What’s the value that DevSecOps brings for Application Security?

Cybersecurity and Cyber threats are becoming a growing concern for every organization as well as an individual user. DevSecOps comes in as a concept and a methodology that plugs in security way ahead in the application development lifecycle. The ultimate objective is to minimize vulnerabilities and squeeze in security within the IT and business objectives as a quintessential component. How effective this can be? Most critically, is DevSecOps adding real value within the Application Security lifecycle?

DevSecOps works on the premise that Security is a woven part of operations and development and a shared responsibility in the software development lifecycle. It tries to bring in security within every aspect of development and automates the core security tasks in the DevOps workflow, instead of it being pushed towards the end of the flow.

What’s the core idea behind DevSecOps?

As quality becomes a shared responsibility with Agile and DevOps, everyone gets responsible for ‘security’ in a DevSecOps scenario. This implies that no security aspect can be ignored in the application development lifecycle. Today, applications are being deployed on the Cloud, which has improved its scalability and speed, but has also intensified the chances of a security or data breach.

DevSecOps is being adopted and introduced within the software development cycle to bring more stability for the application even in the longer run. It’s like integrating IT operations, development, and security under a ‘single automation’ strategy. The idea is to not only ensure security all through the application development, but also bring down the time and accelerate the development cycle.

Most of the times Security becomes a roadblock for rapid application development and any kind of IT innovation. With DevSecOps the equation changes and the test code is brought under scrutiny for all security checks and validations. Sometimes security and compliance monitoring tools are not enough for security testing purposes. That’s when DevSecOps comes in to accelerate and foolproof the strategy.

If we gauge the impact that technology is going to have on the application development process; it’s substantial. All through the technology adoption process, security will continue to become a growing concern for all. When Security is combined in the DevOps strategy, the issue gets resolved to a great extent. Instances such as downtime, random security attacks, and breaches can be reduced to a great extent.

DevSecOps gaining significance and why?

As Gartner details, this (DevSecOps) can lead to security functions like identity and access management (IAM), firewalling, and vulnerability scanning being enabled programmatically throughout the DevOps lifecycle, leaving security teams free to set policies. The analyst firm predicts that DevSecOps — which is slightly different from SecDevOps — will be embedded into 80 percent of rapid development teams by 2021.

Summing up the benefits of DevSecOps can be simple, but practically conceptualizing it within the development cycle can be tricky. Nevertheless, one thing is clear, there will be more automation to bring down any chances of downtime or attack on the application. It will also eliminate the need for any manual configuration of security controls. Every test will be automated and security will get more process driven than just being driven by a particular purpose. Apart from automation, what else is there on the charts?

No delay in fixing security

Imagine the costs that you can incur if the security checks are not done in time and the issues are not fixed quickly. It can further obstruct smooth functioning and delay the development phases. By bringing in security within the DevOps equation, major issues get resolved. The speed of delivery is also taken care of by fixing security issues as they happen even with live applications.

In fact, even the speed of recovery improves in case there is a security incident, where templates and tools are used to automate and make the process seamless. Ultimately, it helps to promote a secure product and bring it confidently to the users.

Reduces vulnerabilities

Security of an application depends a lot on weighing its vulnerabilities and cutting down any kind of insecurities. DevSecOps helps to bring down the vulnerabilities, maximizes test coverage, and intensifies automation of security frameworks. This ultimately gives immense scope of bringing down cybercrime related incidents, intensify security auditing and monitoring.

As the DevSecOps rule books states, Security is everyone’s responsibility, which boosts transparency right from the beginning of the development cycle. The effort is collaborative in maintaining security protocols and ensuring it even when the application is in the hands of the users.

Continuous improvement, Continuous Security

As per the DevOps guidelines, there has to be continuous development and continuous deployment. That’s the way DevSecOps works by fostering a development scenario that enables constant changes and improvements. Hence, security is not a one-time task, it has to be a constant endeavour to ensure that your application is stable even in a volatile digital scenario.

A report on ‘Best Practices: Strategies for making The Crucial Shift to DevSecOps’ by Forrester mentions, ‘Cybersecurity needs help from infrastructure and operations (I&O) teams. Threats are evolving faster than ever and becoming increasingly sophisticated. Consumers drive shorter release cycles by development and operations (DevOps) that limit time for security testing. DevOps teams must embrace security to form a development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) team, adding automated testing throughout the build/test/release/run life cycle. In this report, we describe best practices to help I&O pros integrate security while retaining or improving agility.’

At Cigniti, we standardize efforts and ensure accelerated time to market with DevOps Testing. We also focus on delivering improved deployment quality and greater operational efficiency. Connect with us to understand the value that DevOps and DevSecOps can bring for your business.