Keeping apps and operations healthy without compromising user experience
Often, people talk about organizations like organisms—living, breathing collections of different systems and departments. These, in turn, are made up of technology stacks and devices that each contribute to the overall “health” of the organization.
Just like our bodies need an immune system to defend against viruses and bacteria, organizations must protect operations with a digital immune system (DIS) as well.
What is a digital immune system?
A DIS is a more holistic approach to data and system protection in response to ever-expanding cybersecurity threats. By combining various practices and technologies, organizations can mitigate business risk while simultaneously improving customer and user experience (UX) with digital platforms. A major goal of DIS is ensuring that customer experiences are never compromised by a system failure or network anomaly.
A recent study by Gartner revealed that 48% of businesses listed improving customer experience as the top objective for their ongoing digital investments, which will include implementing a DIS framework. Gartner also predicted that by 2025, organizations that have invested in a DIS will see a significant increase in customer satisfaction by decreasing operational downtime by 80%.1
Investing in a digital immune system
As software developers try to respond to an increasingly rapid rate of change and growing complexity in technology platforms and solutions, they can inadvertently end up with application vulnerabilities that increase risk. A DIS can help address testing gaps so software applications are more resistant to failure and have greater resilience.
A DIS combines a variety of technologies and practices such as data analytics, AI/ML, automation platforms, and DevSecOps. These tools empower security and software engineering teams with greater visibility and responsiveness for threats and vulnerabilities—including functional bugs, security vulnerabilities, and data inconsistencies.
Properly implemented, a DIS can enable developers to not only improve application performance and enhance user experiences, but to do so with more resilient products, services, and systems.
Key components of a digital immune system
There are a handful of key features that set a DIS apart from a general data protection strategy.
- Observability deals with built-in app observability to mitigate issues with reliability and resilience.
- Autoremediation features self-monitor and self-correct any issues, bringing operations back to a normal working state without necessitating human involvement.
- Site reliability engineering (SRE) leverages SLOs to govern service management and improve UX.
- AI-augmented testing expands on test automation with fully automated planning, creation, maintenance, and analysis.
- Chaos engineering is a strategy to expose vulnerabilities and weaknesses within a complex system, but in a non-intrusive manner that doesn’t disrupt production.
With organizations investing in more digital initiatives that improve customer satisfaction, DIS is poised to play a critical role in streamlining development and operations while keeping customers shielded from system failures or anomalies.
- Gartner, “What Is a Digital Immune System and Why Does It Matter?” October 2022
