In software development, testing and deploying software in a controlled manner is essential, and two effective but underutilized methods for reducing deployment risk are Canary Releases and Blue/Green Deployments. Canary Releases involve directing a small percentage of production traffic to a new version of software to test it with live data, allowing issues like unexpected regressions to be identified before full deployment. Kong offers tools to facilitate Canary Releases through its Community Edition's load balancer features or the Enterprise-only Canary Release plugin, which simplifies traffic management and supports advanced features such as timed releases and consumer group-based rollouts. Blue/Green Deployments, on the other hand, involve maintaining two identical environments, where one serves as staging and the other as production, allowing for a seamless switch when a release is ready. This method ensures that the staging environment mirrors production, enabling thorough testing and quick rollbacks if needed. While these strategies do not eliminate all challenges, tools like Kong provide robust solutions to streamline and mitigate risks in the release process.