What Is Trusted DevOps? Principles, IaC, and Integration with GitOps

DevOps is a cultural and practice set that promotes collaboration between software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to improve delivery speed and quality, while trusted DevOps extends this by embedding security and reliability throughout the software lifecycle.

Key characteristics of trusted DevOps include security integration at every stage, automation of testing and deployment, continuous monitoring and logging, compliance with regulations, transparent communication, risk management, continuous improvement, education and training, and cross‑team collaboration.

The concept of XaC (Everything as Code) expands IaC by treating artifacts, configuration, dependencies, infrastructure, pipelines, and security policies as code, enabling consistent, version‑controlled management of all elements.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) allows infrastructure to be defined, deployed, and managed through code, supporting version control, immutability, and seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines; popular open‑source tools include Terraform, Pulumi, Nitric, and Ansible.

Example Ansible playbook:

地
- name: Network Getting Started First Playbook
  connection: ansible.netconmon.network_cli
  gather_facts: false
  hosts: all
  tasks:
    - name: Get config for W0S devices
      yes.vyos.vyos_facts
      gather_subset: all
    - name: Display the config
      debug
      msg: “The hostname is {{ ansible_net_hostname }} and the OS is {{ ansible_net_version }}”

While IaC offers many benefits, limitations exist such as reliance on specific tools and the need for higher‑level automation to reduce manual processes and improve developer experience.

IaC is a core component of GitOps, which emphasizes declarative, versioned, immutable configurations, automatic syncing, and continuous reconciliation, thereby enhancing automation, security, and consistency across environments.

A case study from Washington Trust Bank shows how IaC helped automate infrastructure provisioning, meet FDIC compliance, and improve collaboration between development, infrastructure, and security teams.