DevSecOps is one of the hottest buzzwords in the DevOps ecosystem over the past couple of years. In the given blog, it’s easy for you to grab what is DevSecOps and why people need it and care about it. How it is an efficient strategy that extends DevOps efficiencies to software security.
Generally, DevSecOps is DevOps with security built within. Just like that, it’s right there from the beginning phases. To elaborate, building security into requirements, into the design, the code, and the deployment stages, in short, into your entire DevOps pipeline. Earlier, security practices tend to slow down the software development processes and when the time-to-market is getting shorter by every passing year, Software development teams have been looking for ways to speed up the processes without compromising on the security really. And, that’s how DevSecOps started. The final goal is to bridge the gap between the developers and the QA team serving the security testing services while maintaining the sanctity of time-to-market of the software.
Whether you call it “DevOps” or “DevSecOps,” it has always been an ideal situation to include security in the app life cycle. It is one of the integral parts of the whole SDLC process. DecSecOps is all about the built-in security, not the one that acts as a perimeter around the apps and data. If security remains at the end of the development pipeline, organizations adopting DevOps can find themselves back to the long development cycles they were trying to avoid in the first place. As a part of SDLC, DevSecOps enlightens the urgency to invite the security teams at the first step of DevOps initiatives to build up the information security and set up a plan around security automation. It also makes us understand the urgency to help the developers code and develop keeping the security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing their wisdom in visibility, insights, and feedback of the known upcoming threats. It’s feasible for the developers if this can be included in their training programs since it’s a pretty futuristic application development approach.
How Does DevSecOps Work?
How to make DevSecOps implementation in Cloud
The DevSecOps strategy needs the development team and ops team to mingle, chat, gossip and work. Basically, do more than just collaborate! Security teams also need to sip a cup of coffee with these teams more often than usual, as they are involved in the initiation stage of ensuring the overall software security, from start to end. These teams need to think about infrastructure and application security right from the start.
- The consistent testing leads to secured software coding, it also avoids last-minute delays by spreading the work predictably and consistently throughout the project, leading to faster time-to-market. Once this process is followed, organizations can easily achieve their deadlines and ensure their end-users are completely satisfied. IT department’s security services tend to play a vital role in your apps’ full development life cycle. You can take advantage of the responsiveness and agility of a DevOps approach by entangling security into your processes.
- Scanning for the appropriate configurations. Software development tools are designed to ensure that the app is being configured correctly and thoroughly secured in the use case of a specific environment, such as Microsoft Azure Advisor tools for cloud-based infrastructure. Most of the testing tools used for automation are designed to function in a particular environment, I.e., mobile-based or web-based environment. During the software development, it can be ensured that the software is being built majoring to these proper standards.
- Code Analysis tools can strengthen the DevOps security efforts by automatically searching and scanning the codes and identifying the potential vulnerabilities and combat the threats within the code itself. This is a valuable piece of information for the software development teams and the way they work, as they are able to specify the problems before they are caught in the QA process, helping them develop better coding habits.
The Best Way to Implement the DevSecOps Process
While implementing the DevSecOps, gather around the groups of professionals involved in the development process, i.e, admins, developers, security engineers, and testers, that are aware of your software from start to end. They should be aware of the requirements and leverage their expertise in deploying, monitoring, and implementing new changes.
Once you have your team ready, here are the next steps you need to follow:
1. Plan
Planning, the initial phase is very crucial. In this, do not just stick to feature descriptions, instead go for detailed use case stories that include:
- Functional and non-functional requirements (e.g., automation and performance)
- UI and UX designs
- Testing and QA criteria
- Threat and vulnerabilities models
2. Develop
Once, planned well, initiate by evaluating your existing practices. Choose the best resources to build a development model adapting the best security guidelines.
3. Build
Tools used for automation can do much more than compile the code. Leverage them to conduct test-driven development, enforce quality standards and ensure that the best security practices are implemented through static code analysis.
4. Test
When it comes to a DevSecOps environment, QA and test automation is not just limited to UI-focused Selenium tests. Optimally, your security practice should include the following:
- Unit testing
- Front-end testing
- Back-end testing
- API testing
- Database testing
- Passive security testing
5. Secure
As development, operations, and security go hand in hand, just a few issues are left unattended towards the end of the SDLC process. As and when the vulnerabilities are identified, there is a better chance of determining if they are potential exploitations or false positives.
6. Deploy
Automated deployments are utilized to accelerate product development and delivery and add consistency to the SDLC process. Using an infrastructure-as-code tool, the team can audit properties across the IT infrastructure and enforce secured configurations in a software
6. Operate
Routine checkups and upgrades should be an integral component of the operations team. Leverage infrastructure-as-code tools to patch zero-day vulnerabilities and enhance and update the entire organization’s infrastructure.
7. Monitor
A continuous monitoring plan should be in action to check the real-time stats of how your software is actually performing. In case any exploitation is noticed, it can be addressed immediately.
8. Scaling
Today’s ability to scale infrastructure through virtualization and cloud adoption, while addressing the demands of the modern-day IT user-base should go a long way.
9. Adapt
When it is about sustaining an agile practice, continuous improvements and up-gradation is the key. This is also true for DevSecOps practices, as you improve and adapt throughout and even after the SDLC.
5 Benefits of Automated Security
1. With Automated Security
It not only makes the jobs of the teams involved easier across development, security and operations, it also helps the team deliver a secured and high-quality result.
2. Reduced Human Mistakes
The errors across all functions, automation by taking the manual work out of tedious processes that rely on excessive attention to detail.
3. Early Security Intervention
Once the security is in place from the early stage of SDLC, threats, and vulnerabilities can be detected and addressed smoothly without hampering the time-to-market of the software.
4. Vulnerability Testing
Automated scan reports may represent the threat level of the vulnerabilities which helps the developers and security testers to decide how to address them immediately and who is responsible for resolving the issue.
5. Repeatable Security Checks
Any automated task needs to be repeatable, which levels up to all the codes being reviewed and assessed at the same time, leading to the creation of a trusted and secure environment that helps reviewers identify patterns when results are presented in a consistent manner.
6. Responsibility Clarification
Test Automation takes unpredictability out of DevSecOps process. The constant shifting of security can cause confusion about who is responsible for what tasks. As the scans are automated, it can be tricky for the parties responsible for the development stages.
It is also important to find a productive balance between automated security testing and manual work. For example, trying to automate overly rigorous policies may prove detrimental to business objectives and may not be realistically achieved, it’s important to find a balance between policy compliance and efficiency. It’s also key that automation doesn’t obstruct visibility. Make sure there is still a trail of operations to review if necessary, automated processes should still generate reports of what was done, when, and why the action was triggered. Lastly, Automation is not meant to replace the human touch from the SDLC process. It is one of the most effective tools which makes the work more efficient and easier for the teams involved, clients, and the end-users.
DevSecOps is the Future
DevSecOps plan of action has gained momentum and popularity due to the high cost of correction of security issues and vulnerabilities. As Agile teams release applications more frequently, security testing becomes more enhanced and crucial. We hope some of the best practices mentioned in this article will help your company to transition from DevOps to a DevSecOps approach.
