What is DevSecOps? Definition, Tools & Practices

With the Dynatrace Software Intelligence Platform’s Application Security module, the same OneAgent that provides deep observability for application performance also provides deep observability for security issues. The Dynatrace OneAgent provides rich information, such as which libraries are called, how they’re used, whether a process is exposed to the internet and whether an application or service interacts with sensitive “crown jewel” type data. This is much agile development devsecops richer information than traditional security scanners or behavioral anomaly tools can deliver. By combining security with contextual awareness and observability, Dynatrace Application Security delivers the accuracy and precision teams need to achieve their DevSecOps goals. Explore our interactive product tour to see how our unique approach to application security helps DevSecOps teams innovate faster with less risk and drive better business outcomes.

DevOps has gained ground in recent years as a way to combine key operational principles with development cycles, recognizing that these two processes must coexist. Siloed post-development operations can make it easier to identify and address potential problems, but this approach requires developers to circle back and solve software issues before they can move forward with new development. VMware’s approach to DevSecOps is designed to provide development teams with the full security stack. This is achieved by establishing ongoing collaboration between development, release management (also known as operations), and the organization’s security team and emphasizing this collaboration along each stage of the CI/CD Pipeline. Historically, security considerations and practices were often introduced late in the development lifecycle. DevSecOps (short for development, security, and operations) is a development practice that integrates security initiatives at every stage of the software development lifecycle to deliver robust and secure applications.

Process

Deliver code frequently so that vulnerabilities are quickly identified with each code update. In both practices, the key to monitoring is a proactive approach instead of a reactive one. By keeping apprised of changes in the environment, code can be built or changed efficiently and securely. While DevOps and DevSecOps share much in common, there are several important differences in how they function.

Everyone involved should understand the cultural change required, with a renewed and constant focus on security. When transitioning from DevOps to DevSecOps, be prepared to get your teams on board before changing your process. Preparation involves making sure everyone is on the same page about the necessity and benefits.

DevSecOps Tools and Technologies

So how can you separate DevOps from DevSecOps when they function along the same structure? The two practices involve entirely different activities and best practices to achieve their differing goals. In addition, there are several operational differences between DevOps and DevSecOps. DevSecOps means that every employee and team is responsible for security from the outset, and they must make decisions efficiently and put them into action without forfeiting security. Lucian Constantin writes about information security, privacy, and data protection for CSO. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.

Penetration testing, or ethical hacking, simulates a cyberattack to test your business’s cybersecurity capability. A web application pen test evaluates an application on the web using a three-phase process. Penetration testing, as well as numerous other security practices, should happen before a breach occurs. A transition from DevOps to DevSecOps generally means making a shift left or moving the process closer to the customer. Preparing teams to understand the need for a transition and how it will affect your application development is a vital first step.

Rapid, cost-effective software delivery

Creating and enforcing these expectations across your team of architects is imperative to ensuring regulatory compliance. If your development teams want to implement DevSecOps for their projects successfully, the following suggestions can help overcome common challenges and get them started. A shift to a DevSecOps philosophy will not happen overnight and will require buy-in at all levels of your organization.

Security professionals need to stay updated with the latest automation techniques, tools and security practices. Regular training and skill-enhancement programs are essential to effectively leverage automation and make informed decisions. Testing might occur automatically and frequently throughout the process alongside product development, and all groups can be involved in long-term maintenance. This siloed structure is only sometimes conducive to efficiency, as each team has priorities, tasks, and timelines that don’t necessarily align with the surrounding groups. Throughout development, testing, and operations, continuously monitor software for vulnerabilities.

Empower Developers with regular security training

Monitoring involves tracking the overall security posture of an application, to identify new vulnerabilities or misconfigurations that can occur while it is running in production. In addition, monitoring is critical for discovering threats and security breaches. When a threat is discovered or a breach occurs, lessons should be learned to improve the DevSecOps process and prevent similar incidents in the future.

• Businesses can overcome these challenges, especially once management, development, IT, and security teams realize the benefits of implementing DevSecOps.
• Given that this was not a core responsibility of a DevOps engineer or software developer in the past, it may be necessary for the organization to upskill staff to support these new requirements.
• But as software developers adopted Agile and DevOps practices, aiming to reduce software development cycles to weeks or even days, the traditional ‘tacked-on’ approach to security created an unacceptable bottleneck.
• Preparing teams to understand the need for a transition and how it will affect your application development is a vital first step.
• This is much richer information than traditional security scanners or behavioral anomaly tools can deliver.
• DevSecOps is a trending practice in application security (AppSec) that involves introducing security earlier in the software development life cycle (SDLC).

DevOps wants to create an application, fix bugs and deploy updates and optimize infrastructure to create the best product as quickly as possible. The major goals of DevOps are to shorten the software development life cycle and enable continuous development and delivery. They should know how to identify and measure security risks and exposures and apply security controls. DevSecOps (development plus security plus operations) is an approach that combines application development, security, operations and infrastructure as code (IaC) in an automated continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. Traditionally, major software developers used to release new versions of their applications every few months or even years.

DevSecOps skills

This step helps close the security gap and improve security knowledge for everyone on the team. This report dives into the strategies, tools, and practices impacting software security. Application Programming Interface plays an important role in allowing organizations to create new and innovative services.

The team should include members from the development, security, and infrastructure groups, as you’ll need input from all these areas to plan the move to DevSecOps. Look at implementing a few essential security checks into the SDLC as a proof of concept, but remember to keep it simple at the beginning. When considering DevOps versus DevSecOps, the major consideration is the integration of security practices. DevSecOps is built on DevOps and takes the philosophy one step further, like DevOps did for Agile. DevSecOps is designed to implement security for applications in the cloud, tackling any security threat before it becomes a security issue.

What is DevSecOps Automation?

DevSecOps environments place security at the start of the development lifecycle, requiring software and security engineers to collaborate with the development team. Each organization has unique challenges and must determine the best DevSecOps strategy for its existing infrastructure, policies, and business needs. Businesses can overcome these challenges, especially once management, development, IT, and security teams realize the benefits of implementing DevSecOps. Although AST tools are useful for identifying vulnerabilities, they can also add complexity and slow down software delivery cycles.

It’s already a challenge to form a cohesive team of Dev and Ops, and adding a third team of security, known to work in silos, amplifies the complexity. DevSecOps implies that every employee and team is responsible for security from the start, and they must make decisions quickly and implement them without jeopardizing security. The urgency to push a product to the market at the right time, as soon as possible.

Security Testing

If such a vulnerability was found, the version would need to go back to the developer often from a staging or (worse) production environment. This was not agile and hence the need for integration of security with DevOps i.e. DevSecOps, sometimes called shift-left due to expanding security to the left side of SDLC diagrams. You can’t answer the question of “What is DevSecOps” or truly understand the DevSecOps meaning without being familiar with the five stages of DevOps. The DevOps methodology is an agile and collaborative approach that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to streamline the entire software delivery life cycle. It aims to facilitate faster and more reliable software releases, improved collaboration between teams and enhanced customer satisfaction.