These days, cybersecurity is something that should be taken care of yet at an initial stage of the software creation, and this is where DevSecOps comes to play. This is a decentralized security model that implies engagement and applying the right security measures and controls by particular delivery teams. This way, everybody is made accountable for security issues.
Incorporating security at scale, because that’s the DevSecOps practitioners’ ultimate goal, is something that may save the day for many cutting-edge businesses nowadays. For this reason, they engage significant resources, including financial and human ones, to achieve it.
As enriching the DevOps approach with security practices is something more and more companies decide to do, the demand for cyber security professionals is skyrocketing. Of course, it has a lot to do with the increase in the number of data breaches and cyber-attacks as well as businesses moving to the cloud.
Because average people want to have access to various services from all kinds of devices and locations, it’s a big challenge to make it secure for them. But it is definitely worth it, and mid-sized and big companies pay security professionals surprisingly well. In the US, compensation of over $200,000 per year is not something unusual for cybersecurity specialists, and top freelance bug bounty hunters can earn even over $500,000 annually.
But applications and software security is not a question of lone wolves at all, at least it shouldn’t be. More and more, it tends to become a shared responsibility – it’s good to simply have the security matters in mind at all times, and include them into the iterative or Agile approach. This all-encompassing way of treating safety to prevent security vulnerabilities is the hallmark of DevSecOps.
Table of contents:
DevSecOps in a nutshell
DevSecOps is an abbreviation referring to development, security, and operations. In short, it is a management approach that embraces various organizational levels and teams and highlights the safety of the software delivered. DevSecOps framework or DevSecOps methodology can be a perfect means for that.
It may be said that DevSecOps is the enrichment or enhancement of DevOps itself – the latter being a set of practices combining software development with IT operations – with the security component. In the case of DevOps security part may be a very important addition. This way, security teams, and operations teams can go hand in hand in assuring that there are no significant flaws in software code.
DevSecOps best practices
Limiting the time needed to develop implementation projects, increasing the pace of security efforts, and cost reduction – all these can be reached thanks to utilizing DevSecOps right. But which of DevSecOps practices can be called the most effective ones? Here’s a short list of DevSecOps best practices.
1. Automating security tools
Automating security testing – utilizing it in a repeatable and consistent way – is crucial in providing effectiveness to the process of DevSecOps. However, it should be well-fitted to the company’s needs – to make sure that only relevant changes in code and a few top vulnerabilities are being scanned. This practice is the most basic one as obeying it simply „ensures teams are following DevSecOps best practices”.
2. Security testing with the right timing and scale
If an organization cares about application security, it should apply rulesets and configurations regarding them at an early stage of the development lifecycle. Also, it should pay attention not to overburden itself in terms of time and money needed with choosing a too large scale of scanning procedures.
3. Setting regular checkpoints for security scanning
To make security testing work at its best, it’s good to embed it within the Agile process. This way, all stages of the project development cycle can be performed with safety in mind, and all necessary changes to the process can be implemented fast within the next iterations.
4. Addressing security issues across all teams
The security team should be replaced by an overall security approach, encompassing all organization levels and departments. Security matters need to be set as a priority for the entire organization to make them truly shape the safety of end products and services.
5. Providing constant training to employees
To make employees feel responsible for the overall effect, a company needs to make them aware of the importance of their input and responsibility first. This also refers to all software developers who may simply do their thing and not think about security issues that much.
DevOps & security – key takeaways
DevSecOps practices are something that may prevent cybercrimes, data breaches, and grave consequences of unauthorized access. And more and more end users are aware that secure software, as well as cloud services, is something they can’t go without. This refers to both average people and companies who don’t want to risk losing data badly.
Corporations who deliver cloud solutions or software to them are also very interested in providing secure solutions, as any negligence in this regard could tarnish their image greatly and result in both reputational damages and losing a lot of money. To avoid such a scenario, they tend to spend millions of dollars on hiring cybersecurity specialists.
What's most important in DevSecOps practices, is that everyone in the software delivery pipeline should feel responsible for the safety of the end product provided to the market and clients. And all the employees involved in the production environment need to be trained regularly to learn the best security practices and tools available.
In the world of continuous integration, it’s good to include DevSecOps services and practices in the software development lifecycle. The right security tools, approaches, and procedures within software delivery are definitely something that helps in building secure software in the most effective way.
And you, have you ever been involved in DevSecOps tasks and workflow? What challenges did you have to face? If not, do you find this area interesting and rewarding enough to give it a try?
