Software applications are at the heart of many industries. Many businesses and services rely on them. In extreme cases, it can even result in death. In some extreme cases, it can even result in loss of life.
What Is DevSecOps?
DevSecOps is the method that integrates security practices within the DevOps process. It promotes and creates a collaborative relationship based on the ‘Security as Code” philosophy between release engineers and security teams. DevSecOps has gained popularity and importance, given the ever-increasing security risks to software applications.
DevSecOps integrates security within your product pipeline in an iterative process. The DevOps process integrates security into the entire DevOps methodology. Before the solution can be implemented, security teams must resolve issues. This iterative process will ensure that vulnerabilities do not go unaddressed.
As DevSecOps is still a new and emerging discipline, it may require some time to gain mainstream acceptance and integration. Security tests are often performed late in the development cycle. This can have serious consequences for both companies and products. Security is often the last feature considered during the development process. When security issues arise near the launch of a product, if you put security at the end, you’ll be back at the beginning of a long development cycle. A delay in delivery will result from a production interruption. Ignoring security issues may lead to security debts later in the product’s lifecycle. DevSecOps aims to involve the security team as early in the development lifecycle as possible. So the DevSecOps goal is to begin the security team’s involvement as early as possible in the development lifecycle.
How Does DevSecOps Work?
The DevSecOps method needs development and operations teams to do more than just collaborate. To ensure software security from beginning to end, the security teams must also be involved at an early stage in iterations. Consistent testing leads to secure code and avoids delays at the last minute by spreading out the work consistently and predictably throughout the project. This process allows organizations to meet their deadlines while ensuring that customers and users are happy.
IT Security needs to be integrated into your application’s full life cycle. You can take advantage of the responsiveness and agility of a DevOps approach by the incorporation of security into your processes.
The primary areas of software security testing are being adopted:
Application Security Testing
As software applications are run, solutions can scan the application to ensure that malicious actions are not being taken. Scanners such as Burb Intruder and OWASP Zap automation will test and examine applications, to ensure that they aren’t taking steps that could be perceived as malicious by end-users.
Scanning for the Appropriate Configurations
Software tools can be designed to ensure that the application is configured correctly and secured for use in specific environments, such as the Microsoft Azure Advisor tool for cloud-based infrastructure. Many automated testing software tools are tailored to a specific environment such as mobile or web-based. During the development of software, it can be ensured that the software is being built to these appropriate standards.
Code Analysis Tools
Code analysis tools can strengthen DevOps security efforts by automatically scanning the code and identifying potential and known vulnerabilities within the code itself. It can be an invaluable tool for software teams, as it allows them to detect problems before they reach quality assurance. This can also help them in developing better coding habits.
DevSecOps Best Practices
DevSecOps integrates security into the development lifecycle, but it is not possible to do so hastily and without planning. Include it during the development and design stages. Follow industry best practices to improve your company’s workflow. The process of transferring newly released iterations from development teams to Quality Assurance is well-known. This isolated behavior is the norm in companies that have each team in a silo.
Companies should eliminate silos and bring development, operations, and security teams together. Unity across teams will enable the experts in these groups to work together from the beginning of the development process and foresee any challenges.
Threat modeling is one way to plan for and identify possible security threats to your assets. By analyzing existing controls and examining the types and sensitivities, you can identify any gaps before they become a problem. By identifying the gaps you can address them before they become an active problem.
These types assessments can help identify flaws in the architecture and design of your applications that other security approaches might have missed.
The first step in implementing a DevSecOps culture is to educate your teams that security is a shared responsibility of teams from all three disciplines. DevSecOps will become a part of your development cycle once development and operations teams share the responsibility for securing infrastructure and code. DevSecOps training and events are great opportunities to dispel these myths. Real-life examples and case studies can help to get buy-in from teams and management alike.
Educate Your Developers
Developers are almost single-handedly responsible for the quality of the code they develop. Many security issues and vulnerabilities are caused by coding errors. But companies pay little attention to their developers’ training and skill enhancement when it comes to producing secure code.
Educating them in the best practices of coding can directly contribute to improved code quality. A better code quality will reduce the number of security vulnerabilities. High-quality code will make it easier for security teams to identify and fix any vulnerabilities. As a guide, teams can make use of online tools such as the Common Weakness Enumeration. Listings are useful to developers who are not that familiar with security practices.
Security teams, as part of their commitment to DevSecOps, must undertake to train development and operations teams regarding security practices. Such training will enable developers to integrate security controls into the code.
Compliance (HIPAA, GDPR, PCI) is vital for applications in industries such as finance and medicine. Development teams must be familiar with these standards and keep in mind the requirements to ensure compliance.
Verify Code Dependencies
Very few organizations today develop their code all in-house. Each application is likely to be built using a lot of open-source, third-party code. They lack automated detection and tracking of bugs and flaws in open-source code. Due to the pressure of meeting customer demands developers rarely have the opportunity to review code or documentation.
This is where automated testing plays a significant role in regularly test open-source and third-party components. DevSecOps requires this as a key component. You must determine if the open-source use is creating any vulnerabilities or weaknesses in your code. It’s important to understand how open-source usage impacts your code. It will help you identify issues that help reduce the meantime to resolution.
Third-party code can represent some significant vulnerabilities. Organizations will need to identify their code dependencies and automate the process of ensuring that their third-party code has no known vulnerabilities and is being updated as it should be throughout the process of creation.
There are utilities available that can continuously check a database of known vulnerabilities to quickly identify any issues with existing code dependencies. This software can be used to swiftly mitigate third-party threats before they are incorporated into the application.
Enhance Continuous Integration with DevOps Security
DevOps teams typically use Continuous Integration (CI) tools to automate parts of the software development cycle, such as testing and building. These are routine tasks that teams need to repeat with each release.
Enhancing Continuous Integration processes and tools with security controls ensures that security practitioners identify issues before validating builds for Continuous Delivery (CD). CI also reduces the time spent on each iteration.
For example, using (SAST) static application security testing on daily builds will help you ensure that you’re only scanning for instances or items of interest in the changes to your code that were committed that day.
DevSecOps teams need to use vulnerability assessment scanning tools to ensure that they identify security issues early in the development cycle. They can use pre-production systems for this type of testing.
Simplify Your Code
Simpler code is easier to analyze and fix. When code is simpler and easier to understand, developers will have an easier time debugging. Security issues will be reduced by using simple and clean code. Simple code will allow developers to work together more quickly and review each other’s code. Security teams will be able to find issues faster and easier if they release code in smaller pieces. It will be easier to streamline the process by analyzing and proving one part of the code before moving onto the next. It will reduce the probability of security vulnerabilities and leads to robust applications.
Security as Code
‘Security as Code’ is the concept of including security best practices into the existing DevOps pipeline. Static analysis of code is one of the key processes this concept involves. Security practitioners can focus testing on code that has changed, in contrast to analyzing the entire code base.
Implementing a good change management process will allow members of all teams to submit changes and improvements. This type of process will enable security teams to remedy security issues directly without disrupting the development cycle.
Automation is another essential aspect of ‘security as code.’ Teams can automate security tasks to ensure that they conventionally verify all iterations. This uniformity can help reduce or eliminate known security issues. Put Your Application through Security Checks
Your app should be regularly tested. It should also undergo more rigorous testing such as preventing denial of service attacks.
There may be vulnerabilities in a solution that are only evident when that solution is broken. These are still genuine problems that the product owner may face.
Organizations are seeing an increasing number of malicious attacks. These attacks may focus on any aspect of a client’s organization that is accessible from outside of the network.
By testing your application under particularly strenuous circumstances, you can secure it through various scenarios.
How to Implement DevSecOps?
Each of the teams involved in DevSecOps needs to contribute towards its success.
Development
Developers perform an essential role in the DevSecOps process. Developers need to be open to involving operations and security teams. The participation of these teams from an early stage of the design and development process will facilitate a secure DevOps transformation and make applications overall more secure.
Training developers in security best practices is essential to success. Companies can supplement this training with hiring developers who have experience in DevSecOps so that they can guide the rest of the team.
Companies must build a culture where developers are aware that developing security is a shared responsibility between them and security teams. Security practitioners are only able to recommend security practices. It is the responsibility of developers to implement them.
Operations
The contribution of the operations team is similar to that of the development team. They must work with security practitioners. They are responsible for subjecting infrastructure and network configurations to security tests.
Security teams will also need to train operations teams regarding security practices to make DevSecOps successful. Operations and security teams, in collaboration, will then set up both manual and automated security tests to ensure compliance with network configurations.
Security
DevSecOps is as much of an adjustment for security teams as it is for development and operations teams. Security teams have to gradually increase their involvement while cooperating with development and operations teams.
Security practitioners should start with the concept of ‘shifting left.’ That is, collaborating with development and operations teams to move security reviews and automated tests towards the beginning of the software development lifecycle. This process of shifting left is essential to reduce the chances of unforeseen security issues popping up later.
Development and operations teams usually see security tests as a tedious and complicated task. So the duty of security teams does not stop at developing security tests but extends to involving and training the other teams.
DevSecOps is the Future
DevSecOps methodology has gained momentum due to the high cost of correction of security issues and security debt. Security testing is becoming more important as Agile teams release more applications. This article may help you transition your company from DevOps into a DevSecOps model.
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