Introduction
As a discipline, DevOps emphasizes uniting development and IT operations teams through modernized culture, integrated tooling and processes in order to increase the frequency, quality and business alignment of software roll-outs. But while developers and IT Ops teams need to be in lockstep, security cannot be an afterthought. Rather, DevOps teams need to adapt to include security as an integral part of the agile triangle.
The challenge facing DevOps teams today however is that incorporating security into their day-to-day work is not always easy or intuitive. Security often runs one step behind or out of sync with lean DevOps teams. In addition, the besieged security professional or team often faces a never-ending barrage of breaches, designed by a large, amorphous and highly motivated hacker ecosystem and resulting in a continually escalating threat environment. In an effort to save time, agile developers may leverage existing code in rapid iterations and quickly deploy them to production through continuous delivery pipelines, without considering existing architectural defects or knowing its defect profile and potential for security vulnerabilities. This can expose organizations to huge risks if left unassessed and mitigated.
Fortunately, “security at the speed of agile” is entirely possible, allowing organizations to bring new software products and services to the market, while staying in control. Here are some best practices for better aligning security with DevOps objectives, evolving beyond just DevOps to DevOpsSec:
Shifting security “left” in the DevOps chain
Like functional quality testing (making sure an application works as it’s supposed to), security testing needs to happen in the earliest possible stages of the development process. Traditionally, the application lifecycle has followed a sequential model – ideation, development, testing and finally, production. Functional testing used to occur only during the testing phase. But now, developers are taking on more responsibility, which helps prevent defective code from getting “baked in” further down the application lifecycle, where it becomes much more time-consuming and costly to undo. However, security is also an extremely important part of the quality equation, and if a security defect isn’t detected early on, a very unpleasant surprise is likely in store as the application gets closer to production. Building in and continuously integrating static code analysis and dynamic security testing into the Agile application lifecycle is a key success factor to delivering a high quality, secure application experience in production.
Automating security testing, for both developers and testers
In agile environments, DevOps teams are under constant time pressures. As noted above, developers are expected to develop more and more code, all while assuming greater responsibility for functional quality. Testers, too, are under increased pressure as more frequent application roll-outs mean more testing, in less time. For these reasons, if security testing is going to take place earlier on in the application lifecycle, basic security tests need to be automated. Since security threats are constantly evolving, this kind of automation will not completely rule out all security flaws in production. But it will allow developers and testers to spend more time on their core functions – namely development and functional testing – while lowering the attack surface, once an application does reach production.
Leveraging Big Data analytics
Data generated from DevOps processes and operations, particularly related to automated security tests, often hold a wealth of insights which can be used to step up security validation efforts throughout the application development lifecycle. For example, what code types show the most vulnerabilities and therefore may need more rigorous testing? Which groups of developers are discovering the most security holes in automated tests – such that their development processes may need to be refined — and which groups may not be testing enough? How long are basic security tests taking on average, and how does this need to be factored into roll-out timelines? This type of data can help DevOps teams prioritize and optimize their security testing, and better reconcile security testing requirements with velocity and resources to hit anticipated delivery dates. Also, while using Big Data analytics in production will always be useful (particularly when it comes to detecting new security threats, and determining new automated testing needs), applying Big Data analytics earlier on, to DevOps pre-production data, can prevent more security flaws from making it into production in the first place.
Fostering a shared vision and objectives
To date, real progress has been made uniting developers and IT operations teams together in DevOps organizations. Traditional roles and responsibilities within DevOps teams continue to evolve and coalesce, and that’s a good thing. Developers are contributing to testing and taking more responsibility for overall quality. IT ops teams are thinking like developers, analyzing and feeding production data back to developers and testers so they can fine-tune and modify their offerings. Data flows left-to-right, and right-to-left are becoming more automatic and continuous.
But increasingly, security professionals need to be included in this mix. Developers need to think with security considerations in mind – for instance, will a new feature they want to add to an application bring increased security risk, and if so, how can this risk be minimized? Conversely, security professionals need to think like IT ops teams; for example, making sure a new mobile app doesn’t potentially create a hole for hackers to penetrate back-end systems, and if a hack were to happen, how to contain it and minimize the impact. Only by capturing the right data, communicating and committing to working together can everyone in the DevOpsSec chain make the best, most well-rounded decisions that factor in all concerns, with business success being the top priority.
Conclusion
Often, DevOps teams may view security teams as potential logjams preventing them from doing what they want to do – deliver working software quickly to delight users and create competitive edge. But if security in the software supply chain is not addressed, the results may do the exact opposite, frustrating users, freezing business processes or worse, causing massive financial liability and loss of brand goodwill.
Security is a key ingredient of application quality. By addressing security earlier in the development process; increasing security testing automation; leveraging Big Data analytics and incorporating security in the DevOps mission, organizations can achieve true DevOpsSec and deliver applications that are high-quality, through and through.
About the Author/ Kelly Emo
Kelly Emo, Director, Lifecycle and Quality Product Marketing, HP, Kelly has been involved in all things IT for few decades, including engineering, product management, and product marketing across application development, SOA and middleware, enterprise architecture, IT operations, quality and testing. She now focuses on application lifecycle management, quality, agile development and DevOps. She has worked in other organizations at HP, BEA Software, and Jamcracker Inc .Kelly has a BS in Computer Science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and an MBA from Santa Clara University.
