DevSecOps Best Practices: An Approach to Enhanced Security for DevOps

Quick Summary: DevOps is an approach adopted by software development and operations team for a streamlined workflow. For making security an integral part of DevOps throughout the entire process, DevSecOps practices are implemented. This article covers eight unbeatable practices along with other insightful details on how to take security for DevOps to the next level.

By replacing traditional software development workflows, organizations are rapidly embracing the concept of DevOps, making their development cycle innovative, less time-consuming, and more flexible. The concept of DevOps is agile and futuristic, but it's incomplete without a significant aspect: DevSecOps.

DevSecOps practices take charge of security for DevOps! They improve upon DevOps by integrating dynamic security practices into every step of the software development process from its initial stage.

94% of CIOs strongly believe that scaling DevSecOps culture to more teams and applications in businesses is the key driver to digital transformation, and rapid and highly secure software releases. That’s why the concept of DevSecOps is rigorously applied as security has always been a main concern for DevOps experts.

Since DevSecOps's concept speaks volumes, why don't we delve deeper into DevSecOps best practices to adopt and consider advanced security from the very start of software development? Let's get going.

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What is DevSecOps and Why is It Important?

DevSecOps is an approach that emphasizes security and integrates security practices into DevOps lifecycle management. By integrating DevSecOps, security is also equally focused along with development and operations throughout the lifecycle, which was not the case earlier.

Importance of DevSecOps

DevSecOps' emphasis on security throughout the DevOps lifecycle is reflected in many of its elements. Let's check out how.

1. Early Detection and Alleviation

As security is embedded from the initial stage of the development process, DevSecOps allows organizations to detect and assess vulnerabilities before they become too critical for the system. This relatively decreases the risk of security breaches and costly fixes.

2. Continuous Security

DevSecOps ensures that security is continuously integrated into automated workflows. This allows for ongoing assessment and management of security risks throughout the lifecycle of applications.

3. Quicker Response to Security Threats

As DevSecOps ensures integration of security from the initial stage, the detection of any present security threat is done in a quicker way, and it's resolved on an immediate basis. This helps organizations to remediate vulnerabilities before they become too hazardous.

4. Compliance and Risk Management

DevSecOps allows organizations to meet regulatory requirements and manage risks in a more effective manner by maintaining consistent security practices and documentation throughout the development and deployment processes.

Challenges in Implementation of DevSecOps

DevSecOps comes with many benefits and literally alleviates the concern of security for organizations. At the same time, implementation is not an easy process. Check out the key challenges in the implementation of DevSecOps.

Cultural Shift

Integrating security into DevOps is not a simple process, as it requires a significant cultural shift. Teams that are habitual to following traditional practices cannot easily adapt to new security processes and tools. Thus, getting accustomed to new DevSecOps practices could be challenging.

Tool Integration

Aligning and integrating security tools with existing DevOps pipelines can be a complex process. Maintaining compatibility and streamlined operations between multiple tools (for security testing, CI/CD, etc.) can be achieved after a comprehensive configuration process.

Skill Gaps

Integrating DevSecOps practices requires a specialized skillset that teams sometimes lack. Improper integration leads to disorganized operations.

Balancing Speed and Security

One of the core principles of DevOps is to streamline development and deployment. Incorporating extensive security measures can slow down these processes. This creates a challenge in balancing speed with thorough security assessments.

Automation Challenges

While automation is a prime advantage of DevSecOps, automating security processes (like scanning and compliance checks) can be complex and prone to issues if not properly integrated or maintained.

Eight Unwavering DevSecOps Practices to Ensure Security for DevOps

Let's learn in detail about DevSecOp's best practices to safeguard your software development process through the very beginning, along with their respective benefits.

1. Shift Left Security

Shift left security focuses on integrating security practices in DevOps at the earliest possible stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Ideally through the stage of planning and design, shift left security is enforced.

Key Activities of Shift Left Security DevSecOps Practice

Code Reviews: Performs exhaustive security reviews of code during the software development process to capture potential vulnerabilities.

Static Code Analysis: Utilize SAST tools and vulnerability scanning tool to examine source code to scan security vulnerabilities at the early stage of development.

Dynamic Code Analysis: Perform DAST testing in running applications to fetch vulnerabilities by simulating attacks and perceiving responses.

Benefits

• Minimizes security flaws at the early stage.
• Reduces the cost and effort put into fixing vulnerabilities later in SDLC.

2. Infrastructure as Code

Infrastructure as code is about managing and providing infrastructure like virtual machines, networks, containers, and data centers with the help of machine-readable files.

Key Activities of Infrastructure as Code DevSecOps Practice

Secure Misconfiguration Management: Implementation of security practices in IaC templates (common, e.g., Terraform, AWS CloudFormation).

Automated Security Checks: Integration of security checks like compliance scans and vulnerability assessment into IaC pipelines.

Benefits

• Practicing IaC ensures regular security configurations across environments.
• Decreases manual errors.
• It enhances auditability.

3. CI/CD Security

With CI/CD pipelines, you can automate software delivery processes. CI/CD practice involves integration, testing, deployment, and monitoring. Security CI/CD pipelines call for integrating security practices all across the pipeline stages to fetch and fix vulnerabilities in the initial stage of deployment.

Key Activities to Implement CI/CD Security

Automated Security Testing: Perform security tests such as DAST, SAST, and dependency scanning into CI/CD pipelines.

Security Gates: Perform automated checks to implement security policies before the deployment process.

Immutable Infrastructure: Deploy immutable infrastructure wherever you find potential security risks.

Benefits

• Enables more rapid and highly secured software delivery
• Automates security checks at all stages of the pipeline.

4. Container Security

Container security in DevOps emphasizes securing applications deployed in containers like Docker and Kubernetes. It makes sure that container images have no potential vulnerabilities by thoroughly scanning them before deploying.

Key Activities for Container Security

Image Security Scanning: Container security involves scanning containers' images to fetch vulnerabilities before deployment.

Runtime Security Monitoring: Monitor containers in production in order to detect anomalies or security incidents.

Access Control: Try to implement the least privileged access controls for container orchestration platforms.

Benefits

• Amplifies the security posture for applications running in containers.
• Addresses vulnerabilities alongside ensuring the least runtime protection.

5. Secrets Management

Secret management in DevSecOps is about securely storing, accessing, and managing confidential data like API keys, certificates used in apps and infrastructure, and passwords.

Key Activities to Maintain Secret Management

Centralize Secret Vault: Optimize tools like HashiCorp Vault and AWS Secrets Manager to securely manage and rotate secrets.

Secret Scanning: Run secret scanning to catch sophisticated vulnerabilities that could be present in disguise.

Integration with CI/CD: Capture secrets securely within CI/CD pipelines by making sure not to expose them in code or configuration files.

Benefits

• Minimizes the risk of accidental vulnerabilities and exposure.
• Supports secure automation process.

6. Monitor and Logging

With monitoring and logging, you can continuously perform tracking and recording activities within applications, networks, systems, to keep track of security incidents, anomalies, and operational issues immediately.

Key Activities in Monitoring and Logging

Centralized Logging: Aggregate logs from applications and infrastructure to examine security and audit thoroughly.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): Enforce SIEM practices to correlate security events and fetch abnormal activities.

Benefits

• It allows the detection and prompt action of security incidents.
• Enhance entire security resilience.

7. Compliance as Code

Compliance as code is a practice of defining and managing security and regulatory compliance necessities with the help of machine-readable scripts or configurations. These scripts encompass standard rules and regulations that apps must ideally follow to ensure consistent implementation across environments.

Key Activities for Compliance as Code

Policy as Code: Optimize tools like Chef InSpec or Open Policy Agent for proper implementation of security measures.

Automated Compliance Checks: Incorporate compliance checks into CI/CD pipelines to validate proper obedience to standard security regulations.

Benefits

• Automates compliance checks
• Minimizes manual effort
• Enhances entire security and regulatory compliance

8. Thread Modelling

Thread modeling in DevSecOps meticulously identifies and captures sophisticated cybersecurity threats into an app or system. It allows teams to acknowledge the exploitation attackers can cause by misusing vulnerabilities to compromise security.

Key Activities in Thread Modelling

Fetch and Mitigate Security Risks: Identify and document the components of the system or web apps that require safeguarding, like sensitive data, servers, or APIs.

Risk Assessment: Assess the likelihood and aftermath of every captured vulnerability to enforce immediate action effectively.

Create Models: Create threat models, which comprise diagrams or structured documents, to visualize and perceive how security threats could perform their standard actions.

Benefits

• Easy risk identification
• Prioritized security measures
• Enhanced security designs

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Top Thirteen DevSecOps Tools to Enhance Security for DevOps

Let's refer to some of the commonly used DevSecOps tools that master specific features that can be optimized in different DevOps best security practices.

Category 1: Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

1. SonarQube

SonarQube is highly optimized for static code analysis to capture bugs, vulnerabilities, and code smells. It can be utilized for multiple programming languages, and it also supports CI/CD pipelines.

2. Checkmarx

DevOps teams can optimize Checkmarx for static application security settings (SAST) to detect and remediate vulnerabilities in source code. It can also be a useful tool for scanning multiple languages and frameworks.

Category 2: Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

3. ZeroThreat

ZeroThreat automates the security testing process and seamlessly integrates with popular DevOps tools, ensuring a frictionless adoption process. Whether you use Jenkins, Docker, or Git, it aligns with your existing workflows, and allows you to amplify software and web app security without disrupting development efficiency.

4. OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy)

ZAP is an open-source web app security scanner that is useful for finding vulnerabilities in web applications during runtime. It can also be integrated into CI/CD pipelines.

5. Burp Suite

Burp Suite is a web vulnerability scanner and testing tool. It comprises capabilities for crawling, scanning, and testing web apps for security vulnerabilities.

Category 3: Container Security

6. Docker Bench for Security

The Docker Bench for Security is a script that checks for multiple standard best practices around deploying Docker containers in production. It provides recommendations and guidelines for securing Docker environments.

7. Clair

Clair is an open-source container that scans security vulnerabilities and examines Docker images. It transparently provides the security posture of containerized apps.

Category 4: Infrastructure as Code Security

8. Terraform

Terraform is a known tool for its infrastructure provisioning that enables IaC practices. It comprises built-in security features and best practices in order to manage infrastructure securely.

9. Checkov

Checkov is an open-source tool for static code analysis of IaC templates. It's used to scan Terraform, Kubernetes files, and CloudFormation for security misconfigurations and security practice violations.

Category 5: Continuous Integration/ Continuous Deployment (CI/CD Security)

10. Gitlab

Gitlab is an integrated CI/CD platform that encompasses built-in scanning tools. It offers both static and dynamic security testing features within the pipeline.

11. Jenkins

Jenkins is an automation server with extensive plugin support to integrate security tools and execute security scans as part of the CI/CD process.

Category 6: Cloud Security

12. AWS Security Hub

AWS security is an extensive security management system that offers a centralized view of security alerts and the status of compliance across AWS accounts.

13. Azure Security Center

Azure is Microsoft's cloud security management tool that offers threat protection and secured monitoring for the resources of Azure. It also provides recommendations and remediation in order to improve overall cloud security posture.

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Adopt 360 Degree Security for DevOps with ZeroThreat

With DevSecOps practices, you learn to build and run software by integrating security into the cultural and technical aspects of DevOps, which ultimately promotes faster and highly secured software delivery.

To intensify security testing, we have an exceptional solution for DevOps teams that automates the security testing process, allowing DevOps teams to seamlessly integrate security measures into their CI/CD pipelines. ZeroThreat is a prime security tool for running an advanced scan across entire applications and APIs, ensuring there are no signs of vulnerabilities that welcome disastrous security threats into the system. See how well it operates to scan security flaws and vulnerabilities by Signing up to ZeroThreat to see what you have been missing so far!