CI/CD Security Best Practices [Cheat Sheet]
After reading this cheat sheet, you'll be able to:
Embed automated security checks at every stage of your CI/CD pipeline.
Protect secrets and enforce least-privilege access for build systems and users.
Detect and respond to pipeline anomalies with a CI/CD-specific incident-response plan.
Key Takeaways
- Pipeline stages introduce unique risksContainer images, dependencies, secrets, and config each need their own controls.
- Automation is your security allyImmutable workers, SAST, and dependency scanners cut risk without slowing releases.
- Visibility plus response equals resilienceContinuous monitoring and a rehearsed IR plan keep threats from becoming outages
This cheat sheet is designed for:
DevOps and platform engineers running Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or similar.
Application-security teams integrating testing and policy gates into pipelines.
Cloud security architects enforcing least-privilege and secure secrets handling.
What's included?
Infrastructure hardening: Immutable build workers, container vulnerability scanning, and root-less containers.
Network segmentation: Isolate build servers and workers with VPCs, subnets, and strict ACLs.
Code & dependency security: Integrate SAST and OWASP Dependency-Check for early flaw detection.
Secrets management: Store and rotate credentials in Vault-style secret stores—never in code or CI variables.
Monitoring & incident response: AI-driven anomaly detection plus a repeatable CI/CD breach playbook.
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