Importance Of DevSecOps: Adding Security To DevOps
In the race, if delivering faster, the security of the data is often overlooked. With the implementation of DevOps, quality is improved, but developers fail to inspect the security concepts of the system. DevOps transformed the organisation’s processes to deliver more applications with less delivery time. But the risk of security beaches made more than 43% company to include security practices within the DevOps processes.
DevSecOps bridges the distance between the development engineers and the security team. The unification of development, operations and security promises to give solutions to complex software development processes using an agile framework. DevSecOps is imperative for advancing the older security models within the DevOps continuous delivery pipeline. It ensures that the codes remain safe and are delivered in a fast and secure manner.
The process needs to be followed throughout all the phases of delivery. Thus DevSecOps together with DevOps emphasises and streamlines the two main but opposing goals: “Speedy delivery” and “Code security”. During the cycle, security testing is done parallelly without breaking or slowing down the delivery cycles. In the meantime, if any critical issue is raised, it is rectified at the same time ensuring that no threat occurs at the later stages or there is no room left for compromise at any stage. So what are the benefits of DevSecOps approach? Let’s have a look.
By taking the DevSecOps road, the security protocols are not ignored and followed in the agile framework of development. The DevOps team and security teamwork in collaboration with a clear goal of delivering secure code in less time. This approach resulted in benefitting the company by giving them better Return On Investment and improving their operational efficiency, 2017 EMA report suggests.
Adding to the list, top another benefit of taking DevSecOps approach is that the companies were fully able to utilise the cloud services. For instance, the companies who run their services in Amazon Web Services have the advantage of using preventive and detective security controls of AWS. This service helps them keep running their operations. But the ones who do not use AWS, the crucial security threats may cause costly downtimes. Some other advantages of DevSecOps include:
Security teams have higher speed and agility to perform the operations;
Any change or rectification need can be attended speedily;
As the teams work together, they have better communication and feel united;
Any vulnerabilities or threat gets identified at an early stage;
The process delivers high-quality output.
Getting started with DevSecOps:
DevSecOps is spreading like wildfire. It is helping organisations to solve the threats in real-time and thereby increase the quality of the software. DevSecOps utilises the Test Data effectively and has raised the importance of the security teams, which was once considered as a hindrance in the agile process. Early detection of the security glitch saves a lot of time, resources and costs of an organisation. Also, with the higher usage of cloud services, companies have to scale up the process properly.
The six important components of DevSecOps approach are:
Code analysis: This approach delivers small pieces so that security teams can identify the threats easily and quickly;
Change management: Since the process is followed along with DevOps and DataOps, the speed and efficiency of the process is increased considerably, and changes can be identified and checked rapidly;
Compliance monitoring: The process makes an organisation ready for an audit at any time. This ensures that the software maintain compliance throughout the processes;
Threat investigation: As mentioned above, the codes are delivered in chunks making it possible for the security team to identify the emerging threats that can cost high if identified at later stages. Also, they are able to respond and resolve it quickly.
Vulnerability assessment: Security team performs the code analysis and identifies the vulnerabilities and get it patched.
Security training: As the software needs to be kept up-to-date, the engineers and the security team are trained continuously and acknowledged with the guidelines on a daily basis.
It is high time that you start adopting this automated security process, DevSecOps for your organisation and achieves the security goals set for the company.