What Is DevSecOps?

Definition, Pipeline,
Framework, and Best Practices for 2022
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Meta Description: DevSecOps is a set of automated processes meant to integrate security at

every stage of the development cycle. Learn more about its pipeline, framework, and best
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Excerpt: DevSecOps is a set of pragmatic and goal-oriented approaches taken to ensure

system security.

DevSecOps is defined as the process of establishing critical security principles in the

standard DevOps cycle by collaborating with the IT security team, software developers,
and operations team. Here’s an in-depth analysis of the DevSecOps pipeline, framework,
and best practices for 2022.

Table of Contents
● What Is DevSecOps?
● How Does the DevSecOps Pipeline Work?
● Understanding the DevSecOps Framework
● Top 5 DevSecOps Best Practices for 2022
What Is DevSecOps?

Lifecycle of DevSecOps

DevSecOps refers to establishing critical security principles in the standard DevOps

cycle by collaborating with IT security teams, software developers, and operations
teams.
As the name suggests, DevSecOps is a continuation of the DevOps concept. It is based on the
fact that every department in an organization is equally responsible for integrating security at
every stage of the software development cycle.

Executing new code to drive production in the quickest way possible is a common goal of all
organizations. However, in this era of growing online security concerns, cyber threats, and other
security breaches, specific security protocols need to be followed at every stage, and this is
where DevSecOps comes into the picture.

One of the leading advantages of DevSecOps is that it minimizes the vulnerability of any
product and makes it entirely ready for use by its end users. Since every process and related
workflow gets automated with strict security checks, the security requirements get fulfilled with
higher accuracy. However, it is pivotal to select the right tools to maintain security in continuous
integration (CI). The security team needs to be adequately trained to help achieve this goal.

See More: DevOps vs. Agile Methodology: Key Differences and Similarities

How Does the DevSecOps Pipeline Work?

Generally, a DevOps pipeline involves several steps. DevSecOps stands out from conventional
methods by ensuring strict security standards at each stage. The main phases of a software
development lifecycle (SDLC) process include planning, coding, building, testing, releasing,
and deployment.

● Plan: In the planning stage, the primary security analysis is executed. Engineers
develop appropriate test strategies, used to identify factors including how, where, and
when the testing will take place.
● Code: Various types of Git controls and tools are used in the coding step to protect
sensitive information such as application programming interface (API) keys and
passwords.
● Build: It is crucial to write and execute codes for building the source code. Here, static
application security testing (SAST) techniques are widely used to make the codes error-
free.
● Test: In the testing phase, dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools are mainly
used to test the product/application, secure user authentication, and identify any
possible issues in SQL injection and API endpoints.
● Release: The release stage refers to security analysis executed during penetration
testing and vulnerability scanning.
● Deploy: The deployment phase is where proper security protocols are implemented at
production, ready for final deployment.

As discussed earlier, several security measures are put in place during each phase with
DevSecOps. The following are the phases of such security procedures:

Phase I: Threat Modeling

Threat modeling summarizes probable attack scenarios, lays out the flow of sensitive data, and
highlights vulnerabilities and mitigating alternatives. This phase assists in addressing security
issues and improving the team's security understanding.

Phase II: Scan

The scan phase evaluates the code to guarantee that it is secure and free of security flaws.
Manual, as well as automated code reviews, are included here. During this step, AppSec tools
such as SAST and DAST are employed. As it is early in the software development lifecycle, this
phase allows engineers to resolve most security vulnerabilities and defects.
Phase III: Analyze
All of the previously acquired data and metrics are analyzed to identify any security
vulnerabilities in this phase. The dangers are then categorized into a list, ranging from the most
severe to the least. Some SAST programs such as Klocwork can automate this procedure.

Phase IV: Remediate

The remediation phase deals with security vulnerabilities that have been identified and
organized in prior stages. Some DevSecOps technologies such as SAST can suggest fixes for
the vulnerabilities, flaws, and defects discovered. This makes dealing with security issues much
easier as they emerge.

Phase V: Monitor
In the monitor phase, keeping track of the vulnerabilities found, efforts are taken to mitigate or
eradicate them, and the overall security condition evaluation of the application takes place. It's
also good to keep track of and manage the variations between actual and target metric values.
During the software development lifecycle, this aids in making informed data-driven decisions.
Continuous security should be implemented first in security unit tests. Security unit test
requirements are just as critical as the other unit tests that we write.

See More: Top 10 Cyber Threat Intelligence Tools in 2022

Understanding the DevSecOps Framework

DevOps helps accelerate software delivery, which poses a challenge to standard security
practices. The term DevSecOps (or SecDevOps) was coined to describe the incorporation of
security procedures into DevOps systems due to this problem. It is pivotal to know the way
DevSecOps has been adopted across diverse industries to provide an optimum level of security.
For that, you need to have a clear idea of the top features and solutions required to build the
DevSecOps framework. Next, we will walk you through the top standard features of application
security products to create the DevSecOps framework.

1. Security scanning
Security scanning is one of the prime features of application security products. It is basically of
two types - agent-based and agentless. While both of the scanning models are popular, the
agentless scanning model works in quite a different way. Here, the application security service
collects the project and relevant data from the security administrators and then it executes the
security scanning in the agentless scanning architecture.

The security administrator can use the web dashboard to enter project information or write a
script to transmit data to the application security service's exposed API. Agentless security
scanning is based on two prime components - scanning agent and application security service.
The main role of the scanning agent is to run a thorough security scan and submit the output to
the application security service for further scan and analysis.

The security agent's scanning results are useless without the application security service. For
instance, for an SCA product, the signature of the scanned libraries can be in the result while
the vulnerability detail is expected. On the other hand, for a SAST product, the result contains a
vulnerability code. As a result, the scanning findings can only be used with the application
security service's database.

2. Obtaining the source code

An application security product generally receives the source code of a project through two main
methods - the version control system method and the file upload method. In this process, the
relevant security administrator uploads the source code to the application security product by
compressing it as required. Here the upload process takes place via an API that is already
published or a web management interface.

The security administrator configures repository information for the project through the approach
of the version control system. Some of the examples are - repository uniform resource locator,
repository access credentials, and others.

The application security service uses a specific set of data to obtain the source code from the
version control system. As obtaining the complete source code can be more time-consuming
and complex, it just retrieves the updated part of the code to ensure better results.

Also, there are other advantages of using the version control system such as incremental
scanning, stricter authentication process, streamlined actions relevant to the project, and others.
This is one of the top factors that makes it unique and effective to obtain source code at many
levels.

3. Project organization
Each project is produced and managed by a different team in terms of organizational hierarchy.
Users and groups are used to organize tasks in application security products.

Each user is a member of one or more groups, each of which can access one or more projects.
Also, the employees often need to work on multiple software projects concurrently. Such
projects are often associated with a single unit of a company.

As such, mapping directly from the organizational structure is not practicable. As a result, each
project is allocated to a group that includes all of the project's users with application security
products.
In a DevSecOps architecture, especially, in a high-level one, there are two main parts. Here the
agent refers to an easy-to-use script that extracts and gathers the source code and sends it to
the relevant engine. This is a crucial part of the CI (Continuous Integration) process.

Here, monolithic and microservice architectures are the two types of architectures. Because of
these reasons, the framework's engine is built utilizing a microservice architecture:

● Maintenance is easier: The engine supports different security procedures (such as

security scanning, reporting retrieval, and credential management). Each of these
characteristics can be defined as a separate microservice in the architecture, which can
be created and maintained independently. If a monolithic design is chosen, changing or
adding one security feature will necessitate changing or adding another element.
● Greater dependability & availability: When one security component (e.g., security
reporting) fails, it has no impact on other security features. If a monolithic architecture
was adopted for this framework, a single security feature failure could result in the entire
framework failing.
● Easier to scale: Each service can be scaled separately to provide more resources if
necessary. When using a monolithic architecture, one must scale up the entire engine to
meet the resource demands of a single feature.

See More: Top 10 DevOps Automation Tools in 2021

The administration microservice is in charge of the framework's administrative activities, such

as:

Dashboard & application user interface

The dashboard and application user interface both play a vital role in a management
microservice. Such microservice is also equipped with an API endpoint along with the
microservices focused on interacting with various project data.

Project onboarding
Project onboarding is the starting point before the scanning begins. First, you need to add the
project to the application security service. The microservices dashboard plays a significant role
here by streamlining the process of project onboarding to diverse application security services.

Most of the tasks associated with the scanning, reporting, and security checks are handled by
the central reporting module. But some issues may arise in this case, like, time-consuming
scanning, longer waiting time in the blocked CI pipeline, and others. To resolve these problems,
it is important to monitor and track the security scanning process thoroughly. This will also give
you a clear idea of the relevant scanning status. This ensures easy and fast uploading of the
scanning report in the main reporting dashboard.

The scanning microservice, like the central reporting microservice, is made up of several
modules. Each module is responsible for one application security service's central reporting.
Here a strong connection is established and maintained between the main framework and the
services that are on-premise.

There can be difficulties with connecting the engine with application security services in a cloud-
based infrastructure. This is because the data center firewall restricts the connection. Most of
the cloud services consist of highly dynamic IP addresses. And so, it’s tiresome and error-prone
to whitelist a large number of IP addresses through manual processes. Also, it puts additional
pressure on firewall management like Kubernetes.

As a result, whenever the framework's IP addresses change, it's necessary to whitelist the new
IP addresses. The connection-handler microservice comes into play here. It resolves such
issues by implementing a proper virtual private network (VPN) to the VPN gateway associated
with the data center. This allows framework microservices to access on-premise services
through the VPN tunnel.

See More: Top 10 DevOps Certifications and Courses in 2022

Top 5 DevSecOps Best Practices for 2022

To unleash the potential of DevSecOps, you must adhere to the best practices. Here we have
listed out the top best practices for DevSecOps to ensure a high level of security, reduced risks,
and better related operational efficiency. The objective should be to ensure high standards of
security.

Here are the top five DevSecOps best practices for 2022:

1. Use secure coding techniques

Secure coding techniques are an integral part of DevSecOps to ensure that the software is fully
protected from any threat with low vulnerability levels. Unless the code is highly secure, there
will be risks such as data breaches, cyber security attacks, and other types of security threats. It
is recommended to invest the required time and resources in secure coding techniques to avoid
critical security attacks in the future. Always go for experienced developers and adhere to the
proper coding standards.
 2. Integrate the right tools
Integrating the right tools is one of the basics for effective DevSecOps implementation. Most
companies utilize top appsec techniques such as SAST, DAST, interactive application security
testing (IAST), and source composition analysis (SCA), to name a few, to ensure the usage and
optimization of the right tools.

Some of the common yet highly sought-after features from DevSecOps tools are image
assurance, intrusion detection, runtime protection, and other security features for microservices.
With containerization and microservices being the foundation of modern application
infrastructure, it is mandatory to integrate the proper DevSecOps tools into enterprise SOPs.
That’s where well-developed and easy-to-use APIs also come into play as they help in
extending and integrating tools across diverse platforms and application areas.

3. Employ automation
Manual processes are more prone to errors and often inconvenient to scale up. Such
techniques also increase the risk of misconfigurations, which is one of the most impactful,
serious security threats businesses face.

Strict security protocols and measures need to be applied and validated throughout the CI/CD
pipeline, and automation is what simplifies the whole process. This is why it is one of the most
effective best practices for DevSecOps. Enterprises must automate as much as possible--from
code writing in an IDE to IAM roles in production--to avoid such misconfigurations preventing,
detecting, and fixing issues.

4. Adopt security as a code

Security as a code refers to the coding, scanning, and validation of security policies. The main
advantage of security as a code is that it ensures proper security rules. Protocols are uniformly
implemented across the entire infrastructure. It also helps expedite deployments and use
version control and automation of pipelines.

Security as a code, like automation and other DevSecOps best practices, provides the benefit of
strengthening security as well as helping improve operations. Besides, it simplifies iterating and
scaling security methods once they are documented.

5. Shift security left

Security scanning and evaluations were traditionally performed after software production. As a
result, resolving security vulnerabilities was complicated, expensive, and susceptible to time
constraints. To address these difficulties, shift left security stresses integrating security into the
software development lifecycle (SDLC) as early as practicable.

Shift left is more than just code. It also entails prioritizing security within the SDLC's planning,
analysis, and design phases. Enterprises can uncover security concerns and misconfigurations
early on, increasing product quality and security while reducing the time and effort required to
remediate vulnerabilities.

Takeaways
Traditional security approaches simply need to function better in today's fast-paced world.
Because of the nature of modern security assaults in the recent past, a secure product requires
an integrated and holistic solution, and DevSecOps is the perfect solution.

DevSecOps has the potential to revolutionize how corporations manage security. Many
businesses are yet to become aware of it or are hesitant due to various constraints including
business constraints. Although the transition may be challenging at first, DevSecOps can benefit
a company in the long term.

Did this in-depth analysis help you understand DevSecOps better? Let us know on
LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We’d love to hear from you!

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Author: Remya Mohanan

Site: toolbox.com/tech

Parent Category: DevOps

Tags: DevSecOps, DevSecOps Pipeline, DevSecOps Framework, DevSecOps practices

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