---
title: SolarWinds builds security into design with CircleCI
description: See why VividCortex moved from Jenkins to CircleCI for easy, scalable
  Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
url: https://circleci.com/case-studies/solarwinds/
---

## Strengthening security from the start of coding

Secure by design is our guiding principle for how we approach security and cyber resiliency at SolarWinds. Consisting of several key principles, we’re working to  create a more secure environment and build system centered around  transparency and maximum visibility.  

Engineers worked together to optimize the developer experience for the  SolarWinds Observability product. Their key challenge: helping developers  maintain speed and high code quality while adhering to the internal security  controls. 

“Our biggest challenge is the global group of teams working on a platform as well  as multiple products,” explains Shannon Tillery, Senior Engineering Manager for  SolarWinds. “Developers are frequently making, pushing, and testing changes – while trying to balance speed with quality.”

## Verifying that every code release is secure

CircleCI was already in use when engineers took part in the “secure by design”  project. The company-wide focus included improving SolarWinds’ security  posture across engineering and products and standardizing on engineering  practices. 

“In examining our incident response, we looked across the board as to how we  could improve security when we release software,” says Robert Zahradníček,  Senior Staff Site Reliability Engineer for SolarWinds. “We needed the ability to  cryptographically sign and verify that everything we deploy comes from a trusted  source.” 

The engineers used CircleCI self-hosted runners and private orbs to build code  signing processes for the company’s SolarWinds® Observability product. “The  fact that self-hosted runners operate in an internally controlled environment is a  big help for us,” says Zahradníček. “We can cryptographically verify what’s  coming out of the internally controlled environment and ensure it adheres to  controls our security team requires.” 

CircleCI private orbs have helped SolarWinds engineers advance the goal of  standardizing engineering practices. “With public orbs, we were limited in what  we can include in them,” Zahradníček says. “Now with the private orbs, we can  build orbs with any functionality we need.” 

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## Removing obstacles from rapid and secure development 

In addition to standardizing engineering practices, CircleCI easily integrates with  GitHub. “We’re currently migrating many of our GitHub projects, and it’s been very  easy to transition and then enable builds again quickly,” Zahradníček says. 

The process has also been cost effective. “As we work on migrating the  organization with EMU, and the costs involved in having repos duplicated in  different organizations, we’ve appreciated having CircleCI work with us on the  best approaches,” Tillery says. 

The CircleCI Insights dashboard also helps engineers run processes more  efficiently and troubleshoot workflows. “We get all the details for the tests we run  for validation,” explains Chaitanya Kancherla, Senior Director of Engineering at  SolarWinds. “I can drill down into resource usage, and share it with the rest of the  team.” 

## Benefits of using CircleCI

* Easily scale out standard build processes to more teams 
* Increase trust in CI/CD pipelines 
* Partner with CircleCI for guidance on creating efficient workflows 

## About SolarWinds 

SolarWinds (NYSE:SWI) is a leading provider of simple, powerful, secure  observability and IT management software built to enable customers to  accelerate their digital transformation. Our solutions provide organizations  worldwide—regardless of type, size, or complexity—with a comprehensive and  unified view of today’s modern, distributed, and hybrid network environments. We  continuously engage with IT service and operations professionals, DevOps and  SecOps professionals, and database administrators (DBAs) to understand the  challenges they face in maintaining high-performing and highly available hybrid  IT infrastructures, applications, and environments. The insights we gain from  them, in places like our [THWACK®](https://thwack.solarwinds.com/ "TWACK") community, allow us to address customers’  needs now and in the future. Our focus on the user and our commitment to  excellence in end-to-end hybrid IT management have established SolarWinds as  a worldwide leader in solutions for observability, IT service management,  application performance, and database management. Learn more today at  [www.solarwinds.com](https://www.solarwinds.com "SolarWinds").