What started as a small security and functional test automation effort, using a small private cloud in the government space, has quietly grown into one of the premier DevSecOps approaches and tool sets available in industry. Jackpine Technologies Corporation quickly realized at the time that having the full environment in place was imperative to effective testing. Additionally, it became obvious that automation across all tasks was paramount to helping customers get the most out of cloud. From there an ecosystem evolved that accommodates any third party automation or test tooling. True one touch deployments of simple to extremely complex environments can be used to leverage cloud and address security and functional test from day one.

While the philosophy of baking cyber security and test in from the start has always anchored the CONS3RT toolset, an exciting announcement at this year’s User Group is taking the capability to the next level and in doing so challenging the entire DevSecOps industry to do the same. Jackpine will be using block chain technology to bolster an already powerful security stack in two important ways.

First, to enable the traceability of known good assets or components from their origin in CONS3RT or third party repositories all the way through to their final end states in target DevTest and production clouds. CONS3RT’s ability to deploy environments in both private and public cloud requires a full understanding and meticulous implementation of security into any cloud it brokers workload into. The addition of block chain to not only guarantee traceability but also provide the highest level of audit will help accelerate adoption of public cloud in DoD.

Second, CONS3RT will implement the framework required to use “smart contracts” to automate workflows starting with the DevOps tool chain itself with the intent to push up into security approval processes, acquisition and more. The foundation of block chain 2.0 enables the “exchange of value without powerful intermediaries acting as arbiters of information”. The opportunities to make large and small organizations faster and more efficient are far reaching.

Block chain is commonly associated with crypto-currency, however, the same underlying framework that records each digital transaction and allows the execution of specific actions based on those transactions can be applied to any workflow that involves something of importance or value. While this effort represents the first known integration of block chain into DevSecOps tooling and processes, the industry will likely be quick to adopt and find myriad uses that have not yet even been considered.

Jackpine Technologies continues to follow the philosophy of making cloud more useful to customers. The net result is attacking the problems that constrain products from reaching their target markets more quickly without short changing security or quality. The block chain announcement represents one of the more exciting innovations around DevOps tooling in recent memory. The potential to not only further accelerate cloud adoption but also help customers wring more value out of it is not only real but will be available to HmC customers later this year.