The DevSecOps Playbook: 15 Key Practices for Your Company's Success

The combination of DevOps and security is known as DevSecOps. This combination has become necessary for modern IT firms, as developing secure software while meeting market speed and scale needs has always been a paradox.

Businesses tend to sacrifice security because they fear lagging in terms of speed to market. That is why adopting DevSecOps and building security into software immediately becomes an obvious solution. Sooner or later, this strategy will conquer the software development field. 

“Enterprises are sacrificing mobile device security for greater speed (62%), more convenience (52%), or the opportunity to gain greater profitability (46%)”

Integrating IT security with your Development and Operations team is essential, as security plays a vital role in your application's life cycle. However, when transitioning from DevOps to DevSecOps, companies often encounter a common set of obstacles. The majority of company tech teams lack adequate knowledge of DevSecOps implementation. Following DevSecOps best practices, on the other hand, can easily mitigate such worries.

Now that we've discussed why transitioning to DevSecOps is necessary, let's understand what the term means and what it entails.

DevSecOps meaning

DevSecOps combines development, security, and operations. It's a culture, automation, and platform design approach that emphasizes security as a shared responsibility throughout the IT lifecycle.

DevSecOps involves designing applications and infrastructure with security in mind immediately. It also includes automating some security checkpoints to avoid slowing down the existing DevOps process. Choosing the correct tools to continuously integrate security, such as deciding on an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with security capabilities, can assist in achieving these objectives. 

Advantages of undertaking DevSecOps practices

There are numerous advantages to incorporating security into the software development life cycle at every stage. The most important ones are given here:

1. Cost reduction

Cost reduction is possible by recognizing and resolving security issues early in the development process.

2. Quick delivery

As security bottlenecks are reduced or removed, delivery speed improves.

3. Fast recovery

Using templates and pet/cattle methods enhances the recovery speed in the event of a security problem.

4. Enhanced monitoring

Increased threat intelligence, as a result of improved monitoring and auditing, minimizes the risk of a breach, avoiding unwanted publicity and reputational harm (to say nothing of regulator fines).

DevSecOps practices enable businesses to innovate safely at speed and scale. Complying with legislation and governance standards costs less, and software delivery speeds up.

Simultaneously, increased transparency allows for better threat intelligence across the board and considerably faster reaction and recovery times. 

Unveiling the top 15 DevSecOps tools

One of the most essential characteristics of DevSecOps is that it challenges traditional security teams' integration with the rest of the company. Changing behaviors and boosting awareness throughout a company at all levels is a complex process that requires following some of these best practices.

1. Develop a DevSecOps culture

Simply having the correct DevSecOps practices and capabilities will not be adequate if the company culture prevents such practices and capabilities from being appropriately leveraged.

Historically, the security team has been a bottleneck in the release process. They become the "Department of 'No,'" and as a result, they become marginalized over time, reinforcing a downward circle of team disintegration. DevSecOps strives to break down these boundaries and prevent security from becoming its echo chamber, establishing policies and infrastructure without compromising the whole business.

When DevSecOps is fully implemented, there will no longer be a single "security team" but a constantly developing company-wide security attitude.

2. Automation is the key

Automation is essential when it comes to balancing security integrations with speed and scale. DevOps adoption already prioritizes automation, and DevSecOps adoption follows suit. Teams can adopt DevSecOps best practices by automating security tools and processes.

Automation guarantees that tools and processes are used consistently, repeatedly, and reliably. It's critical to figure out which security operations and processes can be automated and which ones require human interaction. 

Running a SAST tool in a pipeline, for example, can be completely automated; however, threat modeling and penetration testing involve manual intervention and cannot be automated. The same can be said of procedures. In a pipeline, sending input to stakeholders can be automated; however, security sign-offs require user effort.

3. Keep a check on coding practices

All coding standards must be regularly reviewed against updated security recommendations. Setting it up to be event-driven is an excellent approach to uncovering vulnerabilities as quickly as possible (there's a significant difference between finding an issue on day one versus day zero!).

All code modifications must be checked and tested against security guidelines; no change is too minor during this procedure. This is not a simple task, and the advantages of such techniques should not be overlooked. They are not limited to the number of modifications that occur during the development process.

4. Scan the source code thoroughly

Source code should be scanned thoroughly by implementing Static Application Security Testing (SAST). SAST is a software composition analysis technique that scans the source code repository, usually the master branch, for vulnerabilities and does software composition analysis. It can be included in existing CI/CD operations.

5. Utilize CI/CD for patching

With the help of CI/CD pipelines, patching live systems is no longer necessary, reducing the impact of downtime. This also enables risk exposure to be determined in near real-time.

Vulnerability patching would no longer have to be a monthly hassle if included in the CI/CD pipelines. It would just be integrated into the way software is delivered.

6. Audit and scan applications

Auditing and scanning are critical parts of DevSecOps that help businesses understand their risk posture completely. As indicated in the organization's risk appetite, appropriate scanning and periodic auditing represent a higher level of code security assurance.

7. Pre-deployment auditing is a must

To ensure the desired level of security, pre-deployment auditing becomes a must in the software development cycle (SDLC). The check is event-driven, meaning it is triggered whenever the target code is modified. Since this is the last chance before the exit, validations should be prohibited and required to be integrated into a CD pipeline.

This idea can be applied to infrastructure-as-code to improve compliance by assuring that your software and the infrastructure on which it is deployed are compliant by default. Here, tools like terraform-compliance and HashiCorp Sentinel are functional.

This auditing method also has the advantage of involving security teams early in the software development process rather than waiting until the end to announce their requirements.

8. Shift left testing

Originally, security was an afterthought in the development process of software. With the innovation of DevSecOps, this approach to security has been shifted. The direction for this shift is defined as the Shift Left Testing. 

Shift Left Testing is done earlier in the SDLC, making it easier to identify vulnerabilities. This makes the security analysis easier and highly improves the quality of the application.

9. Adopt threat modeling

Before you shift to DevSecOps, doing baseline threat modeling and conducting thorough risk assessments is highly recommended. A threat modeling exercise can assist your security organization in better understanding the existing threats to your assets and any gaps in security controls that need to be addressed. Other security approaches may have missed problems in the architecture and design of your apps, but threat modeling can assist in discovering them.

10. Dynamic Application Scanning Tool (DAST)

Dynamic Application Scanning Tools (DAST) are designed to scan live staging and production websites to identify vulnerabilities in the application's input fields, forms, and other parts. It's critical to understand that whenever you allow users to provide you with data (form fields, query strings, HTTP headers, and so on), you're allowing them to provide data that your web server or application code will have to deal with.

11. Post-deployment auditing is important

Compared to pre-deployment auditing, post-deployment auditing is also event-driven, but the events that trigger checks include policy and code modifications. A check is triggered when the infrastructure or the standards (rules) that infrastructure must meet change.

Post-deployment auditing aims to guarantee that the certified security level you obtained during pre-deployment auditing is still valid and appropriate. As a result, the number of post-deployment tests frequently outnumbers the number of pre-deployment tests.

12. Consider host hardening

Host hardening is not a novel concept, but if it were employed more frequently, fewer services and applications would be exposed to the internet unnecessarily. Most security loopholes can be linked to leaving a generic attack surface that allows automated attack tooling to succeed in even the most basic attacks.

Using security capabilities intrinsic to your OS (e.g., kernel security modules in Linux) and minimizing the attack surface by not installing or executing anything that isn't essential for the main application make this work easier.

13. Scan external vulnerabilities

External scanning provides a slew of advantages. By doing these scans, you're taking a proactive approach to protect your network. External scans reveal flaws in your network that could lead to a security breach.

You may quickly discover the most critical issue within your network by looking at it from this perspective. You may also see whether any new services or servers have been installed since the last check and if they pose any new threats to your company.

14. Use multi-factor authentication

Most apps implement multi-factor authentication in their software as a precautionary measure. Multi-factor authentication is an additional layer of security. In this type of authentication, a user has to provide more than one piece of evidence to confirm their identity, and only then will they be allowed access to a particular resource. 

Even in the case of password compromise, multi-factor authentication will help prevent unauthorized access to resources.

15. Implement a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

In terms of security, a disaster can be defined as a breach or any other incident where a system is compromised. A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a document that specifies what steps should be taken in a disaster. 

The DRP should have essential details concerning the restoration of the system after a disaster. It helps minimize the disaster's impact and ensures your company's recovery in time.

Conclusion

The main problem faced by DevSecOps is the lack of awareness. This blog resolves that by informing you of the best ways to integrate security into your software and also goes into detail on how to implement these practices.

Once you've read through these practices and how they benefit your firm, it is time to discuss them with your tech team and figure out the best way to implement them.

Are you interested in learning more about the security of your mobile application? Schedule a demo and see how Appknox can help you improve your app's performance.