop online and mobile services for their citizens in a secure way. Checkmarx has published a very informative eBook called Under Pressure: How Public Sector Organisations Can Rise to the Challenge of Secure Digital Transformation. This is essential reading for everyone involved in making Government services available online. You can download the European and Asian centric editions of the eBook from here. If you are in America, there is a version of the eBook for your region here.

Find Out More

The pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of public sector services. There is no going back to mainly in-person service delivery. At the very least, a hybrid model for service delivery will be the norm. Making these digital services secure will be essential. The Checkmarx tools can ensure that IT development teams deliver secure applications. Contact us today to find out more about the Checkmarx solutions and how you can get them in the Irish market.