The traditional role of a Security Professional has been to prevent or detect security breaches. The traditional role of a Developer is to create new applications and updates. These two roles have not been combined until recently, hence the introduction of DevSecOps. DevSecOps Best Practices is the marriage of two different disciplines into one unified approach to software development with security considerations from design through delivery and deployment practices.
The goal of DevSecOps is to improve the security, quality, and reliability of code through the use of automated discovery and remediation techniques. The goal is to enhance developer productivity and mitigate security risks by creating more secure software in less time.
The purpose of this article is to identify the fundamental concept of DevSecOps best Practices, so you can make an educated decision about whether you want to become a DevSecOps practitioner. If you already know what DevSecOps is, then we can talk about how it could help your organization.
What is DevSecOps?
The term DevSecOps was coined by John Willis in 2015 when he presented at the Black Hat Conference. The term “DevOps” has been used to describe software development processes responsible for making a product more efficient. However, the DevSecOps concept is different from traditional DevOps because it is focused on security and quality. The idea for DevSecOps best Practices came about when crafty (e.g., hackers) developers came together and thought about ways to improve safety through these automation tools. They found that their means of automation, such as static analysis tools, static code analysis tools, and other tools, were not good enough to help them improve their security posture. Therefore, they began to develop and share techniques to automate the detection and remediation of security flaws in code.
3. Software development life cycle
John Willis said that DevSecOps is a way of monitoring software engineering processes. He also added that DevSecOps is not a process or tool; it is an attitude. One of the core principles of DevSecOps is that security should be baked into your software from the beginning. The goal is to make security a core competency instead of thinking about it as an add-on. Instead, you think about security in every aspect of your software development life cycle (SDLC).
4. DevSecOps can help your organization.
In recent years, there have been significant breaches on consumer websites and mobile devices that have completely changed how we think about cybersecurity. These breaches have caused the public to lose trust and confidence in the companies that they do business with, DevSecOps best Practices. The fact is that it doesn’t matter what industry you work in or what you do for a living. Your organization will be breached if you don’t spend more time and money on security.
5. Google Play Store
A great example of an organization that has adopted DevSecOps is Google. Google is one of the biggest tech companies in the world and is responsible for creating some of the most popular products, such as Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Android. John Willis said that Google uses DevSecOps to improve its apps and platform security. Nowadays, when you download an app from Google Play Store or from Gmail, you can see a lock icon next to it. This means that the application has been reviewed and approved by Google’s security team.
At one point, Google engineers would manually review DevSecOps best Practices with every code change that was made in their code repository. They were spending an inordinate amount of time manually reviewing each shift, which wasted valuable time and money. Therefore, they found that they could automate the process of reviewing code changes to decrease the number of defects and maintain a higher level of quality assurance (QA).
Benefits of DevSecOps
One of the significant benefits of DevSecOps is that it can help you to mitigate risks in your code and infrastructure. There are different types of risks that organizations can encounter with their applications, such as security incidents (e.g., hackings), defects, and operational failures. A flaw is when an application or platform does not perform as described in its documentation or specifications. A security incident, on the other hand, involves a nation-state intruding into a system or network for malicious purposes like stealing data or damaging it. Both of these types of threats can vary in severity and impact on your business.
. Defects, operational failures.
Defects, operational failures, and security incidents can be prevented with DevSecOps. You cannot prevent all security incidents, but you can reduce them by applying the techniques that you learn from DevSecOps best Practices to your operations practices. For example, if you have a malicious insider in your organization, you will not be able to prevent all the attacks. However, you can detect the episodes in your organization and prevent them from causing more damage. You are able to do this because of DevSecOps.
Maintain a higher level of QA
DevSecOps can also help security professionals to improve the quality of their applications. With DevSecOps, you have automated tools that allow you to find vulnerabilities in your code at a faster rate than what is possible with your manual processes. You also have automated tools that help you to fix the defects that may exist. This can help security professionals to maintain a higher level of QA within their organizations.
Facing the challenges
One of the biggest challenges with improving cybersecurity is that it takes time and money. Most security professionals are focused on manual tasks, such as running penetration tests, manually inspecting code for vulnerabilities, writing secure code, and dealing with alerts from their firewalls and other security tools. Because of this focus on manual tasks, these professionals do not have the time or budget to improve the security posture of their organization. This is where DevSecOps best Practices can help security teams by allowing them to secure their code faster and for less cost.
Conclusion
DevSecOps is not just about automating the detection of vulnerabilities in your code; it’s also about automating the remediation of those vulnerabilities. This can be done with what is called static analysis tools. Static analysis tools have been around for years and have been used by security professionals to inspect source code and investigate bugs. Static analysis tools are an excellent place to start when you begin to adopt DevSecOps best Practices. These tools will help you to find bugs in your code. However, that is just the beginning of your automated security processes.
