What is DevSecOps?
DevSecOps automatically incorporates security into every stage of the software development lifecycle, enabling secure software development at the speed of Agile and DevOps.
What is DevSecOps?
DevSecOps, short for development, security, and operations, automates the integration of security into every stage of the software development lifecycle, from initial design to integration, testing, deployment, and software delivery.
DevSecOps represents a natural and necessary evolution in how development organizations approach security. In the past, security was “added” to software at the end of the development cycle (almost as an afterthought) by a separate security team and tested by a separate QA team.
This was manageable when software updates were released only once or twice a year. But as software developers adopted Agile and DevOps practices to reduce development cycles to weeks or even days, the traditional approach to security created an unacceptable bottleneck.
DevSecOps seamlessly integrates application and infrastructure security into Agile and DevOps processes and tools. It addresses security issues as they arise, when they are easier, faster, and cheaper to fix (and before they are put into production).
Additionally, DevSecOps makes application and infrastructure security a shared responsibility of development, security, and IT operations teams, rather than the exclusive responsibility of a siloed security team. It supports the DevSecOps motto, “faster, safer software,” by automating the delivery of secure software without slowing down the software development cycle.
Benefits of DevSecOps
The two primary benefits of DevSecOps are speed and security. Development teams deliver better, more secure code faster and, therefore, at lower costs.
“The goal and intent of DevSecOps is to develop the mindset that everyone is responsible for security with the aim of reliably distributing security decisions at speed and scale to those who have the highest level of context, without sacrificing the necessary security,”
Shannon Lietz, co-author of the “DevSecOps Manifesto.”
Fast Software Delivery and Cost-Effectiveness
When software is developed in a non-DevSecOps environment, security issues can lead to significant delays. Fixing code and security issues can be time-consuming and expensive. The fast and secure delivery of DevSecOps saves time and reduces costs by minimizing the need to revisit a process to resolve security issues after the fact.
This becomes more efficient and cost-effective as built-in security eliminates duplicate reviews and unnecessary recompilations, resulting in more secure code.
Enhanced and Proactive Security
DevSecOps introduces cybersecurity processes from the beginning of the development cycle. Throughout the development cycle, code is reviewed, audited, verified, and tested for security issues. These issues are addressed as soon as they are identified. Security issues are fixed before additional dependencies are introduced. Security problems become less expensive to fix when protective technology is identified and implemented early in the cycle.
Moreover, better collaboration between development, security, and operations teams improves a company’s response to incidents and issues when they occur. DevSecOps practices reduce the time it takes to patch vulnerabilities and free security teams to focus on higher-value tasks. These practices also ensure and simplify compliance, preventing application development projects from needing retroactive security adjustments.
Accelerated Security Vulnerability Remediation
A key benefit of DevSecOps is the speed with which it manages newly identified security vulnerabilities. As DevSecOps integrates vulnerability scanning and remediation into the release cycle, the ability to identify and address common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) is accelerated.
This limits the window of opportunity for a threat actor to exploit vulnerabilities in public-facing production systems.
Automation Compatible with Modern Development
Cybersecurity testing can be integrated into an automated test suite for operations teams if an organization uses continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline to deploy its software.
Automating security checks heavily depends on the project and organizational goals. Automated testing can ensure that embedded software dependencies are at appropriate patch levels and confirm that the software passes the security unit test. Additionally, it can test and secure code with static and dynamic analysis before the final update is promoted to production.
Repeatable and Adaptive Processes
As organizations mature, their security postures also mature. DevSecOps lends itself to repeatable and adaptive processes. This ensures that security is consistently applied across the environment as it changes and adapts to new requirements. A mature DevSecOps implementation will have solid automation, configuration management, orchestration, containers, immutable infrastructure, and serverless computing environments.
Best Practices for DevSecOps
DevSecOps should naturally incorporate security controls into your operational, development, and delivery processes.
Shift-left
‘Shift left’ is a DevSecOps mantra: It encourages software engineers to move security from the right (end) to the left (beginning) of the DevOps (delivery) process. In a DevSecOps environment, security is an integral part of the development process from the start. An organization using DevSecOps brings its architects and cybersecurity engineers into the development team. Their job is to ensure every component and configuration item in the stack is patched, securely configured, and documented.
Shift-left allows the DevSecOps team to identify security risks and exposures early and ensures these security threats are addressed immediately. The development team is not only focused on efficiently building the product but also on implementing security as they develop it.
Security Education
Security is a combination of engineering and compliance. Organizations must form an alliance between development engineers, operations teams, and compliance teams to ensure everyone in the organization understands the company’s security posture and adheres to the same standards.
Everyone involved in the delivery process should be familiar with the basics of application security, the OWASP Top Ten Web Application Security Project, application security testing, and other security engineering practices. Developers need to understand threading models, compliance checks, and have practical knowledge of how to measure risks, exposures, and implement security controls.
Culture: Communication, People, Processes, and Technology
Good leadership fosters a good culture that drives change within the organization. Communicating security responsibilities in processes and product ownership is important and essential in DevSecOps. Only then can developers and engineers become process owners and take responsibility for their work.
DevSecOps operations teams must create a system that works for them, using the technologies and protocols appropriate for their team and the current project. By allowing the team to create the workflow environment that suits their needs, they become invested in the project’s outcome.
Traceability, Auditability, and Visibility
Implementing traceability, auditability, and visibility in a DevSecOps process leads to deeper insight and a more secure environment:
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Traceability allows configuration items to be tracked throughout the development cycle to where requirements are implemented in the code. This can play a crucial role in your organization’s control structure, helping achieve compliance, reduce bugs, ensure secure code development, and assist in code maintenance.
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Auditability is important for ensuring compliance with security controls. Technical, procedural, and administrative security controls need to be auditable, well-documented, and adhered to by all team members.
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Visibility is a good management practice in general but critical for a DevSecOps environment. It means the organization has a solid monitoring system to measure operational pace, send alerts, raise awareness of changes and cyberattacks as they occur, and provide accountability throughout the project lifecycle.
DevSecOps at Looplex
Organizations that use DevSecOps tools and practices build a powerful foundation for digital transformation and the modernization of their applications as the need for automation expands in business and IT operations.
At Looplex, our SOA culture and operational strategy are always geared toward achieving the highest possible degree of automation, standardization, and scalability.
To continuously transform, we must start with small, measurable success projects that scale and optimize other processes in other parts of your organization.
For this, we use cloud service automation resources, including workflows pre-developed internally or by other vendors, to make every IT service process smarter, freeing teams to focus on the most important IT challenges and accelerate innovation.
Thus, team release and iteration cycles always have to become shorter and more scalable. When it comes to legal engineering, our benchmark is what the team itself was able to deliver in the past, while for other operations and development areas, we aim to compare with the state-of-the-art efficiency in the software market.
And this is no different for DevSecOps: we adopt a set of ready-to-use tools and services to enable secure continuous delivery, integrated security testing, and cloud-native delivery pipelines.
Division of Responsibilities
Information security management is a responsibility not only of the information security and infrastructure team but of the entire company.
Part of this material was based on IBM’s DevSecOps article