Secure DevSecOps Architectures for Retail Cloud Resilience and Regulatory Compliance in Distributed Software Delivery

Abstract

The accelerating digital transformation of retail enterprises has led to unprecedented dependence on cloud-native platforms, microservices architectures, and continuous delivery pipelines. This evolution has simultaneously intensified the attack surface, regulatory exposure, and operational complexity of retail information systems. Secure DevOps, often articulated as DevSecOps, has therefore emerged not merely as a technical framework but as a strategic governance paradigm for achieving compliance, resilience, and business continuity in highly regulated, transaction-intensive retail ecosystems. This research presents a comprehensive theoretical and analytical investigation into secure DevSecOps architectures for retail cloud environments, grounded in contemporary academic and industrial literature. Anchored in the work of Gangula (2025), which conceptualizes security as an embedded, lifecycle-wide capability rather than an afterthought, this study integrates insights from cloud automation, continuous integration and deployment, regulatory technology, and organizational agility. Through an interpretive synthesis of peer-reviewed studies and industry case research, the paper develops a layered DevSecOps reference architecture specifically tailored to the operational, legal, and cyber-risk realities of digital retail. The methodological approach is based on qualitative meta-analysis and design-science-oriented conceptual modeling, enabling the identification of causal relationships between pipeline automation, security governance, and compliance resilience. The results demonstrate that security-integrated pipelines outperform traditional DevOps models in regulatory traceability, vulnerability mitigation, and recovery readiness when aligned with privacy-preserving deployment patterns and adaptive policy enforcement. The discussion situates these findings within broader debates on microservices security, multi-cloud governance, and organizational transformation, highlighting both the promises and structural constraints of DevSecOps adoption. The article concludes by advancing a future research agenda focused on AI-driven security orchestration, privacy-centric deployment pipelines, and cross-jurisdictional compliance automation for global retail platforms.