DevSecOps is the orchestration of security at every step of the software development and deployment lifecycle. DevSecOps, like DevOps, is about culture and responsibility as much as it is about technology or methods. So, too, as with DevOps, the objective of DevSecOps is to deploy secure code more efficiently, and find and fix security vulnerabilities (such as vulnerabilities) faster and better.

That’s a lot to digest. In the sections below, I’ll unpack each of those ideas for you so you know how your company can make more full-fledged DevSecOps decisions.

What is DevSecOps?

DevSecOps is a tactical trifecta that binds three domains, development, security and operations. You want security to be as easy to weave into your CI/CD pipeline in pre-production (dev/test/staging) and production (ops) environments. Let’s look at each area and what it does to provide better, safer software faster.

Development

Teams of developers develop and test new software programs. This includes:

• Built-in apps that do just one thing.
• API-based interfaces between legacy systems and new services.
• Apps that use open-source code to build quicker.

Nowadays agile development models are based on continuous improvement rather than waterfall-style cycles. If developers are working in silos without operating and security in mind, new apps or features may have operational or security problems or security issues that are costly and time consuming to correct.

Operations

Operations – this refers to activities of coordinating software functionality over the lifecycle of delivery and use such as:

• Monitoring system performance
• Repairing defects
• Test after upgrades and updates.
• Tuning the software release system.

DevOps has been popular in the last few years as a methodology that melds operational principles with development cycles and understands the two should align. Siloed post-development work is possible for problem detection and remediation, but the process involves developers going back to fixing software issues before continuing with development. This leaves you with a thick software roadmap instead of an easy software workflow.

By running operations in parallel to software development organizations can cut deployment times and improve overall performance.

Security

Security means everything you need to create and develop attacks resistant software and find and react as soon as possible to bugs (or actual intruders).

Traditionally, application security was something that happened after development has been finished, and by a different group of folks not part of the development team or operations team. This closed method made development and reaction time slow.

So too security tools themselves were always separate from one another. Each application security test considered only that application, and more often than not only the application’s source code. That meant that nobody could really have an organisation-wide understanding of security risks, or any of the software risks on a production level.

With application security integrating with a common DevSecOps cycle from design to execution, companies can standardize the three most critical aspects of software development and delivery.

What is DevSecOps and not “waterfall” methodology?

We call waterfall approach in the software development world because there are separate processes of design, development, testing, and finally approval for each stage and one can begin only after the other one is finished.

For the most part waterfall is being outmoded by Agile which divides a project into sprints. But security tests are put off till at the end of the sprint waterfall fashion! That holds up developers from jumping ahead and deviating to rework security issues. This “context switching” is error prone and slow.

DevSecOps on the other hand makes security testing happen seamlessly and automatically in the general timeframe where other development and testing happens. e.g., developers can perform security tests in the development stage near-real-time to avoid wasted time context switching.

They can also perform security tests in production in near real time to discover all production running exploits on a vulnerability immediately after an announcement.

DevSecOps vs. DevOps

DevOps is a process to coordinate the development, operations and security teams in order to reduce the time of software development.

DevSecOps goes one step further by building security into the DevOps journey from day one. It makes sure security is never an afterthought, but is a first priority during the entire software development lifecycle.

Following is some key DevSecOps vs DevOps differences:

• DevSecOps includes more stakeholders like security teams.
• DevSecOps needs to test and scan security more extensively.
• DevSecOps needs to be a bit more proactive with security standards.

Benefits of DevSecOps

Among other benefits of DevSecOps for software security:  

• More security: DevSecOps can also help ensure that security issues don’t get pushed into production environments by including security in the DevOps process.
• Reduced risk: Lower your risk of security & data breaches.
• Compliance: Automate processes that will make you comply with security policies.
• Higher performance: Enable faster software development process through automation of security checks and scans.
• More Compliance: Ensure compliance by organizations with security policies.
• Better collaboration: Collaboration between development, operations, and security teams are better, because everyone is accountable.
• Improved time to market: Improve the speed of software development with automated security checks and scans.
• Better quality: Improve software quality by discovering security holes during development.
• Better risk management: Identify security risks for organizations to respond better.
• More satisfied customers: Increase customer satisfaction with secure and reliable software.
• Lower price: Lower the prices for security and breaches.
• Visibility: Help enterprises to see their security state to respond rapidly and eliminate security threats.

Challenges in implementing DevSecOps

This is the first hurdle: people and culture. You may need to retrain your DevOps teams in security best practices and using your new security tools. At the cultural level, your teams really need to believe they’re in charge of the security of the software they build and release, as much as they’re in charge of feature, function, and usability.

A second obstacle is the right security tooling, and implementing it in your DevOps environment. The more automated your DevSecOps tooling is, the more connected it is to your CI/CD pipeline, the less training and cultural transition you need to do.

The reality is that often the choice is to opt for a more streamlined version of security software that you have been using for years. Why? Because you’ve probably had a completely different development environment in the last couple of years. The average new software application has 70% open-source software. But sadly, finding the vulnerabilities correctly in open-source code wasn’t really something security tools were meant to do.

So too do the new cloud-based applications running in containers that might run up and down quickly. Traditional production security solutions – even the ones that now hawk “cloud security” products – cannot be used to evaluate the threat of containers running apps.

Top traits of successful DevSecOps practices

If DevSecOps is trying to 1) release better software faster, and 2) identify and react to software defects in production faster and more effectively, what skills will you need to develop to get there? How can you gauge the quality of your DevSecOps efforts by what KPIs?

Here are the key attributes of a great DevSecOps program:

1. Security awareness and ownership

Everyone who is working with software and operations should know security principles and owns the outcomes. Security is everybody’s responsibility” should be a part of your DevSecOps culture at your organization.

2. Automated operation

If you want to meet the CI/CD tool chain’s high automation standard, then your DevSecOps security tooling must execute with all the automation no manual input, no configuration, no script. It must tell you about your application’s security even if your engineers are not willing to run a security test because they would be slowed down by it.

3. Fast results

Your security tooling has to give you the data near real-time since DevOps teams have speed at the forefront.

4. Wide scope

You want your security tools to work with all compute instances such as containers, Kubernetes, serverless, PaaS, hybrid and multicloud. No blind spots. No silos.

What’s more, your security toolset should be able to tell you about all kinds of applications — apps built on the vast majority of open-source code, as well as apps you bought from someone else, for which you don’t even have source code.

5. Shift-left and shift-right

There’s been much discussed the importance of security checks very early in the software development process (“shift left”), before bugs enter production. But DevSecOps must also extend into production (“shift right”) for 4 reasons:

• Production is the place of most attack.
• You can’t get the depth that you get looking at source code, or watching the app running in production.
• Some of the apps that you use in production did not even execute on your dev environment and so they didn’t ever get scanned by security scanners in your dev environment.
• You must keep an eye on existing applications in production to catch new zero-day attacks.

6. Accuracy

Automation is nice but you want precision and quality as well. As a CISO polled by our firm recently, 77 per cent said that the vast majority of security alerts and vulnerabilities they receive from their existing security products are false positives that don’t need action, because they’re not actual vulnerabilities.

You need security tests that detect the false positives and false negatives, and that provide information to your remediation team to get you to DevSecOps efficient.

7. Developer acceptance

Everything about your DevSecOps program has to be accepted by the folks who will be creating the software, running the tests, analyzing the vulnerabilities, and fixing the vulnerabilities that exist.

Implementing DevSecOps Best Practices

Integration between development, security and operations is a must. In pursuit of this perfect harmony, implement these DevSecOps best practices for a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement and security savvy.

Automated Security Testing:

Automation for security testing underpins DevSecOps. Frequent security checks (vulnerability, penetration, security code review) should be automatically built into the development pipeline. Automated tools scan for vulnerabilities and assign severity to them so development teams can fix critical issues quickly.

Continuous Monitoring and Feedback:

DevSecOps focuses on the application continuous monitoring. Security attacks in production can be detected and proactively eliminated through real-time monitoring and mitigation. Teams must use SIEM and APM products to get complete app behavior visibility.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security:

The more code you use to run infrastructure, the more IaC security is essential. Implementing security on infrastructure code ensures security settings are consistent and eliminates the potential for mis-sets that could cause a breach. Audit and validate your infrastructure code often for security compliance.

Collaboration and Training:

DevSecOps is built on partnerships between developers, security and operations. Encourage open communication and knowledge sharing. Also give developers security awareness training frequently so that they know what’s the latest threats and mitigation methods.

Immutable Infrastructure:

Think of unchangeable infrastructure where deployed components become non-reusable assets. If found, vulnerabilities can be patched by replacing the entire component with a new version. This decreases the attack surface and makes patching easy.

Automation for DevSecOps

Automation – Automation is the backbone of DevSecOps and a power generator for the development and security teams. It speeds up the deployment pipeline, minimizes manual errors, and provides uniform security across the development lifecycle.

DevSecOps and automation are the two keys to secure software development. Automated security checks and scans can be more efficient and effective and avoid introducing security holes into production systems.

A platform for all stages of DevSecOps

For meeting this demand for application security across both production (shift-right) and pre-production (shift-left), many companies are opting to use the security data they already have on their current application performance monitoring platform. What is DevSecOps? It’s the seamless deployment of security testing and protection across the software development and deployment lifecycle. With real-time security information pre-production and production, AI-based recommendation and automation that will help run every part of the DevOps process, your teams can build faster, better, safer software more efficiently and in less time.