Digital Immunity is a concept that has been around since the early 90's. A researcher at IBM coined the term as part of an overarching anti-virus approach that IBM was taking. David M. Chess, a researcher at IBM in 1991, suggested the idea of the Digital Immune System.
In the article from Toby Bussa "The Future of Fighting Viruses: A History and Analysis of the Digital Immune System", Bussa quotes Chess as saying:
"If transmission bandwidth, CPU cycles, and disk space were free, and programming was easy, every workstation would be protected by a seamless 'immune system.' Objects infected with existing viruses would be detected automatically, the identity of the virus verified and reported to a central location, and the object destroyed or repaired, with minimal user intervention. New viruses would be detected automatically with some high degree of confidence, first-pass signature patterns would be extracted where possible and communicated with a central clearinghouse, along with a sample of the suspicious object. Viruses would very rarely, if at all, spread quickly."
Now we fast forwad to 2022, after the advacements in delivering technology with DevSecOps practices and SRE principles Gartner further elaborated on the concept:
A digital immune system (DIS) combines practices and technologies for software design, development, operations and analytics to mitigate business risks. Here's what to know.
A robust digital immune system protects applications and services from anomalies, such as the effects of software bugs or security issues by making applications more resilient so that they recover quickly from failures. It can reduce business continuity risks created when critical applications and services are severely compromised or stop working altogether.
According to Gartner The concept of Digital Immunity has been elaborated on to combine a number of concepts in early detection and remediation - including software design, development, automation, operations and analytics to create superior user experience (UX) and reduce system failures that impact business performance. A DIS protects applications and services in order to make them more resilient so that they recover quickly from failures.
To properly embed digital Immunity an organisation needs to adopt a number of key pillars, namely : Robust AI enabled Quality Engineering practices, Observability, Chaos Engineering and SRE, Software Supply Chain Security and DevSecOps.
For DevOps1 building a digital immune system is a journey that begins well before Day 2 (Operations). It starts with the foundational work laid during Day 0 (planning and design) and Day 1 (initial implementation and deployment). While Day 2 defines how systems perform in the long run, it's the deliberate strategies and decisions made during Day 0 and Day 1 that lay the groundwork for Digital Immunity.
DevOps1 believes the real power of the digital immune system lies in its ability to turn Day 2 operations into a competitive advantage, not an operational liability. Systems that are resilient and adaptable don't just survive disruptions; they thrive in them, driving innovation and delivering sustained ongoing value to the organisations that run them and the customers that are on.
A strong digital immune system isn't something you can buy or achieve with a quick fix. Like the human body, it must be built and strengthened over time through targeted and thoughtful engineering.
DevOps1 help our customers achieve this by focusing on our key pillars:
all built on the foundation of Cloud and Platform DevOps1 helps you design systems that anticipate risks, adapt to change, and deliver continuous quality, supported by our own Digital Immunity, Cloud and Platform Engineers.
