According to Gartner, more than 70% of enterprises will use the cloud to accelerate business initiatives by 2027. The benefits of moving to the cloud go beyond speed. They also include the infrastructure required for secure-by-design architecture. 

When modernizing and migrating to optimize, one component of that process is improving system architecture to be more secure from the beginning. Combining this approach with robust DevOps pipelines powered by AI could significantly improve your overall security posture. 

Here’s why, DevOps pipelines are often seen as an efficiency tool, but when designed well, they directly operationalize secure-by-design principles. Join us for three ways AI-powered DevOps pipelines can support a secure-by-design architecture.

Shift-Left Security

The earlier you can identify problems and security risks, the earlier teams can adapt and develop solutions. That is why the first principle is Shift-Left Security. This is also a core principle behind our ReDuX blueprinting process and a key benefit of modernizing to optimize rather than using a lift-and-shift approach.

ReDuX builds legacy system blueprints. This allows modernization teams to map system structure and identify their relationship to external components identifying risks earlier. More importantly teams can match legacy code to screen flows and end-points. As a result, they can identify orphan or dead code, identifying these additional risks before they begin migration planning.

The second part of shift-left security is security testing. Either using AI agents (as is the case with ReDuX) or other automation tools, DevOps teams use security testing (static code analysis, dependency scanning, secret detection) early in the pipeline, ensuring vulnerabilities are caught before deployment. 

Automated Compliance Enforcement

Pipelines can embed policy-as-code and compliance-as-code frameworks, continuously validating that builds align with standards like NIST, FedRAMP, PCI, or agency-specific security baselines.

When agile teams use ReDuX to mobilize for migration they can input security documents that enable DevOps agents to use policy-as-code and compliance-as-code as part of their work.  They can also build custom workflows and templates that ensure their DevOps agents work consistently following their internal guidelines and processes.

There are many examples of how teams can use preconfigured DevOps templates and workflows to enhance their security:

• Pipeline templates that enforce secure configurations by default (e.g., encryption turned on, least privilege IAM roles, logging enabled) across every environment.
• Workflows that eliminate hardcoded credentials by integrating with vaults and key management services, ensuring sensitive data is injected securely at runtime.
• Automated pipelines that support rolling updates and security patching, making it easier to quickly remediate vulnerabilities without manual intervention.

Build Immutable Infrastructure with Traceability

Deployments via infrastructure-as-code (IaC) produce consistent, repeatable, and hardened environments, reducing misconfigurations. This addresses a common security weakness. Additionally, pipelines generate detailed logs and audit trails of who changed what, when, and how, supporting forensics, compliance audits, and accountability. 

Similar to automated compliance enforcement, ReDuX AI agents use infrastructure-as-code to accelerate these DevOps tasks. In both cases ReDuX also includes human input to ensure agents accurately execute deployments. Using ReDuX inside an integrated development environment (IDE) DevOps engineers review every step of the process, approving or denying each task these DevOps agents complete. This human-in-the-loop process further enhances security. 

Beyond these examples, one of the most important ways DevOps is it fosters a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration, particularly between developers, security, and operations. 

In short, transforming secure-by-design from principles into daily practice is key to ensuring cloud security. To learn how your DevOps experts can elevate their practice, schedule a demo with our ReDuX team.