Why implement DevSecOps in software product development?

The implementation of the DevOps methodology and culture enables companies to foster collaboration between development and operations teams and streamline code delivery and deployment. By using CI/CD, containerization, and other DevOps practices, IT teams can roll out software products faster, which, in turn, helps businesses better adapt to ever-changing market conditions.

The traditional DevOps methodology has evolved into its more advanced version, DevSecOps (the acronym for development, security, and operations), which is now gaining momentum. According to Gartner’s 2023 report DevSecOps: Strategies, Organizational Benefits and Challenges, 50% of companies have already implemented DevSecOps, while 31% are in the implementation process.

At Itransition, we traditionally rely on DevSecOps practices to ensure top security when developing software products without compromising delivery speed. In this article, our experts cover the concept of DevSecOps, describe its key practices, and highlight the advantages and challenges of DevSecOps.

What is DevSecOps?

Like DevOps, DevSecOps involves automating the build, configuration, testing, and deployment processes and implies more frequent software product releases. However, besides these similarities, DevSecOps has its distinctive features. 

The core distinction between the two approaches is that in addition to increasing software product delivery speed and reducing time-to-market, DevSecOps focuses on cybersecurity. That is why, in the DevSecOps approach, security practices are integrated into each step of the SDLC. 

Already at the planning phase, DevSecOps teams define comprehensive security requirements and utilize various methods of security threat modeling to identify vulnerabilities, even hidden ones, to introduce robust security mechanisms into the software product architecture. 

During the coding phase, DevSecOps teams follow secure coding practices and use version control mechanisms to prevent unintentional exposures caused by changes in software code.  

DevSecOps specialists also check each new piece of code for vulnerabilities. Since security code review is too laborious and time-consuming, DevSecOps teams use a variety of automated tools for vulnerability scanning and monitoring. Frequent code reviews and automation enable DevSecOps specialists to identify and eliminate threats as soon as they appear.

After deploying app code in the test environment, DevSecOps teams use various automated security tests to assess the application for most of the known security risks, including those from the OWASP Top 10, and mitigate them. DevSecOps specialists also run penetration testing, which aims to compromise a software product’s defense and thus reveal potential weaknesses.

Even after the software product goes to production, DevSecOps team members run continuous log analysis and monitor the product’s defenses to detect emerging security threats and fix potential performance issues promptly.

What are the key DevSecOps tools?

For a more precise understanding of the DevSecOps concept, we share a list of DevSecOps practices, namely SAST, DAST, IAST, and SCA.

SAST, also referred to as white box testing, allows DevSecOps experts to detect suspicious code fragments among thousands and millions of source code lines and identify even minor vulnerabilities in the product’s source code before executing it.

During DAST, also known as black box testing, DevSecOps teams simulate malicious user behavior and external malicious attacks on a running application instance to discover software vulnerabilities without analyzing the source code.

IAST, or gray box testing, helps DevSecOps teams analyze software code during its execution in the running app by triggering events that might be associated with vulnerabilities.

SCA allows DevSecOps specialists to detect app dependencies on various software components (such as open-source libraries or frameworks) and identify those that can cause vulnerabilities.

Why implement DevSecOps?

Here are some examples of how DevSecOps adoption can benefit a business:

By using DevSecOps practices, IT teams can identify and eliminate most vulnerabilities and bugs at the early development stages. This helps companies create more reliable, error-free software that is resistant to cyberattacks.

Early vulnerability tracking significantly reduces the time and effort required to find and fix them, which can save hundreds of developers’ and testers’ work hours and make software development more cost-effective.

Understanding that security is a shared responsibility promotes a security-first mindset among all participants of the DevSecOps life cycle, which fosters proactive cyber risk mitigation.

What are the DevSecOps challenges?

DevSecOps adoption should not be considered an easy task, as it can encompass multiple challenges.

The successful adoption of DevSecOps and its specific practices requires strong coding, testing, collaborative skills, and solid application security knowledge from a company’s IT teams.

Solution:

A company can address this challenge by providing continuous and systematic security training to the members of its DevSecOps team, including theory-based, game-based, and role-based learning.

The inability to maintain visibility in a hybrid or multi-cloud environment and track how distributed services, containers, or instances are performing does not allow DevSecOps teams to detect and eliminate vulnerabilities and security threats quickly, which not only reduces the overall efficiency of DevSecOps but also puts corporate systems at risk.

Solution:

Implementing the microsegmentation technique, which implies dividing cloud environments into visible and manageable small segments, can help DevSecOps teams solve this challenge.

The sheer volume of notifications generated by firewalls, security information and event management (SIEM), and intrusion detection systems can cause alert fatigue, which reduces the ability of DevSecOps teams to respond to emerging threats efficiently.

Solution:

Classifying and prioritizing the received notifications, defining clear incident response procedures, and implementing automated remediation are some ways for DevSecOps teams to avoid alert fatigue.

Final thoughts

DevSecOps, which is an evolution of the traditional DevOps methodology, is becoming more popular yearly. By using methods such as threat modeling or version control and practices, such as SAST, DAST, IAST, or SCA, DevSecOps teams can guarantee robust software product security while maintaining high delivery speed.

However, implementing DevSecOps is a demanding process that does not always go smoothly. Fortunately, companies can resort to third-party software developers proficient in DevSecOps to augment their IT teams with professionals or gain expert guidance, thus streamlining DevSecOps transformation.