DevSecOps 101: A Complete Guide for a Business

DevOps has been increasingly adopted by businesses in recent years, resulting in greater collaboration among teams, reduced time-to-market, enhanced productivity, and improved customer satisfaction.

Think about it for a moment. Will this work for your business if there is no guarantee of security? With DevOps, companies can improve their workflow while ignoring security concerns, like pushing water uphill with a rake instead of a shovel.

Even though security is part of DevOps, it is not 100% secure. That is why DevSecOps has become a status quo for most organizations. The “Sec” in DevSecOps can act as the Robin to your “DevOps Batman” by providing ongoing backups.

From 2022 to 2030, the DevSecOps Market size is forecast to reach USD 41.66 Billion, growing at a CAGR of 30.76%.

As cyber threats increase, the market’s growth is driven by the need for secure applications. Global DevSecOps Market provides a comprehensive analysis of the market. This report analyzes key market segments, restraints, drivers, trends, competitive landscape, & factors critical to the market.

This guide will explain everything a business needs to know about building its DevSecOps methodology.

The Traditional Approach to Security

In the past, organizations conducted the security check of the product during the last stages of the SDLC. The app development stage was deemed less necessary than other stages, as the main focus was security.

As soon as engineers performed security checks, the products would have passed through many stages before the final launch. It is thus necessary to rework countless lines of code after discovering a security threat at such a late stage, an arduous process.

Patching after that became the approved procedure. It was considered to be a gut sense that nothing would go wrong rather than spending the necessary time & money to strengthen security.

Understanding DevSecOps: An Overview

Most organizations may find the “agile and secure code delivery” oxymoronic. DevSecOps, however, aspires to revise that assumption.

In short, DevSecOps combines Development, Security, and Operations— a philosophy aimed at integrating automated security processes into an agile IT and DevOps framework to connect two goals into one seamless, streamlined, and transparent process.

The DevSecOps approach to IT security focuses on the idea that everyone is responsible for maintaining security. DevOps pipelines are injected with security practices.

Is your company already practicing DevOps? Then, DevSecOps is a good option.

The primary principle of DevSecOps is the same as that of DevOps, enabling you to switch. It will allow you to combine highly competent professionals from other technical fields to enhance your security procedures.

DevSecOps: The Objective and the Need for It

Monitoring, automating, and implementing security across all stages of the software lifecycle, including planning, developing, delivering, testing, operating, monitoring, and deploying, is the primary goal of DevSecOps. The benefits of incorporating security into the procedure for developing software at every level include continuous integration, reduced compliance expenses, and faster software delivery.

To carry out choices without jeopardizing security, they must move quickly. App security testing often takes place after the development phase is complete.

Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that cybercrime will cost the industry around. $6 trillion every year over the following two years.

Describe the DevSecOps Process: How Does it Work?

There is no doubt that DevSecOps is an inevitable and natural progression in the way development organizations address security issues. A separate security team and an independent quality assurance (QA) team added protection to software at the end of development (almost as an afterthought).

When software upgrades were offered yearly or less frequently, this was feasible.

As software engineers transitioned to Agile and DevOps to cut down software development cycles by weeks or even days, traditional “tacked-on” security methods became an unsustainable bottleneck.

Agile and DevOps techniques and tools are easily integrated with the application and infrastructure security using DevSecOps.

Security flaws are fixed when identified; doing so is easier, quicker, and less expensive.

DevSecOps enables the security of infrastructure and applications to be shared throughout the development, security, and operation teams.

In contrast, a security silo’s primary duty is the opposite. By automating secure software delivery without delaying software development, DevSecOps delivers software safer and sooner.

The Problems That DevSecOps Solves

It is common for software developers to introduce security only at the final software development stages. You can ensure that users understand the products they use by prioritizing security.

DevSecOps solves the following problems:

• Amount of Speed

Product development & delivery would be quick and safe if security measures were taken. Thanks to DevSecOps, businesses may quickly release new enterprise apps to the market while guaranteeing that they meet or exceed business requirements.

• Security-Minded

Security issues in enterprise software might result in lawsuits and harm their reputation. Thanks to DevSecOps, application security is no longer a developer’s afterthought, ensuring that security is always a part of the development process.

• Software Improvements

Businesses can protect themselves from risks brought on by delayed security introductions

Through container environment security. By doing this, the application gains value throughout its existence. Security can be added to software development lifecycle technologies like registry image scan, code inspection, and digital signature to avoid costly problems later in the development process.

The Advantages of DevSecOps

Security should be a priority at every level of the software development lifecycle. The following are the most crucial:

The Core Elements of DevSecOps

There is no doubt that keeping security is essential; putting it off will only impede your growth. And you must approach DevSecOps through these core elements if you want your company to guarantee security at every stage:

Application/API Inventory

While keeping an accurate inventory is important, nothing is more secure than a result. Automate portfolio-wide code monitoring, profiling, and discovery. The practical method for securing APIs is to dive deep into the code and measure each stack tier. Some products function at the host, application, container, network, and API layers.

Open-Source Security

As open-source software (OSS) is commonly vulnerable to security flaws, a comprehensive security strategy should include a solution that tracks and reports OSS libraries and license violations. By automating Software Composition Analysis (SCA), it is possible to manage risk, ensure security, and comply with licensing requirements for open-source software (OSS).

A Custom Code Security System

Continually monitors software vulnerabilities during development, testing, and operation. Delivering code as quickly as possible is essential to detect flaws immediately after a change is made.

DevOps methods, such as offering security functionality in small, regular installments and automating security tasks whenever possible, must be understood and incorporated by security teams. A developer should know security requirements, standards, tools, and threats.

Automation

An effective DevSecOps initiative requires automation. By integrating security measures into the development process, security is not perceived as a burden on the development team. CI/CD pipelines can incorporate security testing and analysis to offer secure software without impeding development and growth processes.

Testing

Security checks are done before product release, but ideally, they should be done all along the way. Effective testing strategies include static application security testing (SAST) and less famous but no less critical methods like penetration testing, red teaming, and threat modeling.

SAST technologies must be integrated into DevSecOps processes to build a viable program. Adopting SAST technologies requires automation since it promotes effectiveness, consistency, and early detection.

DevSecOps Integration Tools

Several DevSecOps tools should be included across the DevOps pipeline, including:

1. ThreatModeler
2. Continuum Protection
3. Elastalert
4. Kibana and Grafana
5. Checkmarx
6. SonarQube
7. Snyk
8. Aqua Security

DevSecOps Challenges & The Solutions to Overcome Them

DevSecOps follows a similar approach. Improved collaboration across operations, security, and development are necessary for its deployment to be effective. However, when employing this method, a rift between the DevSecOps security and development teams is typically unavoidable.

DevSecOps adaptation often encounters collaboration issues, along with the following challenges:

1. Individual Challenge

1.1 Cultural clash

Any change starts with people; in the case of DevOps, people are where it all begins. Creating a cohesive team of developers and operators is difficult enough; adding a third team of security personnel prone to working in isolation increases the difficulty. Many people find it difficult to change their line of work, mainly if it necessitates a change in mindset from “security as an afterthought to security-first.”

Solution: Be ready and involve people early to create new routines that benefit everyone. It all comes down to showing employees across the organization that code could be delivered quickly and securely simultaneously and inspiring teams to cooperate to achieve that common objective.

1.2 Lack of Skills

Many DevSecOps practices require formal security skills that developers lack. DevSecOps implementations will only succeed with proper knowledge.

Solution: Formal internal training can increase understanding and provide more experienced personnel the chance to assist less experienced ones. To bring everyone up to speed, spend money on independent online courses and specialized outside training firms.

2. Practice Challenge

2.1 Failure to Automate

Security professionals conduct tests, assess results, and then give developers comments as part of numerous conventional security activities, including compliance checks, threat modeling, risk management, and architectural risk analysis. Agility and flexibility are hallmarks of DevOps, but some of these behaviors are challenging to automate, which puts security & DevOps in conflict.

Solution: The best way to address this time-consuming issue is to use DevSecOps tools to modify standards, guidelines, models, and service-level agreements, making them easier to test.

2.2 A comparison of Speed & Security

Fast release cycles need to be improved by security teams’ attention to laborious procedures. DevSecOps relies on quick feedback loops to preserve traceability, identify errors, and address problems. These techniques are difficult to apply in the DevOps era.

Solution: Developers will be able to see security concerns early on as a result of introducing security procedures earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) by shifting left, which will ease the strain on security professionals and lower costs in the long run. Using security patch management will increase your chances of finding risks, and teams should take immediate action to fix them.

3. Tool Challenges

3.1 Embrace Technology

Although DevSecOps explicitly promotes the use of tools, issues arise when security teams have different tool sets. Developers will find it more and more challenging to choose from the more sophisticated tools available or even to use them. Incorporating their selected tools into the DevOps pipeline might be difficult and time-consuming. For DevSecOps teams, there need to be more guidelines, instruction, and training programs.

Solution: Encourage your teams to establish tool standards and usage norms, simplify tool selection and usage, and improve tool documentation. Additionally, it would make configuration management challenges easier to handle and provide the recommended security settings for tools so that everyone on the team is aware of them, which would speed up integration.

3.2 Unsuitable Tools

Tools for static application security testing (SAST) cannot be deployed slowly. Widely used containers are susceptible to security breaches. It raises a greater concern when they contain external components like code libraries. Developers must decide whether to risk code corruption or use these components for speed.

Solution: Developing more cloud computing services would be worthwhile to avoid any potential problems with standalone SAST tools. In the meanwhile, a feature-rich orchestration platform could reduce container-related issues.

Now is the Time to Revolutionize Your Security System

DevSecOps is revolutionizing how organizations manage security. DevSecOps is often viewed with skepticism by mid and low-level organizations for various reasons, including a lack of awareness about what it is, an unsolicited culture shift, budget constraints, and sometimes the term’s ambiguity.

It is very promising that organizations can reap technical as well as business benefits as a result of implementing DevSecOps. Though you will undoubtedly encounter some hiccups when you first start, DevSecOps will significantly benefit your organization in the long run. That is why it is critical to hire a reputable solution provider like Netsmartz to take your business to the next level.

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