What is DevSecOps?
It is the philosophy of integrating security practices within the DevOps process. The DevSecOps movement, like DevOps itself, focuses on creating new solutions for complex software development processes within an agile framework.
Key to DevSecOps
- Prevent the DevOps workflow from slowing down.
- Select the right tools to integrate security on an ongoing basis.
- Agree on an integrated development environment (IDE) with security features.
Benefits of DevSecOps
The two main benefits of DevSecOps are speed and security, however, let’s detail them a bit more:
- Development teams deliver better, safer, faster and therefore cheaper code.
- Collaboration between development, security and operations teams improves an organization’s response to incidents and problems when they occur.
- They reduce the time to patch vulnerabilities and free up security teams to focus on higher-value work.
- They secure and simplify compliance, preventing application development projects from having to adapt for security reasons.
Its purpose
“The purpose and intent of DevSecOps is to build a mindset where everyone is responsible for security with the goal of safely distributing security decisions at speed and scale to those who have the highest level of context without sacrificing required security.”describes Shannon Lietz, co-author of the DevSecOps Manifesto.
Improved proactive security
DevSecOps introduces cybersecurity processes from the beginning of the development cycle. Throughout the development cycle, code is reviewed, audited, scanned and tested for security issues.
But what good does it do me to identify these problems?
- They are addressed as soon as they are identified.
- They are resolved before additional dependencies are introduced.
- They become less costly to solve when the protection technology is identified and implemented early in the cycle.
Best practices for DevSecOps
DevSecOps should be the natural incorporation of security controls into your development, delivery and operational processes.
- Shift left: Encourages software engineers to move security from the right (end) to the left (start) of the DevOps (delivery) process.
- An organization using DevSecOps incorporates its cybersecurity architects and engineers as part of the development team.
- Security training: Organizations should form an alliance between development, operations and security engineers to ensure that everyone in the organization understands the company’s security posture and follows the same standards.
- Traceability, auditability and visibility: Implementing traceability, auditability and visibility in a DevSecOps process leads to deeper insight and a more secure environment:
- Traceability: allows you to track configuration items throughout the development cycle.
- Auditability: it is important to ensure compliance with security controls.
- Visibility: the organization must have a robust monitoring system to measure the performance of operations.
Everyone involved in the delivery process should be familiar with:
- The basic principles of application security.
- The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP).
- Application security testing and other security engineering practices.
DevSecOps automation tools
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DevSecOps tool for automated security assessments
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Summary
Like DevOps, DevSecOps seeks to achieve greater efficiency and productivity through team collaboration, but the DevSecOps approach incorporates security principles.