Covid 19 response - NIAXO & JBC
Playing a part in the Covid-19 Response
Playing a part in the Covid-19 Response
Sector
Government
The Client
NIAXO working on behalf of the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) Data analytics science hub Covid-19 pandemic
Deliverables
The Challenge
To develop a reproducible deployment capability for a system which was key to navigating through the pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic caught everyone by surprise, and the initial scramble to monitor and predict the impacts on our society led to a rapidly evolving situation with fluid requirements. The goal was to identify the critical data feeds and sub-systems, and ensure these could be recreated in the event of a failure. It was also a goal that new requirements would be captured and applied to the systems using the same processes as the recovery mechanism
Our brief was to ensure that systems essential to the data scientists could be quickly and reliably recreated via an automated recovery process that would minimise operational disruptions in the event of a disaster
Experienced Agile and Test Driven Approach
Creation of a test harness derived from live system functionality, treating the system as a black box allowed the existing system to be validated, but equally important is that this test harness was integrated into the development pipelines
As the IAC capability increased, more sections of the test suite were enabled. Project visibility - progress comparable against live systems test framework
Each environment was created and updated using the same IAC under development. Adding a new environment to facilitate parallel development was a simple configuration exercise
Simulators were created for the more complex 3rd party systems. Simulators offer lightweight and flexible alternatives to the real implementations, making them ideal for development and exercising failure scenarios. The use of simulators facilitated the parallel and iterative delivery of the pipeline, allowing an experience of the final solution prior to the completion of the project, removing obstacles which would otherwise block development. Such are the benefits of simulators they remain fundamental pieces of the development process
Incremental Delivery
No big bang deployment. Completed features were integrated into the live pipelines. Lambda deployments, system configurations, permission changes, dataset input validation and scanning
Team Integration
Establishing successful teams requires the right blend of personnel and skills. The ask from the end client was multi-faceted so we created agile pods to form teams from Lydtech and client. The pods empower the teams to make progress and facilitate parallel development. The fast, productive, and highly collaborative relationship formed within these teams meant that there was a seamless integration with the NIAXO team, this contributed to a productive and friendly working relationship, increasing learning and education for all involved
What they said
Threat Intelligence Lead
Just wanted to say thank you for providing all the info and the attack maps for us. It’s rare we get this level of info back and its clear you’ve put a lot of effort into the attack maps, so just wanted to say a genuine thank you from me! This is really useful stuff!The Outcomes
System Restoration
System recreation was achieved when provided with an environment. Operational environment updates applied via automation
System Validation and Verification to ensure reliable data
The resulting automated systems resulted in the creation, repair, and updates to the live systems relied upon by Data scientists during the Covid-19 pandemic
Parallel Development Enabler
Multiple environments running in parallel became the norm during and after the project