Systems hardening and Building Pipelines

This month we will be looking at build systems, locking down and securing system images, and how this ties together with build pipelines.

Talk 1 - Security discussion (with James Watson):

With so many ransomware, vulnerability and zero day exploits currently going on in the wild, what is now required of DevSecOps and SRE? Is DevOps an island from security? Can site reliability ever not include security?

There are many cases of security falling through the cracks between operations and development so what can be done differently to combat this?

We'll walk through a typical security problem, how the issue manifests itself and discuss how security issues can be avoided.

James Watson is a DevOps / SRE evangelist working on technical compliance projects and architecture. With technical compliance in mind - working within regulated environments to facilitate positive change. James works primarily in Gibraltar and is focused on technical operations and executing continuous improvement plans. James is also the DevOps Gibraltar organiser.

Talk 2 - Security Technology in practice (with David Turner):

In this session we will talk about development pipelines, building system images as code, securing systems through tools like packer and TeamCity on various platforms.

We will deep dive to show how using automation of timed Packer builds through TeamCity as an automation engine to combat toil tasks. The difference between hardened system images and desired state configuration when you don't have the time or resources to put into a desired state system or you need a solution that works now for security requirements.

David Turner is a CI (Continuous Integration) / CD (Continuous Delivery) specialist currently working in the contractor space in the online gambling scene. David previously worked at Accenture as a Cloud Engineer and at HPE in South Africa. David lives in South Africa, and occasionally works in Gibraltar and the UK. David is focused on removing toil and automating complex tasks.

There will be plenty of time for Q&A and great conversation.