DevSecOps is changing our perspective toward security and is equipping us to deal with its challenges in an intelligible manner. The systematic approach of DevSecOps helps us add value to our business processes while ensuring security.
Here’s a summary of the key inputs and a recipe for a successful software development project. Implementing DevSecOps with the primary goal of enhancing security requires a step-by-step procedure.
It requires the unification of culturally disparate teams of Security, Operations, Development and Test for the sole purpose of building a product marked by quality and backed by security.
The DevSecOps process will require effective planning, design and release, which will be put together with a collaborative toolchain of technologies to bring about a common goal.
Furthermore, as organizations continue to rely on automated delivery, avenues are created for testing opportunities beyond traditional bugs. In-house experts will be able to identify potential loopholes, design errors and even code weak spots.
Being able to identify weak spots and flaws well in advance helps organizations maintain a competitive front in the market and trustworthiness before its target audience.
DevSecOps Implementation Process and Road Map
1) Planning: Planning is the first approach to any task at hand and the core focus of DevSecOps—security—begins from here. In the planning stage, DevSecOps professionals must go beyond creating feature-based descriptions. The focus should also be on security and performance, acceptance test criteria, application interface and functionality and threat-defense models.
Tech terminology: Acceptance Test Criteria is used by DevSecOps professionals to understand user preferences and behavior to a software application behavior.
2) Developing: Developers should approach DevSecOps with a “how to do it” approach, rather than a “what to do” approach. It is important for developers to bring together available resources for guidance, have reliable practices and a code review system in place for themselves and for others in the team to follow.
3) Building: Automated build tools can uplift the whole DevSecOps implementation process tremendously. These tools ensure test-driven development, standards for release artifact generation and utilize tools to ensure the design aspect is in alignment with the team’s coding and security standards through statistic code analysis.
They can also be used to identify vulnerable libraries being used in your application and replace them with new ones.
4) Testing: Automated testing in DevSecOps should utilize strong testing practices including front-end, back-end, API, database and passive security testing.
Tech Terminology: Passive Security Testing is a developmental stage testing where security testing is not conducted directly on the target.
5) Securing: Traditional testing methods always remain in place in DevSecOps exercise. However, somewhere down the line, there is a tendency to identify issues toward the end of the development process.
Through advanced practices such as security scanning, we tend to become more aware of the issues and can determine if the threat is a serious one or not.
6) Deploying: Automated provisioning and deployment can fast-track the development process while making it a more consistent one. Infrastructure-as-code tools can perform the aforementioned audit properties and configurations and ensure secure configurations across the IT infrastructure.
7) Operating: Regular monitoring and upgrades are the Operations team’s important tasks. DevSecOps teams ensure to deploy infrastructure-as-a-code tools to update and secure the entire organization’s infrastructure in a quick and efficient manner with no scope for human error. Operations personnel have to be especially watchful of zero-day vulnerabilities.
Tech Terminology: Zero-Day vulnerabilities are a software breach that remains unknown to software productions personnel and can eat away at a computer program and other components such as a network.
8) Monitoring: Constantly keeping a watch for irregularities in security can save an organization from a breach. Hence, it is essential to implement a strong continuous monitoring program with real-time to keep a track of system performance and identify any exploits in their early stages.
9) Scaling: Gone are the days when organizations spent precious hours and money on the maintenance of large data centers. With the introduction of virtualization solutions and the cloud, organizations can scale their IT infrastructure or replace it in the event of a threat, which would be impossible to do with a traditional data center.
10) Adapting: Continuous improvement is key to any organization’s growth. An organization will only be able to achieve the desired growth of it evolves in its practices including DevSecOps practices—security, functionality and performance. Therefore, an organization should adapt to continuous improvement and external changing trends.
The DevSecOps is in itself a process of innovation that substantially adds value to an organization.
Point to Remember: Security is everyone’s responsibility.
— Veritis
