What is SecOps (security operations)?
SecOps is the collaborative integration of IT security and operations teams to protect and manage an organization's digital assets more efficiently. By aligning security and operational goals, SecOps aims to reduce cyber risks without compromising IT performance.
How do SecOps teams make your organization safer?
Having a SecOps team can help your organization proactively identify and mitigate threats before any type of compromise occurs; it also allows you to respond more quickly and efficiently in the event of a breach, malware, data loss, or any other type of incident.
Here are just a few benefits of having a SecOps team in place:
Improves response time by coordinating security and operations teams
Optimizes security efforts—teams don’t duplicate each other’s efforts and nothing falls through the cracks
Enhances compliance posture to avoid risks of penalties and reputational damage
And because you’re working proactively to minimize downtime from security incidents, SecOps can also help you achieve better overall business continuity.
Empowering SecOps in the cloud: enhancing threat detection with Wiz and Google Security Operations
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SecOps vs. DevOps vs. DevSecOps
Let’s do a quick recap of three essential phrases when it comes to IT, software development, and security. All three of the roles described below serve a valuable purpose.
SecOps
Primary goal: Protecting systems and infrastructure
SecOps is concerned with securing the organization’s infrastructure and systems, rather than apps in development.
Another term you may hear is security operations center (SOC). Some organizations use these two terms interchangeably. In general, however, the term SecOps refers to the specific interdisciplinary team of IT and security professionals charged with overseeing security, while SOC is a broader term for the infrastructure (physical and virtual) that supports the SecOps team.
DevOps
Primary goal: Optimizing software development
While SecOps primarily focuses on security, DevOps is all about development.
DevOps is a development approach that stresses the need for dev and IT operations teams to work together and automate wherever possible. Breaking down the silos between these roles can facilitate collaboration, communication, and automation, establishing streamlined CI/CD pipelines that deliver software fast.
However, the rapid pace of DevOps highlights the inherent friction between development and security. Dev teams typically want to code, build, and release fast; because of this, they see security teams as slowing things down due to excessive testing. DevSecOps, discussed in the next section, was created to eliminate this friction.
DevSecOps
Primary goal: Securing software development
While DevOps is primarily concerned with optimizing the software development life cycle (SDLC), DevSecOps places its main focus on incorporating security concerns early on in—and throughout—the SDLC.
DevSecOps aims to build security practices in from the start before apps reach production environments, where vulnerabilities can be a major headache and affect UX. For example, DevSecOps practices empower developers to handle some security testing tasks themselves, ultimately ensuring more secure products.
Unlike SecOps, DevSecOps deals exclusively with the development process. It takes a proactive, preventive approach (often, you’ll hear the term “shift left”), while SecOps is more reactive and protective.
The rest of this article will look at some of the unique features of SecOps that reconcile an organization’s security needs with the everyday challenges of coordinating IT departments.
SecOps methodology
As the name suggests, because SecOps spans both security and operations, the SecOps team has a wide range of responsibilities.
These teams must:
Share information
Align on goals and priorities
Work together to respond to incidents and improve security
Because the demands on SecOps teams are so wide-ranging, you need to leverage automation wherever possible. This not only makes the team’s work easier and cuts response times but also reduces the potential for human error.
Below, we list several tasks a SecOps team will typically handle.
Detecting threats
Tasks: Gather threat Intelligence about relevant systems, apps, and other assets to ensure appropriate prevention and response; correlate threat data and IOCs to reduce false positives; identify, assess, and prioritize risks to inform decision-making.
Requirements: Accurate threat intelligence, asset inventories, ongoing monitoring, and observability tools
Managing vulnerabilities
Tasks: Identify, prioritize, and remediate vulnerabilities across all relevant systems and applications.
Requirements: Access to vulnerability databases such as OpenCVE and Exploit-DB, asset inventories, and strategic prioritization
Ongoing security monitoring
Tasks: Continuously monitor for threats, investigate incidents, and implement response plans.
Requirements: Tools in place to observe network traffic, environments, sensitive filesystems, and more
Responding to incidents
Tasks: Implement predetermined incident response plans, including playbooks.
Requirements: Extensive advance planning, knowledge of best practices, and automation to the greatest extent possible
Reporting and analytics
Tasks: Produce reports for internal and external forensic and compliance purposes; perform root cause analysis and prevent recurrence; derive lessons and insights for continued improvement of security practices, tools, and processes.
Requirements: Visibility, data preservation (for forensics purposes and more), and an understanding of a wide range of environments and tools.
We've discussed SecOps, DevOps, and DevSecOps, but don't forget about SecDevOps! SecDevOps represents a strategic evolution in the integration of security within the DevOps pipeline, emphasizing the importance of addressing security throughout the development lifecycle. Learn more about SecDevOps ->
Building a SecOps team
What roles will you need on your SecOps team? Obviously, a balanced mix of security and IT skillsets will help make the team more effective. IT professionals bring operational knowledge and skills, while security pros bring specialized threat-related knowledge and skills related to security tools and resources.
It can actually be helpful to bring individuals on board who have a background in both areas, such as a security analyst with IT operations know-how, to better understand system behavior and potential vulnerabilities.
Here are a number of roles you may wish to consider as part of your SecOps team.
Core security roles
Security analyst: Detects, investigates, and responds to security incidents
Security engineer: Plans, builds, and maintains your security infrastructure; evaluates and tests vendor tools
Security manager: Oversees the SecOps team and overall security strategy
Operations-oriented roles
IT operations manager: Manages IT infrastructure and services
System administrator: Maintains and supports IT systems
System analyst: Analyzes IT systems and recommends improvements
Hybrid roles
Incident responder: Configures and monitors security tools; handles security incidents from detection to resolution
Threat intelligence analyst: Aggregates, analyzes, and shares information on potential threats
One other persona you’ll definitely need on board is the CISO or your organization’s equivalent. They probably won’t be directly involved in the day-to-day operations of the SecOps team, but when it comes to planning strategic direction, setting and adapting security policies, and ensuring alignment with overall business objectives, their buy-in is essential.
This is the “buck stops here” person for maintaining your company’s end-to-end.end security posture. Plus, they can serve as the bridge between the SecOps team and the C-suite (executive) to ensure that everyone is on the same page while also advocating funding for SecOps projects.
DevOps Security Best Practices [Cheat Sheet]
In this 12 page cheat sheet we'll cover best practices in the following areas of DevOps: secure coding practices, infrastructure security, monitoring and response.
Download Cheat Sheet
Key components: SecOps tooling
SecOps teams use a variety of tools to perform their wide range of functions.
Detection and Response: While EDR focuses on securing individual endpoint devices, CDR extends detection and response capabilities to cloud environments. In modern SecOps, both EDR and CDR are crucial, especially as organizations increasingly adopt hybrid environments where endpoints and cloud resources are tightly interconnected.
Threat intelligence platform (TIP): Provides updated information about potential threats such as malware, along with attack methods and adversary tactics
Security information and event management (SIEM)/Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR): Unifies incoming security data for efficient analysis and automates routine tasks along with incident response actions for security event management
Network security tools: Protect data in transit and prevent unauthorized access by enforcing network policies and segmentation
Vulnerability management: Correlates data on security vulnerabilities with other risk factors to prioritize and streamline remediation efforts
There is constant demand for new types of tools and new capabilities, like tools that can handle security challenges related to AI, e.g., managing AI/ML models and deploying AI-centric apps faster and more securely.
While this may sound complex, many modern solutions bring these tools together behind a single pane of glass, implementing analytics and optimization to cut complexity and reduce errors.
One such solution is a cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP), which provides a unified view of your cloud security posture, incorporating multiple SecOps tools mentioned above for a more effective consolidated approach.
Wiz: Turbo-charging SecOps with actionable insights
As an integrated CNAPP, Wiz brings all your security solutions together behind a single pane of glass. That means you get deep visibility into vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that could be exploited to put your organization at risk.
As more and more of your infrastructure moves to the cloud, SecOps teams need a deeper understanding of cloud security challenges, as well as your specific environment, so they can quickly and efficiently investigate and respond to concerns.
Wiz empowers SecOps teams to detect, investigate, and respond to security threats across all your systems, offering:
Comprehensive Visibility
Wiz offers extensive visibility across cloud environments, helping SecOps teams:
Scan and monitor resources across multiple cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.) and services (VMs, containers, serverless functions, databases, etc.)
Gain a unified view of the entire cloud stack through its security graph technology
This comprehensive visibility allows SecOps to maintain awareness of their full cloud footprint and potential security issues.
Risk Prioritization
Wiz helps SecOps teams focus on the most critical security risks by:
Automatically identifying and prioritizing critical vulnerabilities and misconfigurations
Detecting toxic combinations of issues that create attack paths
Providing a single risk queue that highlights the most urgent security tasks
This prioritization enables SecOps to address the most impactful security issues first, improving overall risk posture.
Automated Detection and Response
To support rapid threat detection and response, Wiz offers:
Real-time threat detection capabilities
Out-of-the-box playbooks for common security scenarios
Automated evidence collection to speed up investigations
These features help SecOps teams quickly identify and respond to potential security incidents in their cloud environments.
Cross-Team Collaboration
Wiz facilitates better collaboration between security and development teams by:
Providing project-based workflows for addressing security issues
Offering remediation guidance to help fix misconfigurations and policy violations
Enabling proactive security measures throughout the development lifecycle
This collaborative approach helps bridge the gap between SecOps and development teams, leading to more efficient security processes.
With prioritized, context-rich cloud security information, Wiz cuts the friction between your security and IT teams and lets them collaborate to keep you safer. In fact, 40% of the Fortune 100 have already embraced Wiz to quickly identify and remove critical cloud risks.
Learn why CISOs at the fastest growing companies choose Wiz to power their shift towards DevSecOps.
