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In software product development services, speed is imperative for success, as any delays may make your product irrelevant or derivative. That’s why companies employ DevOps teams to automate processes and testing and accelerate time to market. However, this process expedition leaves the product vulnerable and susceptible to data breaches. To combat this, DevSecOps was created, integrating security right into the software development life cycle. The process of adopting DevOps security can be quite strenuous which is why many businesses opt to employ IT infrastructure consulting services to smooth out the challenges.
In this article, we’ll discuss security and DevOps, touch on the biggest challenges of DevSecOps, and explore how to redefine the culture to seamlessly introduce this approach. Additionally, we’ll explore the most crucial DevOps security best practices to help you endorse DevOps without common obstacles.
DevOps security or DevSecOps is a practice that incorporates security into the software development life cycle (SDLC) and operations. While DevOps allows cross-functional teams to build new applications faster and release more frequently, the increasing complexity of the methodology tends to jeopardize security.
The main appeal of the DevOps approach is automation and scalability. By leveraging microservices architecture and cloud infrastructure, you can create software products that are more responsive and cost-effective. However, the ever-growing complexity of automating processes, building applications into microservices, and employing numerous tools poses real security challenges.
DevSecOps is a philosophy that marries DevOps with security, encouraging teams to prioritize the safety and integrity of their data.
The fundamental concept of DevSecOps is redefining security in software development as a shared responsibility that falls on the shoulders of developers and operations teams. While conventionally developers did not involve themselves in the security concerns, this methodology challenges that and promotes shifting security measures into the early stages of the SDLC.
In the abundance of similar abbreviations, it could be difficult to understand the distinction between DevSecOps vs SecDevOps. Although technically different, both DevSecOps and SecDevOps push for prioritizing security and integrating it into the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. The main distinction is that SecDevOps puts security ahead of everything else while DevSecOps is a more holistic and balanced approach.
So what is secure DevOps and why has this concept become so vital for development and operations teams?
First and foremost, DevOps security aids companies in building and deploying applications faster and more effectively. While DevOps itself gives you tools and practices to scale up the software development life cycle, DevSecOps fixes the common delays that occur during the processes. Instead of pushing them into production environments, secure DevOps methodology allows you to address them proactively.
By instilling security practices into the software development pipeline, you can automate security checks and tests and fix vulnerabilities before they become a liability. DevSecOps security tools also allow for continuous monitoring and testing, including dynamic and static application security testing, interactive application testing, and others.
Finally, security in DevOps promotes Infrastructure as Code (IaC), a practice that automates the provisioning of computer systems and networks. Instead of time-consuming and error-prone manual setup and configuration, IaC is automated, documented, scalable, and consistent, allowing you to reproduce the results again and again.
As cybercrime continues to soar in the business landscape, the need for a proactive approach to security is higher than ever. Secure DevOps methodology aims to address security challenges by integrating measures throughout the entire SDLC ensuring that the issues are identified and resolved before severe escalations take place. Basically, this approach breaks down the development process into smaller steps and incorporates security controls all throughout to deliver highly safe applications.
Among the most crucial benefits of security in DevOps is the ability to create repeatable processes and consistently reproduce the results. Even if your requirements shift or the market fluctuates, following the DevSecOps blueprint will ensure secure software products every time. Reproducibility is essential not only for the high quality of applications but also for testing, audits, and troubleshooting.
Last but not least, DevOps teams integrate security to ensure transparent and strict compliance with laws and regulations. DevSecOps offers a wide range of security practices and methodologies to secure your systems, from automated compliance checks and continuous monitoring to infrastructure as code.
Despite the numerous benefits of DevOps security, it does not come without any pitfalls and risks. Research from Business Wire states that the largest hindrance to adopting DevSecOps is the lack of technical expertise. In this part, we’ll discuss other significant DevOps security challenges and how they can impact your bottom line.
Arguably the biggest challenge of integrating security into DevOps processes is the resistance from the software development and operations teams. Initiating the culture shift in an organization requires conveying the concept of shared responsibility, which can be a difficult task. Potential security risks can emerge from third-party code, adoption of new tools, poor secret management, and many other practices. Changing this mindset requires continuous training, open communication between the teams, and increased automation.
Although cloud environments present a wide array of benefits, they also pose security issues. While traditional on-premise infrastructures don’t suffer from many security vulnerabilities, cloud environments tend to exchange and transmit data between tenants, making them more exposed to attacks and breaches. Even a small oversight in configuration management due to human error can jeopardize the safety of critical resources and hinder overall cloud security.
While DevOps engineers are in demand, the supply isn’t fully there. According to Statista, the second most sought-after technical skill is DevOps, with 35% of recruiters stating the shortage of talent in this sector. As the need for security teams and DevOps specialists grows, many companies continue to neglect security processes due to the lack of expertise. This in turn leads to poor security hygiene and opens the door to potential attacks and mistakes in the development process.
DevOps teams utilize a broad spectrum of tools and applications to automate, streamline, and secure the SDLC. Creating dependency on third-party systems poses a threat to supply chain security. If even one of your suppliers, partners, and stakeholders is susceptible to an attack, your entire organization may also be exposed.
While thorough vetting of third-party services can safeguard your assets to a degree, some tools require additional steps to ensure a robust security posture. For instance, Kubernetes is not secure by default, requiring significant expertise to ensure the impenetrability of your systems.
Due to the collaborative nature of DevOps, sensitive data—including credentials, API access tokens, and encryption keys—is frequently exchanged between the operations and development teams. These assets can be intercepted during the data transfer and utilized to steal more information and further infiltrate the business. In order to avoid these security incidents, organizations are required to establish robust access control as well as resilient secrets management protocols.
As mentioned above, the need for a major cultural shift within the company is among the biggest pitfalls of DevOps security. It’s imperative to develop a culture of transparency, accountability, and continuous learning throughout the organization. Only by fostering trust and cooperation between operations, development, and security teams can you pivot your culture enough to make a difference.
Additionally, the company’s executives and leaders are expected to promote the change and incorporate DevOps security principles in their own work. They should convey the benefits of adopting DevOps practices to the employees and provide all the essential tools, guides, and resources to streamline the transition.
Another aspect of building DevOps and security is creating strong feedback loops to ensure direct and effective collaboration. This is usually accomplished with business communication tools like Slack along with project management applications like Jira or Asana.
What further complicates the adoption of DevOps security is the skill set gap. The shortage of security experts in the labor market paired with ever-growing cybersecurity threats creates a substantial problem for businesses. To battle the talent disparity, organizations should educate their existing development teams and assist them in comprehending and mastering the DevOps security methodology.
DevOps security also requires a change in workflow. While developers conventionally write code first and test it later, this approach attempts to integrate security into the development process. In other words, software engineers perform security testing at every step of the way, including during code creation.
The final piece of the puzzle is fostering DevOps automation, including CI/CD and continuous security across the organization. To prevent a big portion of security concerns, companies can automate security testing, the CI/CD pipeline, infrastructure provisioning, etc.
Lastly, let’s focus on the DevOps security best practices to help you smooth the transition.
The cornerstone of DevOps in security is automation. Especially for larger projects, vulnerability scanning becomes increasingly more challenging. Automated security systems are designed to manage potential threats without human intervention. Not only will this eliminate human error but also accelerate time to market without jeopardizing the quality.
In addition to code analysis and vulnerability assessment, you can automate privileged access management, configuration management, monitoring, and numerous other aspects of the software development process.
Any change to the development process, contents of the toolkit, accounts, and credentials need to be documented and stored across the cloud to allow other teammates to access this information. Being a collaborative approach, DevOps in security will not function without an atmosphere of visibility and accountability.
Security vulnerabilities can occur and persist at any stage of the development, from coding and testing to production environments. It’s essential to continuously monitor and address vulnerabilities as early as possible to avoid complications in the post-production phase. The later you identify and handle an error or bug, the costlier the process of fixing will be.
Development teams exchange a lot of highly critical information during and after the development process. In order to secure assets like account credentials and secure shell keys, it’s crucial to establish a robust secrets management system. On one hand, important data should be accessible to those with permissions while on the other it should be secure and protected from attackers and intruders.
Privileged access management (PAM)—monitoring and controlling of access permissions—is an integral part of DevOps security best practices. To protect their assets, organizations adhere to the principle of least privilege, in which a user only gets the permissions that are sufficient to perform their duties. Another aspect of PAM is providing just-in-time access to allow a user to gain necessary information one time, after which the access is revoked.
During the transition from traditional software development practices to DevOps security, businesses are encouraged to run a penetration test to identify the current weaknesses in the infrastructure. After successful adoption, regular automated security testing is essential to continuously uncover vulnerabilities and roadblocks. Other important tests include:
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) allows security teams to identify vulnerabilities in code without running the application. This test aids teams in writing and maintaining secure code from day one.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) tests the application when it’s running and helps to discover vulnerabilities missed in the SAST.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) evaluates the safety and integrity of the open-source technology stack used in development.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is designed to continuously monitor endpoint and network events and collect the gathered data to investigate the issues in more detail.
Finally, an important addition to the DevOps security best practices is the development of resilient security guidelines and policies. From implementing automated compliance checks in the CI/CD pipeline and version control management to continuous auditing and documentation, develop a comprehensive set of guidelines for the employees to follow.
In the scarcity of skillful and experienced DevOps and security experts, collaborating with an agency can be a great alternative. NIX is a software development company with decades of experience across technical domains, from end-to-end development and digital transformation to DevOps and cutting-edge technologies. Take a look at our latest case study where we helped a global technology company fully adopt DevOps security best practices:
Our client was a software and hardware development firm focused on innovation. However, their previous attempts to bolster innovation have created numerous security and financial risks. In order to protect their assets and prevent future attacks, the company committed to adopting DevSecOps practices.
The NIX team was tasked with facilitating the transition and helping the company strengthen its security team. We started by implementing the principle of shifting left, which pushes testing into the earlier stages of the development process. Using this approach, the client was able to identify and fix vulnerabilities proactively and accelerate the deployment. Additionally, we opted for Kubernetes to guarantee secure automated deployment bolstering the resilience of the infrastructure. As a result, our client received a well-designed set of guidelines and tools to increase agility while maintaining solid security standards.
Get in touch with our security teams to discuss your needs and requirements and to ensure a flawless transition into DevOps security.
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