Cloud Background
Beyondrisk.io is a prominent cybersecurity company specializing in enterprise risk management solutions. Their focus lies in providing DataOps solutions that assist organizations in modeling and mitigating complex security risks.
Business Challenge
Beyond Risk faced numerous challenges in environmental management, particularly in the swift creation and removal of dynamic environments required for multiple development and building sales processes. Managing the existing environment architecture and infrastructure code was a cumbersome task due to the current infrastructure setup, multiple cross-dependencies between infrastructure layers, and the complexity of the module structure.
Solution
1. Terraform Cloud and workspace approach.
The main idea was to use Hashicorp Terraform cloud tool to manage dynamic environments based on Terrafform workspaces. It must provide the possibility of dynamic creation of isolated environments with the required size and specific features.
2. Create Reusable Terraform Modules
In collaboration with Gart, Beyond Risk embarked on a transformative journey to streamline its infrastructure processes and enhance outage recovery capabilities. The key solution involved the creation of reusable Terraform modules, providing a foundation for repeatable infrastructure.
Picture 1: “Reusable Terraform modules – a foundation of repeatable infrastructure”.
3. Analyzing and Refactoring
Gart’s experts conducted a thorough analysis of Beyond Risk’s IT infrastructure, identifying areas for improvement and code refactoring. The focus was on developing a modular approach that could adapt to the dynamic needs of Beyond Risk’s varied processes.
4. Automation Framework
Gart developed a comprehensive automation framework that empowered non-technical executives to generate dynamic and fully customized environments. This not only streamlined the environment creation and removal processes but also reduced the dependency on technical teams for routine tasks.
5. Real-time Communication with Slack
To enhance communication and transparency, Gart integrated Slack as the primary channel for real-time notifications. Action results were delivered directly to a designated Slack channel, keeping stakeholders promptly informed about the status of requests. This integration played a crucial role in incident response and outage recovery.
6. Implementation Stack
The solution’s implementation leveraged a mix of technologies. Slack API facilitated interactive communication, AWS Lambda handled business logic, and GitHub Actions, along with Terraform Cloud, were employed for infrastructure automation. This robust combination ensured efficient collaboration and execution throughout the infrastructure lifecycle.
7. Notification Step for Terraform
An additional notification step was introduced to track the success or failure of Terraform operations. This proactive approach allowed the team to identify and address issues promptly, minimizing the impact of potential outages.
New Beyond Risk’s solution architecture: 
Picture 2: “New Beyond Risk’s solution architecture with Terraform Cloud and Slack Notification System”
