U.S. DoD Strengthens National Defense with Secure, Centralized Cloud Development

This U.S. Department of Defense software development group supports thousands of developers who play a critical role in advancing national defense. The organization needed to modernize its software development approach to improve security, consistency, and developer productivity across multiple classification levels.

Challenges

Decentralized, local development environments created significant risk and inefficiency:

• Source code stored on developer laptops increased the threat of data exfiltration.
• Frequent security patches and tool updates across distributed systems strained resources.
• Developers lacked flexibility and consistency, leading to slower updates and reduced productivity.

The entity needed a centralized, secure development solution that maintained compliance while improving the developer experience.

Solution

The agency deployed Coder on AWS GovCloud (US) and regions supporting IL6 and above, gaining access to the latest AWS compute, storage, and database services within a secure, compliant framework.

Key capabilities included:

Global workspace updates: Automated delivery of tool updates and security patches across all developer environments, ensuring consistency and reducing vulnerability risk.

Data sovereignty and secure access: Integration with Amazon Workspaces, Amazon VPC, and AWS IAM to enforce strict access controls and maintain data sovereignty.

Robust audit capabilities: Detailed audit logs providing visibility into workspace access and user actions to support compliance and incident response.

With Coder’s self-managed and self-hosted architecture, the customer deployed in a customized cloud environment that streamlined secure developer access without compromising productivity. Centralized control over development infrastructure ensured compliance with the agency’s stringent security and auditing standards.

Outcomes

Reduced security risks: Centralized infrastructure eliminated local code storage and minimized exfiltration exposure.

Enhanced productivity: Developers worked in always-updated environments with uninterrupted access at all classification levels.

Centralized source code management: Source code was moved off remote laptops and into a secure, managed platform.

A better path toward mission-critical innovation

By adopting Coder, the DoD Software Development Group transformed its development model, reducing risk, streamlining security operations, and empowering developers with modern, compliant cloud environments. The result: a faster, safer, and more efficient path to mission-critical innovation.