Have you heard about DevSecOps? Is it the next big thing? Well, to be precise and straight-to-the-point, DevSecOps features to bring a more advanced life cycle of the application development process by introducing security earlier in the process. As a result, it ensures relatively lesser vulnerabilities to the IT project and software business needs.
Now, in order to know more details about DevSecOps, how to get started, how it can impact the IT industry, and how it is different from DevOps, please keep reading and as I do my best to dive a little deeper into the topic.
What Is DevSecOps?
Well, if you are new to this term of “DevSecOps” and you do not have much idea about it, I hope to give you a detailed overview of it. DevSecOps is originally known to add or integrate security practices within the framework of DevOps process. It tires to build the culture of “Security as Code” which emphasizes an impactful and meaningful collaboration between the software release engineers and the security teams. Like the traditional DevOps process, DevSecOps is also focused on creating a complex software development process that’s meant for the agile framework.
The full form of DevSecOps is Developer-Security-Operations which is built on an idea/model where everyone involved in the software development life cycle process should be responsible for the security. With the advent of technology and the internet, security breaches have been one of the most alarming issues for the IT industry. For example, almost every day there has been at least one incident of a data breach that can tamper the security layer of an application.
What’s more concerning, the number of security threats and breaches are steadily increasing with time. Hence, it’s apparently important to adopt a culture like “Security as Code” where everybody will be counted for ensuring the application security. With this very idea, the concept of Developer-Security-Operations or DevSecOps has been recently popped up in the industry.
The basic principle of this Developer-Security-Operations model has two goals, such as secure code and speed of delivery which are merged in order to ensure a single streamlined process.
Additionally, there are certain benefits of this approach which you need to be aware of. For instance, the benefit of DevSecOps approach ensures a better ROI in the existing/conventional security infrastructure. Secondly, it guarantees an improved operational efficiency between the security team and the rest members of an IT team.
Another important and key benefit of this approach is that Developer-Security-Operations allows enjoying the full usage of cloud services. Since more organizations nowadays rely on the cloud infrastructure, using the DevSecOps approach certainly becomes an important move for them. Considering all of these benefits, it’s now widely considered that DevSecOps is the next big thing for the entire software cum IT industry.
How to Get Started with DevSecOps?
In the previous sections, we already revealed the key advantages and benefits of Developer-Security-Operations model. So, as a business owner, if you are planning to adopt this framework, then here are five incredibly helpful tips that you should follow and get started:
- Deliver Code in Smaller Chunks: DevSecOps approach emphasizes the benefits of delivering code in smaller chunks so that the possible causes of threats and vulnerabilities can be detected quickly.
- Vulnerability Assessment: Once the vulnerabilities and threats are detected, meticulously assess or analyze them so that those issues can be quickly fixed and deployed.
- Investigate Threats During Each Code Update: Allow enough time for the team members to investigate the code updates regularly and respond to the problems quickly.
- Change Management for Better Speed and Efficiency: Anyone in the software development team should be allowed to submit the changes to ensure better speed and efficiency. Once the changes are submitted, allow the team to investigate and determine if those changes are OK or not.
- Security Training: Regularly train the IT engineers, security team, and software developers about the required security measures and guidelines that need to be followed during the entire life cycle.
How Is It Different Than DevOps?
As mentioned earlier, DevSecOps adds more security methods to the approach of traditional DevOps practices. This ensures a list of benefits for the DevSecOps approach when it’s compared to DevOps.
- Better speed and more agility for the security teams
- Effective communication and collaboration among different teams
- The possibility of detecting threats and vulnerabilities early in the code
- Respond to the changes easily, seamlessly, and rapidly
I’ve only touch on the surface of this topic and I know there is a lot more to it. Has your organization implemented DevSecOps? Have you seen a change in your workflow? Any lessons learned you would like to share with the community? Let me know on Twitter and thanks for reading!