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

Cybersecurity and Cyber threats are becoming a growing concern for every organization and individual user. DevSecOps is a concept and a methodology that plugs in security ahead of the application development lifecycle. The ultimate objective is to minimize vulnerabilities and squeeze security within the IT and business objectives as a quintessential component. What is the purpose of DevSecOps? How effective can this be? Can Application Security DevSecOps add real value within the cyber security lifecycle?

DevSecOps works on the premise that Security is a woven part of operations and development and shared responsibility in the software development lifecycle. It tries to bring in security within every aspect of development. It automates the core security tasks in the DevOps workflow instead of being pushed toward 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, improving their scalability and speed but intensifying the chances of a security or data breach, risking the entire cyber security strategy.

Application Security DevSecOps is being adopted and introduced within the software development cycle to bring more stability to the application, even in the long run. It’s like integrating IT operations, development, and security under a ‘single automation’ strategy. The idea is to ensure security through the application development, reduce time, and accelerate the development cycle.

Security often becomes a roadblock for rapid application development and any 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 insufficient for security testing. This is where the value of DevSecOps becomes apparent – it accelerates and fortifies the strategy to ensure a robust and fail-safe approach.

If we gauge the impact that technology is going to have on the application development process, it’s substantial. Security will continue to become a growing concern for all throughout the technology adoption process. When Security is combined with 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 — slightly different from SecDevOps — will be embedded into 80 percent of rapid development teams by 2021.

Summing up the value 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 security. 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 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.

Even the recovery speed improves in case of 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

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

As the DevSecOps rule books state, 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

Per the DevOps guidelines, there must be continuous development and 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 must be a continuous endeavor 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. This report describes 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 DevOps and DevSecOps can bring your business.