Main takeaways from this article:
DevSecOps adds security to the developmental process by shifting security left—from the start of development to deployment.
Your team can benefit from several advantages by adopting a DevSecOps approach, like improved security posture, faster recovery time, and enhanced compliance and risk management.
There are key challenges you should consider for different architectures, such as securing a large structure like monolithic architecture or securing the distributed nature of a microservices architecture. Learn how to tackle those obstacles for improved security.
DevSecOps challenges include balancing speed and security, overcoming cultural and organizational hurdles, and tackling complexity in implementation.
Learn how to implement DevSecOps in six key steps.
DevSecOps is a proactive approach to development that puts security considerations at the forefront of every decision—from design to deployment.
Learn how DevSecOps continues to change the cloud security landscape, what methodologies and tactics you can use to implement successful security practices, and how to adopt a solution to keep your organization secure.
Explained: What is DevSecOps?
Teams can’t perform their best if they're working and communicating in silos—especially as innovations in cloud technology change the threat landscape. DevOps leaders are learning that making security a pillar in the development process is a more efficient and safer approach for their organizations.
By integrating proactive security before deployment, DevSecOps provides smoother, more efficient, and more secure software delivery.
What’s the difference between DevOps and DevSecOps?
While DevOps includes software development and operations through people, processes, and technology, DevSecOps adds one crucial step: security.
In a DevSecOps environment, security considerations influence every decision, from design to deployment. This proactive approach mitigates risks and streamlines the development process by identifying and addressing security issues early. This ensures that security isn’t an afterthought and reduces the need for time-consuming fixes later.
One key part of the DevSecOps process is automated tools that offer security scanning, continuous monitoring, and compliance checks. Leveraging these tools allows your team to consistently maintain security throughout the development life cycle without sacrificing DevOps’ speed and agility.
The benefits of DevSecOps: What you have to gain
DevSecOps is a response to a subset of cyberattacks and the difficulty teams have in integrating security into the DevOps cycle while maintaining speed.
When companies like Google fall victim to cyberattacks—the most recent of which was 7.5 times larger than its last one—organizations can’t ignore the complexity and frequency of modern cyber threats, especially for the cloud.
For example, the SolarWinds hack in 2020 was one of the most significant breaches in history and affected thousands of companies, including the US government. SolarWinds, without knowing, included malware within an update. Because of this, the hackers gained access to Orion users, their data, and networks all over the web. Since the hackers targeted a third party, they could find vulnerabilities that affected a wider range of platforms and users with its supply chain attack.
This continuous acceleration in threats for the cloud and new technologies means that teams need DevSecOps to anticipate future vulnerabilities.
DevSecOps serves a pivotal role by shifting the security process left and making scrutiny a part of the software development process. For example, implementing automated code scanning during development can catch security vulnerabilities before they make it to production.
Overall, adding SecOps to the process brings several benefits:
Improved security posture: DevSecOps helps teams identify and mitigate vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, exposed secrets, and malware and reduces the chances of security breaches.
Faster recovery times: DevSecOps practices allow for quicker identification and response times to minimize the impact on operations, even during a security incident.
Enhanced compliance and risk management: With regular security audits and compliance checks, DevSecOps ensures that software complies with regulatory standards and reduces legal and financial risks.
Strengthened collaboration and communication: DevSecOps fosters a culture where security is everyone’s responsibility. This strengthens collaboration between development, operations, and security teams.
Increased efficiency and cost-effectiveness: By catching security issues early in the software development life cycle (SDLC), DevSecOps reduces costly, time-consuming late-stage fixes. This more effective process means security teams aren’t slowing down sales and deployment initiatives by working within a proactive security approach.
However, while DevSecOps offers clear benefits, it’s not without its challenges.
The challenges of DevSecOps with different architectures
Your organization can tackle relevant obstacles while transitioning to a DevSecOps model, according to your architecture. Below are some popular architectures, along with their unique challenges and implications:
Monolithic architecture
Like many legacy systems, monolithic systems are inflexible and vulnerable, and a compromise can affect the entire infrastructure—even if it affects only one part.
Because the architecture is for a unified application, your team may find it challenging to manage and protect because of its large size.
Challenges and approaches include:
Lack of modularity: Large codebases and a lack of modularity make changing independent components difficult. Plus, when the team provides an update or patch, they could interrupt the application and slow down development. Your team can practice modular testing to break up the codebase into digestible units so it’s easier to test.
Delays from identifying vulnerabilities: If your team finds a security issue later in the developmental process, going back to patch the error can slow down deployment. With automated security checks, your DevSecOps team can implement analysis tools in the CI/CD pipeline to address security vulnerabilities before they deploy applications.
Inefficient management and deployment: Your team can’t work efficiently within the operational workflow when they have to maintain a massive infrastructure as a unified process. To counteract this, you can use containerization, which simplifies deployment and management by isolating components. This allows for easier testing and scaling while reducing the risk of interruptions during updates.
Microservices architecture addresses the monolithic model issue by breaking down applications into independent services. Each service couples with a specific function.
Because of this structure, your DevSecOps professionals may find the architecture easier to maintain than monolithic models and more secure due to risk isolation, where one vulnerability doesn’t immediately compromise the rest of the system.
These independent deployments and improved scalability still face challenges, though, mainly because of their distributed nature.
Challenges and approaches include:
New attack surfaces: Since your organization relies on many services, you’ll need more security to avoid exposure. This could mean securing APIs with authentication methods like OAuth or encrypting data transfers with protocols like transport layer security. Your team can also implement service meshes for consistent security, policy enforcement, and traffic monitoring across different microservices.
Increased complexities: Maintaining visibility and understanding of the interdependencies between services can be challenging and complex, especially when misconfigurations and failures cause downtimes. Service discovery tools, dependency mapping tools, and similar platforms can provide your team with insights into performance, health, and overall architecture.
Serverless architecture
Serverless computing is a popular architecture for modern teams that relies on third-party cloud services.
The risks and responsibilities your company faces depend on the type of cloud model you choose, which then affects how much control you have over data security compared to the cloud provider. However, since both organizations and cloud providers share security responsibilities, you should collaborate to manage and secure data, no matter what.
Challenges and approaches include:
Multi-location workforces: With the rise of remote and hybrid work, it’s much more difficult for a company to secure and manage data when teams are in different locations and time zones and use many different devices that may be exposed to environments that organizations may not be aware of. Platforms like Wiz explicitly provide cloud-native solutions for these challenges.
Role, access, and responsibility identification: Knowing which users can have access to what becomes more complex across different devices, countries, and cities. Your team can improve its serverless architecture by implementing modern identity and access management protocols and tools. These will protect data while granting authorized users access when they need it. Additionally, monitoring and auditing access are necessary to detect possible vulnerabilities before attacks.
Hybrid architecture
The hybrid architecture leverages serverless systems’ flexibility and convenience while using the privacy and control of an on-premise or third-party site system. Often, hybrid systems implement multi-cloud technology, which involves using different cloud providers alongside on-site systems.
While the hybrid model absorbs the same cloud challenges as serverless systems and similar challenges as traditional on-premise systems, it faces unique issues because the two models work together.
Challenges and approaches include:
Inconsistent data quality: You may risk compromising your information during migrations and data transfer between other providers and users. Your team can overcome this challenge by seamlessly unifying tools across different architectures.
Multiple security platforms: Combining architectures and using multiple tools to secure them can open up your team to breaches due to complex stack inefficiencies. Not only can this open you up to compromises, but often, these tools also aren’t designed uniquely for cloud challenges. Your DevSecOps team can adopt all-in-one cloud-native security platforms like Wiz across on-premise and cloud systems to simplify hybrid environment management.
The overall challenges of implementing DevSecOps
No matter what architecture your organization uses, you’ll have to tackle these universal challenges:
Balancing speed and security: This balance requires a mindset shift. Your team should consider security and speed not as opposing forces but as complementary elements of the development process.
Overcoming cultural and organizational hurdles: DevSecOps requires breaking down silos between Dev, Sec, and Ops teams. This creates a cooperative atmosphere where security is a collective duty.
Tackling implementation complexity: Your team should integrate security into existing DevOps processes. This can be complicated, especially for organizations and stakeholders with established workflows.
Keeping up with evolving security threats: The cybersecurity landscape constantly evolves, so new threats emerge regularly. Keeping up with these changes and continuously adapting security measures to counter new threats is a significant challenge in DevSecOps.
Despite these challenges, adopting DevSecOps is crucial for developing secure, reliable software. With the right approach, mindset, and tools, your team can overcome hurdles and pave the way for a more secure and efficient development and delivery process.
Implementing your DevSecOps strategy: Step-by-step
Successfully implementing DevSecOps begins with understanding its mechanics. To seamlessly integrate DevSecOps, follow these essential practices from the planning phase through coding, building, testing, release, deployment, and operation:
1. Design a roadmap to implement DevSecOps practices
Since a DevSecOps approach involves analyzing your current process and embedding security throughout each stage, it’s vital to build a roadmap to ensure a holistic security approach. Your roadmap should include implementation steps—but more importantly, it should clarify the long-term, ongoing support and security practices you want to implement afterward.
First, analyze your processes and infrastructure to find possible vulnerabilities. Your team can review code and identify issues with data flow, server configuration, and protocols for information handling teams. With platforms like Wiz, you can also review vulnerabilities, manage security, and establish cloud configuration rules, such as how API gateways can be accessible for long-term protocols.
Then, establish and clarify actions for when your team detects a policy violation, covered code repository, or threat.
Creating a practical roadmap involves asking the following questions:
What are my current vulnerabilities, and how can I fix them now? Before creating a new process, fix existing issues, such as code vulnerabilities, or data flow weaknesses, such as lack of encryption. Doing so will allow you to start with a strong foundation.
How can I establish shared responsibility across all developmental and operational processes? Clarify what each team is responsible for and create clear protocols for management and detection. Additionally, establish a culture that sets security at the center of every decision.
What processes and metrics can I implement to ensure accountability and prioritize security improvements? To accomplish this, your team should implement audits and tighter feedback loops. Then, you can track each process and create an ongoing dialogue that nurtures and facilitates a security-first mindset across teams.
Once you’ve created a roadmap, establish a timeline that’s challenging enough to motivate your team but reasonable enough to accomplish.
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2. Secure continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines
Your team can improve security by integrating security checks into the CI/CD workflow and using code analysis to detect vulnerabilities, as well as configuration management and compliance monitoring. You can then prevent damaging mistakes and save money and time in the long run in the event of an avoidable breach.
For example, developers can integrate Wiz scans into CI/CD workflows and run secret and misconfiguration scans to block vulnerabilities before introducing the application. These scans can also integrate with AWS CodeBuild, Atlantis, AzureDevOps, and more.
3. Automate security testing
Automation is a key component of DevSecOps. Tools that automate security testing can significantly reduce teams’ time and effort in identifying vulnerabilities.
Wiz’s agentless approach helps your team more proactively find vulnerabilities throughout your information’s lifecycle. It also helps you categorize issues by priority, such as publicly exposed or sensitive data.
Even with today’s innovations, there’s no stopping AI’s trajectory. For instance, AI-driven tools can now provide real-time compliance guidance within integrated development environments, enabling developers to meet standards as they write code.
Rob Aragoa, chief security strategist at OpenText, chimed in about compliance during the OpenText DevSecOps Virtual Summit. DevOps.com sums up his remarks: “Rather than pumping the brakes by requiring developers to go back and fix a defect after an application is developed, the guidance [from AI] will be provided directly within their integrated development environment [...] as code is being written.”
4. Establish security baselines
DevSecOps practices should improve the rate of security defect detection and speed up issue resolution. These baselines serve as a benchmark to measure your DevSecOps initiatives’ effectiveness over time.
For example, you can implement static analysis security testing to analyze source code during the developmental process. This encourages a proactive approach to detecting and fixing vulnerabilities before exposing the application.
Baselines can also include metrics like the number of vulnerabilities detected during static testing, average time-to-remediate, or compliance rates during audits. Additionally, teams can run dynamic analysis security testing to test applications by using simulated attacks to spot possible vulnerabilities.
5. Implement real-time security monitoring
As all security professionals know, the tasks of preparing for and addressing new, rising threats within the cloud environment never end.
Why not anticipate these changes proactively instead of reacting to vulnerabilities once it's too late? Part of this process includes regular training and education, but managers should also create a plan to implement new knowledge and skills. For example, your team can continuously monitor applications and infrastructure for immediate detection and reaction to threats.
Continuous application and infrastructure monitoring enables immediate detection of and reaction to threats. To accomplish this, you can leverage a cloud platform like Wiz, which provides all the cloud-specialized security tools you need to implement automated manual detection, manage and fix vulnerabilities, and maintain your system.
Your team can also conduct regular security audits and compliance checks. These help you adhere to security standards and regulations, which reduces the risk of non-compliance and future breaches.
6. Incorporate a feedback loop into the DevSecOps process
“Shifting left” means more than implementing security at the beginning of the application lifecycle. It’s also about priority and communication.
Start improving priorities by encouraging everyone on your team to value, implement, and think about security as a shared responsibility. One way to do that is through feedback loops, which open a line of communication between your team members. That way, everyone can voice concerns, share ideas, and point out possible vulnerabilities.
Your team can also offer feedback asynchronously. Async methods create faster communication, no matter how busy your team’s schedule is. To do this, your team members can fill out surveys, send video messages, or add comments on documents.
The tighter the feedback loop across the entire DevSecOps life cycle, the more you can improve security from the beginning of development.
Are you looking for more best practices? Check out the guide on the 8 Essential Best Practices for DevSecOps.
Types of DevSecOps tools and their uses
Effective tools automate and streamline security processes and consistently apply security practices across the development life cycle.
You can broadly categorize DevSecOps tools into automation, security scanning, and compliance. Each category plays a vital role in embedding security into the DevOps pipeline, as shown in the chart below:
| Category | Tool examples | Functionality |
|---|---|---|
| Automation tools | Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI | These tools automate security check integration within CI/CD pipelines for early vulnerability detection and continuous security integration. |
| Security scanning and testing tools | SonarQube, Fortify, Veracode | These tools automatically scan code, dependencies, and applications for vulnerabilities, provide real-time feedback, and reduce the time to fix security issues. |
| Compliance and monitoring tools | Splunk, Nagios, New Relic | These tools continuously monitor applications and infrastructure for security breaches or compliance drifts to ensure adherence to security standards. |
Fostering a DevSecOps culture
Successfully implementing DevSecOps goes beyond integrating tools. Your team should also cultivate a security-centric mindset across your organization.
The shift to a DevSecOps culture starts with acknowledging that every team member—not just the security team—should be aware of and committed to the security aspects of the products and services under development.
Strategies for successfully implementing a DevSecOps culture include:
Training and awareness: Regular training sessions and workshops can keep your team informed about the latest security protocols and help them grasp their responsibilities in upholding security.
Collaborating between teams: Fostering open communication and collaboration between development, operations, and security units is essential. Encourage joint planning sessions, shared goals, and cross-functional teams.
Learning from incidents: When security incidents occur, conducting post-mortem analyses can help your team improve processes and prevent future breaches.
Fostering DevSecOps from the top down: Leadership is pivotal for driving the cultural shift toward DevSecOps. As a leader, advocate for the importance of security, allocate resources for training and tooling, and create an environment that prioritizes security.
Have you heard of the OWASP DevSecOps Maturity Model (DSOMM)? It's a five-level framework for assessing and improving DevSecOps practices.
- Level 1: Basic understanding of security practices
- Level 2: Adoption of basic security practices
- Level 3: High adoption of security practices
- Level 4: Very high adoption of security practices
- Level 5: Advanced deployment of security practices at scale
How Wiz empowers a DevSecOps culture
Wiz helps DevSecOps teams secure everything in the cloud while building, improving, and managing applications. But how can you leverage it to establish a stronger DevSecOps culture?
An improved DevSecOps culture starts with creating a system that positions teams to succeed with as little friction as possible. Wiz provides the unified cloud security platform your team needs to create a proactive DevSecOps culture with features and tools that can help them:
Implement early detection in CI/CD pipelines: With Wiz, your team can find vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and secrets thanks to integrations with popular tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, and CircleCI. This way, they can scan infrastructure as code (IaC), container images, and more before deployment. Wiz also makes policy enforcement and remediation easy with automatic flags for violations and actionable suggestions.
Make informed decisions and prevent breaches: From development to runtime, Wiz offers a single-platform approach for full visibility across the entire development lifecycle. And with Wiz’s continuous monitoring, you can collaborate, break down silos, and make improved decisions for better security.
Simplify operations: DevSecOps should include smooth, precise, and accurate systems to help your team adopt a proactive security approach. Wiz provides an improved DevSecOps process through agentless architecture by scanning your cloud infrastructure without complex deployments. This provides an intuitive interface, reporting for more clarity, and flexible interrogations so you can work with the developer tools and workflow you use every day.
Having a unified cloud security platform in the arsenal allows your leaders to foster security-first mindsets. As a result, you’ll be able to mitigate incidents and maintain strong security while also speeding up the development process.
Wiz provides end-to-end cloud security that streamlines processes, offers comprehensive visibility into security postures, and facilitates continuous compliance. With Wiz, your team can:
Secure code: Wiz for code security helps your team ensure the security of your codebase from the earliest stages of development. The platform makes it easy to integrate security directly into the development process.
Secure IaC: Wiz’s IaC security solutions enable you to secure your infrastructure provisioning by identifying and mitigating risks in IaC templates.
Secure supply chain: Wiz’s supply chain security solutions protect against vulnerabilities and threats across the software supply chain. The platform helps you maintain the integrity and security of third-party components and services.
By focusing on these key areas, Wiz supports a comprehensive approach to building a DevSecOps culture that prioritizes security at every stage of the software development life cycle.
Book a demo today to see how Wiz’s industry-leading platform can transform your cloud security.
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