As part of their three-day webinar series “Introduction to DevSecOps for Government Systems,” Defense Unicorns organized the “Big Bang” segment which featured Enrique Oti, Chief Technology Officer at Second Front Systems™ (2F), Austen Bryan, Postmaster at Defense Unicorns, and Zach Burke, Iron Bank Chairman at Platform One. Big Bang is a DevSecOps platform built from DOD hardened and approved packages deployed in a customer-owned environment.

In the segment the speakers discuss how the Big Bang tech stack is used to accelerate the secure delivery of commercial software to the DoD, and why secure software delivery is an important capability.

Through his experience in DoD IT operations and acquisition, Bryan gained a perspective on the future of cyber warfare. “I have no doubt that the next time we're in some sort of kinetic conflict, there will be many assets rendered useless because they were taken out before they could actually go kinetic because they were exploited,” said Bryan. 

Bryan explained that secure software delivery is vital to keeping assets ready, adapting to the fog of war, delivering new capabilities faster, and bridging the gap between industry and federal regulations. 

The discussion touches on the need for streamlined pipelines that incorporate standard approved solutions like Big Bang in order to reduce the friction between commercial software companies and the DoD. 

”It's incredible how many people want to work with the government. The government just has to make it better, and it has to make it easier,” said Oti speaking to the demand from commercial software companies for entry into the defense market. He credits the time and labor necessitated by DoD Authority to Operate (ATO) processes for the current reluctance of many commercial software entrepreneurs to invest energy into pursuing the DoD as a customer. 

The speakers also discuss how their respective organizations implement Big Bang in their own solutions, and how it smooths the pathway to DoD entry for their commercial constituents.

Defense Unicorns’ free open source tool, ZARF, helps companies run Big Bang for themselves, and it’s described as “DevSecOps for airgap.” Platform One’s Party Bus and 2F’s Game Warden® are public and private sector DevSecOps platforms, respectively, that build on Big Bang to provide additional capabilities such as active threat response and continuous monitoring. 

Big Bang also lends itself to continuous Authority to Operate (cATO) compatibility. As Burke puts it, “to my knowledge there's two [cATOs]: I have one inside Party Bus, Enrique has one inside Game Warden.”