Prioritization Based Taxonomy of DevOps Security Challenges Using PROMETHEE

Abstract

DevOps is a combination of collaborative and multidisciplinary efforts of an organization to control continuous delivery and updates of new software while guaranteeing their reliability and correctness. In the software industry, the implementation of DevOps (development and operations units) faces many challenges that are specifically associated with the security. The objective of this study is to identify and develop a prioritization based taxonomy of DevOps security challenges. The total of eighteen DevOps security challenges were extracted using systematic literature review approach and were further evaluated with experts using questionnaire survey study. Finally, the multi criteria decision making PROMETHEE-II approach was used to prioritize and develop the taxonomy of identified factors and their categories. The implications of PROMETHEE-II approach are novel in this research domain as it has been used successfully in various other domains e.g. medical, banking, internet techniques and management etc. The contribution of this study is not limited to develop the taxonomy based structure of DevOps security challenges, but also the proper prioritization of these challenges by introducing PROMETHEE-II approach in the research field of DevOps. The study results will assist the practitioners to remove the uncertainty and vagueness in the opinion of DevOps experts to secure DevOps implementation for better and continuous software development process.

Keywords

• DevOps security
• challenges
• empirical investigations