Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Webcast Series

Bringing computation and data storage closer to the edge, such as disaster and tactical environments, has challenging quality attribute requirements. These include improving response time, saving bandwidth, and implementing security in resource-constrained nodes. In this webcast we review characteristics of edge environments with a focus on architectural qualities. The characteristics and quality attribute concerns that we present are generalized from and informed by multiple customer experiences that we have undertaken in recent years. We present an overview of edge environments, in both military and civilian contexts, and provide a discussion about edge-specific challenges and how they can differ based on the context. We discuss architectural quality attributes that are well suited to address the edge-specific challenges, and provide examples of how each apply. A microservices architecture provides an opportunity to address several of the quality attribute concerns at the edge. Through a final consolidated scenario as an exemplar, we discuss how the presented qualities can be addressed using microservices. This webcast should be useful for anyone interested in better understanding the challenges of edge environments and learning about representative scenarios of work currently being done.

This webcast provided practical insights into how a Government Program Office can productively engage with a contractor using Agile and Lean methods. By reorienting the Agile Manifesto for a system acquisition context, we will consider the distinction between oversight and insight then briefly share examples of the impact of continuous delivery on technical review, requirements, testing, and system engineering.

Disruptive events and crises have the potential to irreparably harm your organization. The key to thriving, not simply surviving, in uncertain times is analysis of posture and preplanning. An organization can demonstrate operational resilience, when faced with both cyber and physical disruptions, if it focuses on the fundamentals and makes data-driven risk decisions.

The chasm between what academia researches and what industry uses in cyber is wide. By building mutually beneficial collaborations between the two, we can improve algorithms, datasets and techniques that are applicable to the real-world. Students and researchers should build a solid partnership with professionals early in their career to be exposed to and ground their work in current industry challenges. This ultimately results in more research being transformed into practical solutions.

Collaborations between the academia and the industry is one of the best ways for the industry to direct academic research outcomes to solve current problems. Without collaborations it can be challenging for the academia to produce algorithms, datasets and techniques that are directly applicable for real-world problems. Students and researchers have to build a working loop with the professionals early in their carrier to maximize the relevance of their work in practice, which ultimately results in more research being transformed to practical solutions.

The concept of software architecture as a distinct discipline in software engineering started to emerge in 1990 — although the idea had been around for much longer. Throughout my career in industry, then in academia, I've witnessed the growth of software architecture, its evolution in leaps and bounds. I've also had the privilege to meet and work with many of the key contributors who over 30 years have shaped it to what we know today: a mature discipline. It has its theories, its standards, its processes and tools, its place in schools' curricula. Industry and academia, although often on different tracks —and often ignoring each other— have been making every year more incremental progress and even branching out subdisciplines or different schools of thoughts. But the obvious question is: are we done? what's next? Plateau, obsolescence, retirement? Not quite. New problems arose, driven by new technologies, and some old problems were not really fully solved, or their context significantly evolved. In this brief talk, I'll reflect on these 30 years, and pulling out my crystal ball, I'll speculate potential developments ahead, from 4+1 different viewpoints.

SEI Chief Technology Officer Tom Longstaff interviewed Jeff Boleng, a senior advisor to the U.S. Department of Defense, on recent DoD software advances and accomplishments. They discussed how the DoD is implementing recommendations from the Defense Science Board and the Defense Innovation Board on continuous development of best practices for software, source selection for evaluating software factories, risk reduction and metrics for new programs, developing workforce competency, and other advancements. Boleng and Longstaff also discussed how the SEI, the DoD's research and development center for software engineering, will adapt and build on this work to accomplish major changes at the DoD.

In an increasingly cloud-native world, application containers and microservice architectures are the next go-to for system architecture modernization. Like many technology choices, there are trade-offs that have to be carefully considered. Will containers solve my business problems? How will certain responsibilities shift between my software teams? How do I maximize my cyber security posture? Will I need to re-train staff? What is my budget for infrastructure and prototyping? In this webcast, David Shepard and Aaron Volkmann discussed some of the potential pitfalls of using containers and provide some food for thought to software teams considering embarking on a journey to containers.

You may have a secure application today, but you cannot guarantee that it will still be secure tomorrow. Application security is a living process that must be constantly addressed throughout the application lifecycle. This requires continuous security assessments at every phase of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). The SEI has researched a continuous authorization concept—DevSecOps—that allows for constant interaction between developers and information security teams throughout the entire SDLC. This allows any authorizing officials, such as personnel on information security teams, to be in constant contact with developers as changes are made to existing code and as new features are added. From project conception, a developed system security plan should be integrated into the development platform as well as other environments, where both developers and IAs can see the same artifacts for every development and deployment activity. This allows any changes to the system's security posture to be immediately identified and reported to the IA to evaluate and ensure that all security controls are adequately addressed. As a result, all security features can be verified and authorized, and eventually the organization will build a trusted culture among all stakeholders. Hasan Yasar and Eric Bram discussed how the continuous aspect of communication and collaboration among developers and information security teams reinforces core DevOps principles, as well as allowing developers to write code with a "secure" development mindset. Giving developers and DevOps engineers the tools and knowledge to excel in their roles not only leads to enhanced productivity but also a more robust and secure application and environment development mindset. Giving developers and DevOps engineers alike the tools and knowledge to excel in their roles not only leads to enhanced productivity but also a more robust and secure application and environment.

In this webcast, CMMC Architects, Gavin Jurecko & Matt Trevors provide insight on how to evaluate and assess your organization's readiness for meeting the practice requirements of CMMC Level 1.

Learn more about the DIB CS Program at: https://dibnet.dod.mil/ Or email: [email protected] CISA CRR Resources: https://www.us-cert.gov/resources CMMC Accreditation Body – https://www.cmmcab.org NIST SP 800-171A - https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-171a/final

Andrew Hoover and Katie Stewart discussed the DoD's new CMMC program. They gave a brief overview of CMMC followed by a deep dive into the Process Maturity aspect of the model. The webcast provided insight into how organizations can prepare for CMMC.