With increasing demand for security in cloud applications, the DevSecOps lifecycle is becoming a widespread practice among organizations. In this new DevOps world, DevSecOps enables organizations to introduce security at every phase of the software development lifecycle and allows them to deliver applications with security, speed, and quality.
Many organizations are introducing the DevSecOps lifecycle in their development because it is bringing a shift in mentality as it is making everyone accountable for the security of the application.
Suppose you are also planning to introduce DevSecOps in your application development process. In that case, this guide will help you explore a lot of things about the DevSecOps lifecycle that will help in implementation in a better fashion.
What is the DevSecOps Lifecycle?
DevSecOps can be considered as a software development practice or methodology that emphasizes security implementation in every phase of development. Starting from planning, design, development, and testing and ending at deployment and operation.
It also highlights the collaboration between security, development, and operation in an organization during every stage of SDLC. DevSecOps brings the mindset where it makes every member involved in the software development process accountable for the application security.
This practice ensures security shouldn’t be implemented in the end and should be deployed in the DevOps pipeline. However, implementing DevSecOps in an organization is not easy as it involves a shift in the team’s methodology, tools, and culture and makes everyone responsible for security.
The term DevSecOps stands for development, security, and operation, and each term refers to the responsibility every team must have during the development phase. This methodology integrates security into DevOps and Agile processes and ensures vulnerabilities are mitigated as early as possible.
Due to these practices, fixing security issues and vulnerabilities is quicker, easier, and less expensive for every organization. Almost every organization that has implemented a DevSecOps lifecycle is able to automate the deployment software with optimum security, and that too without hampering the development cycle.
Steps in the DevSecOps Lifecycle
DevSecOps lifecycle comprises multiple steps, and most of the steps are repeated in a loop as the organization deploys new updates and features. Here are the steps that we are talking about;
Step 1: Planning
This is the first step, where the development, security, and operation teams work together and identify security issues that may arise in the application development phase.
Together, the team also devises a security strategy that not only involves defining the security requirement but also selecting the right security tools and security policies.
Step 2: Development and Testing
This is the most important where the development team builds the application and tests it. In this stage, the development team also implements the automated security testing into the development phase, reviews the security of the code, and assesses whether all the security requirements are fulfilled.
During this stage, Continuous Integration is also implemented as many third-party codes are utilized during development. Through CI, code changes are automatically stored in a repository, and it helps developers monitor and respond to security issues that may impact the application in the later stage.
In the DevSecOps lifecycle, the testing phase happens quickly as it doesn’t follow the general process of traditional application testing. The testing process involves various security testing techniques like vulnerability scanning and penetration testing that help the developer evaluate the application for vulnerabilities, loopholes, and threats.
Step 3: Deployment and Monitoring
In this deployment stage, the development team is tasked with implementing access control, securing the infrastructure, and monitoring the ecosystem for any threats. In the DevSecOps lifecycle, the development team holds the responsibility of deploying the application to the production stage.
Since most organizations adopting the DevSecOps lifecycle follow the CI/CD pipeline, they can start deployment by leveraging Continuous Delivery processes and tools. By automating the code changes to the production stage, the organization opts for continuous monitoring to identify threats in the application and mitigate all security incidents.
Benefits of the DevSecOps Lifecycle
Implementing the DevSecOps lifecycle in an organization provides numerous benefits. Speed and security may be the primary benefits, but there are many other perks that make it suitable for most modern organizations. These benefits are:
Quick and Cost-Effective Delivery
In traditional application development, security problems are always fixed in the end, leading to huge costs and time delays. However, by implementing DevSecOps, organizations can save time and minimize costs as it enables quick and secure delivery. DevSecOps helps organizations to reduce the repetition of various processes for responding to security issues.
Early Detection of Vulnerability
Implementing security in the early stage of the development lifecycle enables the team to detect vulnerabilities, gaps, and other security issues at an early stage. This is highly beneficial for the team because they can quickly mitigate the issue at an early stage with limited resources and prevent them from making any significant impact.
Faster Delivery to Market
Another considerable advantage of DevSecOps is that it allows developers to automate the security testing of codes and prevents security testing from being a time-consuming process. Thus, it enables the organization to swift up the development process and deliver applications quickly with high accuracy and quality.
Better Software Quality
Since codes are continuously reviewed, audited, scanned, and tested for security issues at every stage, it helps the organization improve overall application quality by a large margin. Developers are able to mitigate the security issues early in the development stage, and it makes the application much more reliable.
Proactive Security Approach
DevSecOps brings the culture of making everyone responsible for the security of the application, so it makes every team accountable for the security of the code. Throughout the development lifecycle, all the codes are constantly evaluated, and vulnerabilities are immediately mitigated before they can make any impact.
It also curbs the time that security teams have to invest to solve security issues and helps them focus on other security aspects of the application.
Delivering Updates and Features Securely
Security, development, and operation teams in DevSecOps culture use standard security tools for automating the testing and reporting process. Every team makes an effort to add value to the application by adding new features and making updates according to customer feedback without compromising on security.
Adherence to Compliance
DevSecOps has been instrumental for organizations in complying with various regulatory requirements by implementing best security practices and policies. Integrating cyber security into the SDLC enables the organization to meet all the requirements and ensure optimum data protection.
Which Software Development lifecycle (SDLC) Approach is Most Compatible with DevSecOps?
When it comes to choosing the SDLC approach for DevSecOps, there is no particular precondition. Every team adopting DevSecOps practices will have to opt for shift left security practice.
However, it is often seen that organizations adopting Agile SDLC have benefited the most because this approach offers the best compatibility due to its emphasis on collaboration, continuous improvement, and flexibility.
Organizations can easily integrate cyber security into every phase of the Agile development lifecycle and deliver a reliable and secure application. From planning, designing, and development to deployment, the organization has benefited greatly by using the Agile approach in SDLC.
This approach allows organizations to comply with all the industry regulations and standards without compromising on speed and quality. Moreover, it also enables organizations to respond quickly to change requests and security incidents, which ultimately helps DevOps to deliver safer codes.
Organizations widely prefer the agile approach because it enables them to deliver software quickly and efficiently while eliminating the chance of any security issues or vulnerabilities.
Automate DevSecOps Testing
Automation of the software delivery process is an essential component of DevSecOps methodology as it helps them to achieve faster delivery to the market. In DevSecOps, automation is mainly associated with security testing, and organizations use different automated testing tools to achieve it.
Most organizations benefit from automating DevSecOps testing as it enables them to automate the process after a code is pushed. Automating the security testing also enhances the overall application security and eliminates the access of developers to production.
Eliminating human involvement removes human error during testing and enables teams to identify and mitigate vulnerability accurately and consistently. Moreover, identifying vulnerabilities in the code efficiently and continuously also allows us to reduce time to identify security issues and address them.
By saving time through automation, teams can spend their resources on other productive tasks that will increase the value of the application. However, teams can’t randomly automate DevSecOps testing as they have to identify the area and how they can automate the testing process.
The popular areas where most security teams automate the testing process are code quality, container scanning, application composition, automatic vulnerability scanning, and web application scanning.
What Are the Challenges When Enabling DevSecOps?
Enabling DevSecOps might seem like just introducing a methodology, but there is more to it than meets the eye. Organizations will have many challenges when implementing DevSecOps, and these challenges are:
Difficulty in Shifting the Culture
Developers and security teams have been following traditional application development for years, and shifting quickly to DevSecOps culture can be overwhelming. DevSecOps requires everyone to emphasize the security of the application, so it can be challenging for the operation and development team to adapt to the new culture.
It is vital for individuals in the higher hierarchy to make efforts and provide training to all the team regarding DevSecOps practices.
Compatibility Issue With Open-Source Tools
The development team often uses various open-source tools like libraries, repositories, and scripts. Not every open-source tool will conform to the security practices of DevSecOps, and if they aren’t properly audited, it will give rise to many security problems.
Involving Numerous Tools
By integrating DevSecOps, the organization introduces numerous tools in the SDLC, and it can cause challenges, especially for the team that doesn’t have much experience with DevOps tasks.
Organizations must introduce tools slowly, and they should only enable the necessary tools that will provide time for them to learn. Once the team is habituated with the essential tools, then the organization should introduce the additional tools one by one.
Multiple Cloud Complexity
Nowadays, almost every organization utilizes more than one cloud for their business operation. According to a report by Flexera in 2021, 92% of organizations utilize multiple public clouds.
With numerous public cloud deployments, organizations will use various cloud services and different automation tools, and this makes it problematic to implement security in the DevSecOps lifecycle. Data security and adherence to compliance is a big issue as there are a lot of components, and it isn’t easy to maintain the security posture of every service.
Alert Fatigue and Lack of Risk-Based Prioritization
As an organization leverages numerous cloud security services, most of the time, the security team is flooded with a large number of alerts, leading to alert fatigue.
Organizations lacking risk-based prioritization have difficulty putting their focus on vital fixes that need to be remediated immediately. On many occasions, the organization puts its resources on issues that don’t even pose much risk to the infrastructure.
Trying To Get Everything Right
Not all DevSecOps processes are perfect, so it can be challenging for an organization to get everything right. By bringing more integration to achieve perfection, organizations might face more complexities while implementing security in every phase of the DevSecOps lifecycle.\
FAQ
Is DevSecOps part of SDLC?
Yes, DevSecOps is a part of SDLC, and it spans the entire lifecycle, starting from planning, designing, and coding to testing and release.
SDLC serves as a framework that defines different stages of application development, whereas DevSecOps serves as a methodology that integrates security into the SDLC. DevSecOps just extends the methodology of DevOps processing by introducing security into SDLC and enabling more secure and better-quality application delivery.
What are the phases of the DevSecOps lifecycle?
The DevSecOps lifecycle is based on multiple phases, and each phase plays a vital role in ensuring secure software delivery. The phases include planning, coding, building, testing, release, deployment, operating and monitoring.
Without any of the phases, the DevSecOps lifecycle won’t be complete. These phases provide the detailed guidelines that every organization must follow while implementing DevSecOps in their organization.
Is DevSecOps agile?
Even though DevSecOps and Agile are relatively similar concepts, they aren’t exactly the same thing.
Agile is all about bringing flexibility and readiness in application development, whereas DevSecOps is about integrating security as part of the development process. However, DevSecOps is most compatible with the Agile framework in SDLC as both of them follow the principles of continuous improvement and flexibility.
What is the core principle of DevSecOps?
The core principle of DevSecOps is to enable quick development processes with a secure code base. DevSecOps tries to implement security in every phase and ensures the application is reliable and secure.
The core principle of DevSecOps also involves delivering frequent releases of updates or features using agile methodologies. It also embraces the culture of automating security testing wherever possible in the development phase.
In which phase of the DevSecOps lifecycle do we do threat modeling?
The initial phase, especially the architecture and design phase of the application development, is ideal for threat modeling. Ideally, the threat modeling should be defined at an early phase, and then it should be refined throughout the development lifecycle.
Conclusion
It is vital that every organization should understand the DevSecOps lifecycle as it can benefit their application development process in a lot of ways. It is one of those methods that ensure faster and more secure delivery of applications to the market.
It extends the principles of DevOps along with the integration of security at every phase of the development lifecycle. With DevSecOps, organizations will achieve security and flexibility and also allow developers to quickly introduce updates and features according to the demand.
Anshu Bansal, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist, currently co-founds CloudDefense.AI, a cybersecurity solution with a mission to secure your business by rapidly identifying and removing critical risks in Applications and Infrastructure as Code. With a background in Amazon, Microsoft, and VMWare, they contributed to various software and security roles.
