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What is DevSecOps? Definition and Overview for beginners

What is DevSecOps? Definition and Overview for beginners

In order to gain customers’ trust, software development companies must secure their products and show that they are secure. Threat actors, however, are increasingly focusing on mobile apps because the developers may not always be security professionals. If you are a software developer, you must incorporate security and automation into the process—not as a separate phase, but as a component of the full program lifetime. DevSecOps was established as a result. So what is DevSecOps?

What is DevSecOps?

Before digging into DevSecOps, you have to answer the question: “What is DevSecOps” or “What does DevSecOps stand for”? 

DevSecOps is an acronym that stands for development, security, and operations. It is a cultural, automation, and platform design strategy that integrates security as a shared responsibility across the whole IT lifecycle.

Security is now a shared responsibility integrated from beginning to end in the collaborative framework of DevOps. It’s an attitude that’s so crucial that some have coined the name “DevSecOps” to underline the importance of incorporating security into DevOps operations. DevSecOps entails planning for application and infrastructure security from the beginning. It also entails automating some security gates in order to keep the DevOps workflow moving. So now you have got the answer for what is DevSecOps. 

What is DevSecOps?

The advantages of DevSecOps

1. Delivering software quickly and affordably

Security issues can cause major time delays while developing software in a non-DevSecOps setting. It might be time-consuming and expensive to fix the security and coding problems. By limiting the need to repeat a procedure to resolve security vulnerabilities after the fact, DevSecOps provides speedy, secure delivery while saving time and money. Because integrated security eliminates redundant reviews and pointless rebuilds, more secure code is produced, increasing efficiency and lowering costs.

2. Greater proactive security

Beginning with the design phase, DevSecOps introduces cybersecurity procedures. The code is examined, audited, scanned, and tested throughout the development cycle for security flaws. When these problems are found, they are immediately resolved. Before adding more dependencies, security flaws are corrected. When safeguarding technology is recognized and put into place early in the cycle, security risks become less expensive to solve.

Improved communication among the development, security, and operations teams also enhances an organization’s capacity to respond to incidents and other issues as they arise. By speeding up the vulnerability patching process, DevSecOps techniques enable security teams to concentrate on tasks with higher value. Additionally, by ensuring compliance and making it simpler, these techniques prevent the need for security upgrades in application development projects.

3. Rapid security vulnerability patching

The speed with which DevSecOps handles newly discovered security vulnerabilities is one of its main advantages. The capacity to recognize and fix common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) decreases as DevSecOps integrates vulnerability screening and patching into the release cycle. This reduces the window of opportunity for threat actors to exploit flaws in production systems that are visible to the public.

4. Automation appropriate for contemporary development

If a company employs a continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline to deploy its product, cybersecurity testing can be incorporated into an automated test suite for operations teams.

Security check automation is highly influenced by organizational and project objectives. Automated testing can verify that incorporated software dependencies are at the proper patch levels and that security unit testing was successful. Additionally, it can use static and dynamic analysis to validate and secure code before the final update is promoted to production.

5. A cyclical and adaptable procedure

As enterprises mature, so do their development security operations. DevSecOps methods are repeatable and adaptable. This guarantees that security is implemented consistently throughout the environment as it changes and adapts to new requirements. A mature DevSecOps system will include strong automation, configuration management, orchestration, containers, immutable infrastructure, and even serverless computing environments.

The advantages of DevSecOps

DevSecOps is about built-in security

Whether you call it “DevOps” or “DevSecOps,” including security as an intrinsic component of the entire software life cycle has always been ideal. DevSecOps model is about security integrated in, not security that acts as a perimeter around programs and data. If security remains at the end of the development pipeline, DevOps enterprises may find themselves back in the protracted development cycles they were attempting to avoid in the first place.

So what is DevSecOps concentration? It emphasizes the importance of inviting security teams and partners from the start of DevOps projects to build in information security and develop a roadmap for security automation. It also emphasizes the importance of assisting developers in coding with security in mind, a process that includes security teams exchanging visibility, feedback, and insights on known concerns, such as insider threats or potential malware. It’s probable that this will entail new security training for developers as well, given that security hasn’t traditionally been a priority in more traditional program development.

Automated security for DevOps

It is a challenging task for any firm to maintain short and frequent development cycles, integrate security measures with little impact on operations, stay current with cutting-edge technologies like containers and microservices, and cultivate closer team cooperation. All of these initiatives start out on a human level, with the ins and outs of collaboration inside your company, but automation is what makes those human changes possible in a DevSecOps framework. 

But it raises the second important question after “what is DevSecOps” is: What should be automated, and how? To assist with the solution to this query, there is written information. Organizations should take a step back and take into account the full development and operational environment. This covers source control repositories, container registries, the CI/CD pipeline, application programming interface (API) administration, orchestration and release automation, as well as operational management and monitoring.

New automation technologies have aided firms in adopting more agile development processes, as well as in the advancement of new security measures. However, automation isn’t the only thing that has evolved in the IT world in recent years—cloud-native technologies such as containers and microservices are now a big element of most DevOps programs, and DevOps security must adapt to meet them. 

Automated security for DevOps

DevSecOps practices

DevSecOps should be defined as the natural integration of security controls into your development, delivery, and operational processes.

1. Shift left

‘Shift left,’ according to DevSecOps: It promotes software developers to shift security from the right (end) to the left (start) of the DevOps (delivery) process. Security is included into the development process from the start in a DevSecOps environment. A company that implements DevSecOps includes cybersecurity architects and engineers on the development team. Their goal is to guarantee that every component and configuration item in the stack is patched, securely configured, and documented.

Shifting left enables the DevSecOps team to detect security risks and exposures early and respond to these security concerns rapidly. Not only is the development team concerned with producing the product efficiently, but they are also concerned with security.

2. Security instruction

Engineering and compliance go hand in hand in security. To make sure that everyone in the organization is aware of the company’s security posture and adheres to the same standards, organizations should create an alliance between the development engineers, operations teams, and compliance teams.

Everyone participating in the delivery process of understanding what is DevSecOps should be aware of the fundamentals of application security, the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10, application security testing, and other security engineering techniques. To measure risks, expose vulnerabilities, and apply security controls, developers must be familiar with thread models, compliance checks, and risk assessment techniques.

3. Culture: Communication, people, procedures, and technology 

A positive organizational culture is fostered by effective leadership, which encourages change. It is critical and vital during the process of understanding what is DevSecOps to convey the duties of process security and product ownership. Only after that can developers and engineers assume ownership of the process and accountability for their work.

Operations teams for DevSecOps should design a system that works for them, utilizing the technologies and protocols that suit their group and the project at hand. By giving the team the freedom to design the workflow environment that best suits their requirements, they become invested stakeholders in the project’s success.

4. Accountability, Visibility, and Traceability

A more secure environment is created by implementing accountability, auditability, and visibility in the process of understanding what is DevSecOps:

  • Accountability allows you to trace configuration items throughout the development cycle until they are implemented in code. This can be an important aspect of your organization’s control structure because it helps with compliance, bug reduction, secure code in application development, and code maintainability.
  • Auditability is critical for assuring security control compliance. All team members must follow auditable, well-documented technical, procedural, and administrative security procedures.
  • Visibility is an important management technique in general, but it is especially critical in a DevSecOps setting. This means that the business has a good monitoring system in place to measure the operation’s heartbeat, send alerts, raise awareness of changes and cyberattacks as they occur, and give responsibility throughout the project lifecycle.

DevSecOps for containers and microservices

Containers’ increased size and more dynamic infrastructure have transformed the way many firms do business. As a result, DevOps security procedures must adapt to the new environment and adhere to container-specific security rules whether what is DevSecOps.

Static security policies and checklists do not work well with cloud-native systems. Security must instead be continuous and integrated at all stages of the app and infrastructure life cycle. 

DevSecOps entails incorporating security into app development from start to finish. This pipeline integration necessitates both a new organizational perspective and new technologies. With this in mind, DevOps teams should automate security to secure the broader environment and data, as well as the continuous integration/continuous delivery process—a goal that will almost certainly involve microservices security.

DevSecOps Security tools

Security tools are also indispensable for beginners in the process of finding out what is DevSecOps. It includes SAST, DAST, SCA and IAST.

1. SAST

Static application security testing (SAST) tools analyze proprietary or custom code for coding errors and design defects that could lead to exploitable vulnerability. SAST tools, such as Coverity®, are generally employed during the SDLC’s code, build, and development phases.

2. DAST

Dynamic application security testing (DAST) is a tool that simulates how a hacker would interact with your online application or API. It evaluates apps over a network connection and by inspecting the application’s client-side rendering, much like a pen tester might. DAST tools do not require source code or customisation; they interact with your website and detect vulnerabilities with a low false positive rate. Synopsys Online ScannerTM and Synopsys API ScannerTM DAST products, for example, identify vulnerabilities in web applications and APIs, as well as web-connected devices like mobile back-end servers, IoT devices, and RESTful or GraphQL APIs.

3. SCA

Software composition analysis (SCA) such as Black Duck®, examines source code and binaries for known vulnerabilities in open source and third-party components. They also provide insight into security and license concerns, allowing prioritizing and repair activities to be accelerated. Furthermore, they may be smoothly integrated into a CI/CD process to detect new open source vulnerabilities continually, from build integration to pre-production release.

4. IAST

Interactive application security testing (IAST) technologies evaluate web application runtime behavior in the background during human or automated functional tests. The Seeker® IAST tool, for example, employs instrumentation to monitor application request/response interactions, behavior, and dataflow. It discovers runtime vulnerabilities and automatically replays and tests them, offering developers with precise insights down to the line of code where they occur. This allows developers to concentrate their efforts and attention on major vulnerabilities.

DevSecOps Security tools

As such, DevSecOps undeniably revolutionizes the way businesses approach security. The advantages that enterprises can gain from using DevSecOps, both technically and commercially, are quite promising. Implementing DevSecOps will benefit your company much in the long run after you understand what is DevSecOps methodology and the way it operates.

>> Related article: Explore 30+ DevOps Tools To Learn In 2023 [UPDATING]

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