Integrate security into DevOps
What is DevSecOps and why is it important?
Therefore, today we are going to talk about this novel approach that integrates security from the beginning and throughout the entire life cycle of an application. We will see in detail what DevSecOps consists of, its relationship with DevOps, what benefits it has and how to put it into practice.
What is DevSecOps?
DevSecOps is a Software development solutions approach or philosophy in which security is integrated from the beginning and throughout the entire DevOps process and becomes a shared responsibility for all teams involved in the project.
Its name, an acronym for development, security and operations, refers to the integration of security into DevOps through continuous collaboration between development, operations and security teams. In short, it is a term that reinforces the importance of incorporating security into the custom software development life cycle. It is a method that is part of agile software development and represents an evolution towards shared responsibility for security. It involves considering software security from the beginning, as well as automating processes so as not to slow down the DevOps workflow. Its goal is to achieve faster and more secure software deliveries , without turning security into a bottleneck. That is, DevSecOps is about ensuring fast and secure delivery by solving common problems between development and security. And, to do this, it relies on tools . Although it also requires a series of changes in the organization's culture to integrate security as soon as possible. By integrating security into culture, processes, and tools, DevSecOps ensures that rapid software delivery does not include security vulnerabilities.
DevOps vs. DevSecOps
Previously, Software development solutions took months or even years. However, with DevOps software deliveries are becoming shorter and more frequent (weeks or days). As a result, meeting a high level of security in developments has become a challenge. This has caused companies to find themselves in the position of having to decide between a good degree of security in their developments, which takes more time, or shorter cycles, giving up security. DevSecOps brings together the advantages of these two approaches and promotes faster and more secure software deliveries. DevOps was not intended to leave security behind, but as barriers between development and operations teams were removed, security became isolated. It was carried out by a specific team at the end of the process. DevSecOps emerged to change this situation, integrating security from the beginning and throughout the entire cycle and expanding responsibility for it to other teams. Both DevOps and DevSecOps are work methodologies that pursue the same objective: delivering quality software faster. Only with DevSecOps it is also done safely. It does this by integrating security from the beginning into DevOps and holding development and operations teams accountable as well. Additionally, like DevOps, DevSecOps relies heavily on automation (for example, security audits). In short, DevOps and DevSecOps are software development approaches based on collaboration, shared responsibility, automation, feedback and continuous improvement.
Why apply DevSecOps?
Integrating security throughout the custom enterprise software development process and not just at the end allows DevOps and security professionals to get the most out of agile methodologies, removing obstacles to ensuring secure code. These are the main benefits of adopting DevSecOps:
Develop secure software from design.
Identify code vulnerabilities and attacks early.
Apply security more quickly and agilely.
Respond to changes and requirements quickly.
Improve collaboration and communication between teams.
Generate greater security awareness among all members.
Focus on generating the greatest business value.
How to put DevSecOps into practice?
DevSecOps represents a change in work philosophy , where security becomes a shared responsibility (extended to the development and operations teams) and integrated throughout the entire development and deployment process. To put DevSecOps into practice, security must become another condition in the software design, development and delivery process. How do organizations achieve this?
Integrated and shared security
In DevSecOps, security is integrated into the entire application life cycle. To do this, security teams must be present from the beginning of the DevOps project, incorporating security from this moment and planning its automation from then on. Likewise, security becomes a responsibility of all areas involved in the project, so the security team must ensure that all the people involved have the necessary knowledge about security to work effectively in a short period of time. In this sense, they must help developers write code with security in mind, sharing valuable threat information with them. Likewise, the security team becomes another actor within the continuous integration and delivery process , which must be able to identify errors and create requests for their resolution in new deployments. On the other hand, in DevSecOps it is essential to know the level of acceptable risk and analyze the risk/benefit ratio. To do this, issues such as how many security controls are necessary or what weight time to market has in our software must be taken into account.
Security automation
One of the main challenges that DevSecOps poses to the security team is not to slow down the application development flow , since executing manual security tests can be time-consuming. Therefore, you must automate processes and use the appropriate tools that prevent security from becoming a bottleneck. In this way, automation in a DevSecOps environment makes it easier to maintain short and frequent development cycles, integrate security with minimal interruption to operations, use the latest technologies, and promote collaboration between traditionally isolated teams. When automating, organizations must consider the entire development and operations environment : code repositories, container registries, the CI/CD process, API management, deployments, and operations management and monitoring.
DevSecOps best practices
These would be good practices when putting DevSecOps into practice:
Optimize security and development processes.
Teach good security practices to different teams.
Manage and improve access controls.
Automate repetitive processes.
Evaluate risks and define contingency plans.
Use security tools.
Proactively identify threats and vulnerabilities.
Conduct security audits periodically.
Gartner Recommendations
Integrating security into DevOps requires a change in mindset, processes, and technologies. Thus, Gartner makes a series of recommendations to successfully practice DevSecOps:
Adapt tools and processes to developers and not the other way around.
Don't try to eliminate all vulnerabilities during development.
Focus on identifying and removing known open source vulnerabilities first.
Adapt static and dynamic test analyzes (SAST / DAST) to the new reality.
Train developers in security, without expecting them to become experts.
Adopt a Security Champion model (security specialist who acts as a mentor for the rest of the teams) and implement a simple tool for collecting requirements.
Ensure and apply the same operational discipline to automation scripts and security infrastructure.
Implement strong version control across all code and components.
Implement secret management.
Adopt an immutable infrastructure mindset.
Rethink how service delivery incidents are handled, including security
Use dynamic access provisioning for developers in DevSecOps.
Conclusion
DevSecOps is a philosophy that integrates security from the beginning in the DevOps process and that promotes development and operations teams to also be responsible for security. It is an approach that seeks to deliver secure software quickly and that allows organizations to detect vulnerabilities earlier and respond agilely to changes, improving customer satisfaction.