What is DevOps security?

DevSecOps distributes and shares security responsibilities among the various development, operations and security teams involved.

The need for heightened DevOps security is due to the ubiquitous presence of active cyberthreats that has become part of the current condition. Theft and sabotage are not new elements of human behavior; only the type of materials stolen and the methodologies used to carry them out have been updated. Modern pirates seek lucrative data caches instead of gold treasure and use electronic thievery to carry out their crimes.

Such criminals have grown so adept at exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities within software systems—at all levels and stages of development—that forward-leaning organizations are now adopting ways to strengthen and enhance their security posture at each phase of development. DevSecOps fully supports this mission to counter security challenges like data breaches and other security vulnerabilities wherever they may lurk within the development process.

The rise of DevSecOps marks a shift in corporate attitudes about security issues. At one time, DevOps security was treated by many organizations as an afterthought. Security checks were implemented along with other final checks performed at the end of the SDLC. This often created situations where siloes could spring up and hide vulnerabilities, with the eventual corrections that needed to be made costing even more than they would have had they been flagged and fixed earlier.

Those old attitudes still exist, but for most, DevOps security has moved on significantly. DevSecOps fully recognizes the advanced complexity of the many types of threats now facing software development teams and seeks to deal with cybersecurity issues during an earlier stage or development and spread out the shared responsibility to counter security risks among more or all of the related team members.

This concept of baking enhanced security into a project starting at an earlier stage is known as “shift left.” The term supposes the viewer is looking at a left-to-right production timeline. Engaging in shift-left testing means integrating heightened testing at the left end of the chart, near the beginning of project activity.

Instilling and ensuring security requires a number of moving parts and different practices operating in proper coordination.

Consider it the defender at the gate, keeping out unwanted intruders. Access control governs how permissions are granted to entities seeking to access digital resources. It does this through authentication processes that confirm individual identity and grant privileged access to specially authorized users. Access management plays a key role in companies complying with regulatory requirements like HIPAA, which guards the confidentiality of patient medical data.

The business of defining how software should behave falls to the DevSecOps frameworks that are in place. Frameworks provide information related to best practices, related processes and security tools. They also explain how security is to be integrated into each stage of development, and what dependencies exist between different software components or systems. This assists with vulnerability management and protecting production environments.

In the configuration management systems engineering process, the emphasis is on making sure that a product’s attributes remain consistent throughout its lifecycle. There wouldn't be a need for configuration management were it not for the vast number of changes that a software system routinely has to absorb. Configuration management ensures that despite changes, the system works as planned.

Instead of blindly assuming that company software is safe, vulnerability management assumes it might not be, and could be subject to any number of security liabilities. It’s a heavily proactive approach, built on first identifying potential vulnerabilities through vulnerability scanning of the codebase and later using remediation to fix those vulnerabilities before they can become exploited by cybercriminals.

Secrets management is another related discipline that addresses the pressing and ongoing need for secure information. Just as it sounds, secrets management helps users store and manage sensitive data like passwords, encryption keys (secret codes to secure data) and API keys that authorize applications when they interact with an application programming interface (API).

Cloud environments are often richly packed data repositories, so they need the extra protection DevSecOps provides. Cloud-native apps must spin up quickly, and DevSecOps helps by ensuring they operate smoothly, even with their rapid development cycles. DevOps security also protects workloads from misconfigurations and other cyber threats.

It’s easy to say that a company is putting extra muscle into maintaining effective security measures. However, for an organization to fully realize its security goals, it will need to embrace security best practices in addition to effective DevOps processes. Here are some of the key concepts that go into making DevSecOps pay off.

There’s a good bit of specialization present among various DevSecOps testing schemes, as you can see from these examples:

• Application security testing (AST): As its name implies, application security testing (AST) deals with assessing the security problems affecting applications. AST covers a range of highly unique tests, each with their own spin on the DevOps process.    
  • Static Application Security Testing (SAST) lets testers spot security vulnerabilities in an application through code analysis of the source code, byte code or binary code.
  • Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) is a cybersecurity process in which applications are run and their behavior checked for anomalies. DAST lets teams see how apps will react to real-world cyberattacks.
• Penetration testing: Also called “pen testing,” penetration testing takes the form of a simulated cyberattack (triggered by a security expert posing as a hacker) on an application, network or system. This is basically a type of fire drill in which an organization’s security infrastructure is pitted against an intruding attack to see if the organization's resources can withstand the damage and still operate as needed.
• Software composition analysis: Software composition analysis evaluates the software components that go into making up an application and checks them for possible vulnerabilities. Such components include third-party code and open-source libraries. Software composition analysis also assists in supporting license compliance.

DevSecOps methodology is versatile and can be applied to a variety of programming purposes:

• Kubernetes: The Kubernetes platform works hand-in-glove with DevSecOps practices, especially when it comes to bringing enhanced security to containerized apps and infrastructure. Kubernetes promotes a security-based framework where threats are effectively detected, analyzed and defused—from the start of development through deployment and runtime (which is the period when the computer program is executing).
• Microservices: Microservices spring from the idea that an application can be constructed from a number of smaller, loosely coupled services that are independent in nature. While this enables apps that feature more scalability and agility and can be introduced in a faster release cycle, microservices architectures are intrinsically more complex, and therefore need the extra security help DevSecOps offers.   
• Supply chains: Supply chains benefit highly from DevSecOps. Supply chains can be frighteningly complicated, and such complexities often provide hackers with opportunities for hiding malware. Supply chain management requires a “clean" production environment, and DevSecOps helps foster that.