Developers are crucial in enhancing security and ensuring high performance throughout the development pipeline. DevSecOps—short for development security operations—indicates a commitment to security testing and mitigation of vulnerabilities before a release. Baking security into the code is more effective and efficient than testing a release candidate after the fact, only to be forced into corrective action.
An essential component of DevSecOps is security training for all staff. Training ensures that everyone knows the guidelines and how to implement them. Another includes compliance monitoring of all parts of DevSecOps. Developers should detect vulnerabilities early by analyzing the code, developing and reviewing the code in small batches, and applying static application security testing (SAST).
The final component is automation. Automatic security protocols help maintain timely code delivery in a continuous integration/deployment (CI/CD) environment. Developers following the steps below can enhance security and improve the development pipeline.
Start each release with security in mind. Instead of adding security at the end, enhance security throughout the development cycle. However, development has the potential to become siloed, such that different teams may have different procedures, tools, and outcomes. Ensuring code security becomes even more challenging if an organization outsources part of the process to an external development provider.
Security and development teams must actively build critical relationships and maintain a collaborative, security-minded culture to avoid these pitfalls. A direct connection between development and security staff limits the segmentation of these two areas and results in peers working toward the same goal.
All security and development team members should use the same analysis and code scanning tools. The development community and those who write business and software requirements should also develop a deep partnership.
Moreover, new hires should be passionate about security. Finding team members who share this passion and growing their technical skills in-house will pay dividends to any DevOps team by building a security culture.
Using unique tools and processes in different groups is neither agile nor unified. It may even result in the loss of information or division of criteria, despite the teams attempting to meet the same objectives. If everyone has the same information about vulnerabilities and defects, they will have the context to help them understand, remediate, and resolve issues.
The Open Web Application Security Project, or OWASP, offers tools and tutorials to help developers and security staff learn and collaborate on best practices for developing secure applications.
Communication between the developer and security teams must be peer-based, with everyone on equal footing. However, teams that place passionate, security-minded people in charge of regular training see results. Security champions can help ensure practical training by including demonstrations of cyber attacks so security teams can receive hands-on experience with real-world scenarios.
Developers should aspire to greatness as a badge of honor. With equitable communication and strong advocacy, the team can better understand the security acceptance criteria and an objective view of the risks present in each change of requirements. Regular training on fresh skills and concepts — plus a safe environment to gain experience fighting real-world security threats — engages everyone and builds enthusiasm for effective security practices.
Security champions understand the code they are securing. Therefore, they can build credibility with development teams using their ability to help with the code directly. This is where hiring passionate security people and providing training on cloud application security technology can directly benefit a DevOps organization.
The status of release candidates should be automatically registered so security experts and developers can stay informed. This way, everyone will be updated on whether a build is ready to progress in the development pipeline.
Status registration can also be used for management decisions. Managers know the objective criteria for release acceptance and can tell if a release candidate meets them. Therefore, they can determine which vulnerabilities could have been avoided during analysis and identify anyone not adhering to the security agreement for coding.
Continuous improvement reduces the number of defects and vulnerabilities found within an application. However, not every issue must be resolved or remediated at the same time. Instead, risk classification can be applied to the criticality and consequences of each defect to estimate the effort to fix it. The business risks should be considered, and the potential consequences, such as a denial-of-service attack or impersonation, should be identified to help mitigation efforts.
It’s essential to evaluate the cost and benefit of each repair while creating an action plan to progressively repair the most critical vulnerabilities and efficiently mitigate the remaining defects. Continuous improvement that includes mitigation steps does not interrupt the code evolution cycle, thus streamlining development and release.
Without measurement, there is no way to know if any effort is effective. Development teams can establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to provide valuable, actionable data that helps the team improve with each iteration. Setting a fixed period for measurements, such as monthly, quarterly, or annually, is essential. This is because measuring a consistent period reduces confounding variables.
Examples of actionable KPIs include:
The success of the company’s DevSecOps culture should also be measured. Employees in both security and development can be surveyed to ensure appropriate feedback and provide an opportunity to improve and build better relationships throughout the company.
By following these five critical steps throughout DevSecOps, the development cycle can become more cost-effective by reducing defect remediation, reducing the number of release candidates required for a single release, and reworking.
These steps also ensure that every team member adds value and feels valued. This peer-based system relieves siloing and encourages collaboration.
The increasingly rapid pace of software development and release often overwhelms application security teams with the task of ensuring all products meet necessary security standards while maintaining a timely release schedule. Incorporating security testing into planning and design can help achieve the primary goal of delivering better software faster.
Combining development and security throughout the lifecycle reduces the effort required to detect and remediate issues. If everyone considers security as they develop applications and solutions, fewer defects and security issues will make it into a release candidate.
Security should become a shared responsibility integrated into the development and security life cycles, leading core functional teams to collaborate more seamlessly throughout all the software development life cycle (SDLC) stages. DevSecOps empowers CI/CD systems, improving efficiency by enabling organizations to find and fix security flaws in real time.
Organizations that foster a DevSecOps culture understand how teams can build in security. Knowing where to add security into the SDLC reaps financial gains and high credibility in the industry. Building and maintaining a reputation for security and creating a DevSecOps culture are essential for growing and retaining business.
These security-minded organizations acknowledge the threat of vulnerabilities so they can get down to proactively preventing security events through the power of their developer–security culture.
DevSecOps requires checking source code for defects and scanning for efficiency, maintainability, portability, reliability, and security. A complete vulnerability and analysis tool that the entire team uses can enhance communication between the security and development staff. Essential application security tools include static application security testing and software composition analysis (SCA).
Kiuwan takes a rigorous approach to detecting vulnerabilities throughout the software development supply chain. We strive to achieve security compliance with industry standards, allowing DevOps to manage security seamlessly within the code.
Contact Kiuwan for more information about SAST, OWASP, and open-source security development.
