Compliance as Code: Embedding Audit Readiness into Enterprise Software Delivery

Enterprise software delivery compliance is typically a distinct step where compliance is done after the development. This causes massive manual processes, laxity in control implementation and time wastage in the auditing process. As the complexity of the system and pressure of the regulatory system grow, the old techniques of compliance may no longer work. The Compliance as Code presented in this paper is a method that inserts the compliance rules into the code delivery pipelines. The compliance requirements are in the form of runnable rule and automatically executed in the process of build, test and deployment phases. The qualitative pre-post research was carried out in a large organization. The findings indicate that there was a decrease in the time spent on manual audit by 81.4 percent, the time on audit was reduced to 78 hours as compared to 420 hours. The consistency of compliance rose to 94% compared to 61 percent and auditor confidence rating grew to 4.6 out of a five-point rating. This evidence indicates that Compliance as Code goes a long way in enhancing audit readiness and assists in efficient and reliable delivery of software.