For more than 20 years, Agile has empowered developers to create software quicker, more responsibly, and with the needs of its users firmly in mind. Agile’s tenets have since energized fields as diverse as project management, healthcare, education, and science. Can Agile have an equally positive impact on cybersecurity? In this article, we examine the Agile Manifesto, the Copernican shift it brought to software development, and how its legacy may revolutionize cybersecurity practices today.
Table of contents
What Is the Agile Manifesto?
The Agile Manifesto is the brainchild of seventeen developers who got together one February weekend in 2001 to hash out new software development principles. They were disgruntled by the slow and documentation-dependent practices of the time. They sought to create a mindset shift to revolutionize cybersecurity that would make application development faster, more responsive, and adaptive.
Four core values & twelve principles
In just 68 words, the Manifesto’s creators summarized four core principles that would fundamentally change our approach to software development. They emphasize the need to build working software and the ability to adapt it to change over adhering to extensive documentation and lengthy production cycles.
Communication within development teams and with stakeholders plays a pivotal role in Agile. Continuous feedback ensures that different teams are on the same page. Additionally, keeping stakeholders and end users in the loop lets Agile developers anticipate and respond to their needs far faster.
Why the Waterfall Approach Was Failing
The Agile mindset was born from the Manifesto creators’ dissatisfaction with the then-default Waterfall approach. While suitable for stable projects that require a high degree of compliance and aren’t expected to need many changes, the Waterfall approach was growing increasingly rigid for the increasingly dynamic requirements of the time.
Adhering to this approach means committing to sequential phases. Each step of development undergoes rigorous planning and requires extensive supportive documentation. There’s little room for change once a project is underway. Testing occurs fairly late in development, leading to late discoveries of vulnerabilities that teams can do little about.
Any interaction with customers happens during the lengthy planning phase, if at all. Outside involvement is typically non-existent after that. Since completing each phase is a prerequisite for starting the next, development cycles tend to be long.
How Is Agile Different?
Agile strives to be the antithesis of the Waterfall model.
As the name implies, speed and adaptability in delivering results are key to the philosophy. For software, this means rolling out smaller, iterative releases faster. Rather than being siloed and working on projects with minimum input, Agile teams communicate extensively, both internally and with others.
User feedback is a cornerstone of Agile that continuously shapes new releases. It also fits into the part of the Agile mindset that emphasizes the need for continuous improvement. Agile software can be complete in the sense that it meets all the goals its current iteration is supposed to accomplish. However, Agile’s dynamic nature means there’s always room and a need to do better.
An Agile Approach to Revolutionize Cybersecurity
Agile began as a paradigm shift in software development. Yet, its principles align perfectly with cybersecurity fit to tackle an increasingly complex threat landscape.
Secure software development principles
On the one hand, we’re talking about integrating cybersecurity into software development. Agile’s emphasis on diverse teams and their continued collaboration means experts get a say in shaping new software and subsequent releases.
That means cybersecurity becomes part of the process from the outset, as opposed to a tacked-on feature added later to satisfy requirements. Continuous testing and user feedback also let teams implement important fixes as vulnerabilities become evident, ensuring that a program’s newest version is also the most resilient it can be.
Agile for general cybersecurity applications
Any organization can and should align its cybersecurity efforts with Agile principles. Doing so will strengthen its overall security posture while ensuring timely and adequate threat responses.
The ability to identify emerging threats and pivot toward addressing crucial ones exemplifies Agile cybersecurity teams in action. By continually scanning for threats and improving detection, it’s possible to mitigate data breaches, malicious insiders, and other dangers before they have time and opportunity to cause serious damage.
Many vulnerabilities exploit improper data handling and access protocols. A zero-trust approach shares many similarities with the Agile mindset. It hinges on continuous user validation and access logs that can quickly identify suspicious behavior and adapt permissions to isolate and strip attackers of their access privileges. Incorporating the best data removal service into this approach ensures that outdated or redundant data is securely deleted, reducing the risk of data breaches and ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.
Focus on continued intra- and inter-team communication also yields better results. Frequent huddles allow team members to voice concerns as they arise or point out internal hurdles preventing them from achieving security goals. Similarly, keeping other teams in the loop means they’re more likely to adhere to best practices and deal with issues preventing the cybersec team’s smooth operation more efficiently.
Of course, this presupposes timely and secure team communication, which is harder to pull off in dynamic workplaces with hybrid and remote employees. Such changes mandate modern cybersecurity tools, like VPN for US. The VPN benefits for Agile cybersecurity are many, from ensuring secure remote access regardless of geographical location to encrypting any sensitive communication or file exchanges between team members.
Conclusion
The Agile Manifesto is an excellent example of how a mind shift in one area of human endeavor can impact many more. It’s clear that applying its succinct yet profound high-level concepts to revolutionize cybersecurity leads to more effective and responsive strategies.
