Over the last several years, DevOps has dramatically transformed the way in which software is designed, developed, and delivered.
                             
Together with innovations such as Agile and Continuous Integration, DevOps has led to an increasingly rapid and inter-disciplinary software development life cycle (SDLC), leading to more robust and responsive applications. But with this push toward speed and flexibility, software has in some ways become even less secure. The solution? DevSecOps.

DevSecOps begins with DevOps' commitments to continuity and automation and merges them with the principle of security-by-design, creating a single, streamlined SDLC that is both more efficient and more secure. It is becoming increasingly obvious that everyone, from the CEO down to the secretary, has a role to play in cybersecurity. Therefore, rather than consolidating security into one team or department, DevSecOps seeks to distribute responsibility throughout the development lifecycle as well as throughout the organization.

The Benefits of DevSecOps

The benefits are simple:
1. Baking security into each stage of development vastly minimizes the quantity and severity of vulnerabilities in final production.
2. Introducing automated security tools throughout the pipeline provides team members with key insights and allows them to focus on high-level development.
3. Increased collaboration and communication between the dev and security teams fosters rapid and efficient production.

Key challenges to DevSecOps

There are various reasons why the industry has been slow in adopting DevSecOps. It partially has to do with a prior investment in the status quo as well as a general underestimation of the centrality of security for both business and technical KPIs.

Moreover, there are several DevOps-specific concerns that are offer challenges:
1. Organizations are keen to comply with the aforementioned DevOps standards of flexibility and speed; standards which seem to be at odds with robust and distributed security monitoring.
2. The very nature of security makes it resistant to the kind of automation and integration that has led to the rise of DevOps. Security controls can be far more complex and must often be heavily tailored to each environment.
3. Modern software developers work off of an increasingly large batch of pre-assembled modules, libraries and APIs. These open-source components and frameworks often contain known vulnerabilities, making the buy-in costs of DevSecOps simply too high for some to swallow.

Some strategies

Silent Breach recommends the following proven strategies to ease your organization's transition to DevSecOps.

1. Invest in secure coding training. The earlier and more seriously the training is, the more likely it is that security-by-design will go from being a theoretical concept to an applied methodology.
2. Encourage regular peer-review. All developers have certain strengths and weaknesses; and creating an atmosphere of constructive criticism and collaboration will go a long way in capitalizing on those strengths.
3. Lighten the burden on your team by incorporating key vulnerability and configuration scanners. For example, the OWASP Dependency Check is a plugin that automatically identifies project dependencies and alerts you to any known vulnerabilities.
4. Ease the transition by partnering with a cyber security firm that specializes in DevSecOps. At Silent Breach, we provide end-to-end guidance to help organizations plan, execute, and review their DevSecOps goals.
5. And finally, effective organizational changes must always come together with a changed culture and mindset. As long as security is viewed as an incidental liability or IT-specific concern, implementing lasting solutions will always remain a challenge. But as soon as the principles of security-by-design and shared responsibility are recognized and adopted, DevSecOps will become second nature.