4 mins to read
Public cloud vulnerabilities are on the rise, as researchers continue to discover new exploitable weaknesses. According to a recent study, there are now over 2,500 known vulnerabilities in existence — a 150% increase over the last five years. Where can we begin to tackle this issue? DevSecOps security tools.
Many cloud-driven enterprises are rethinking the way they approach security and development. To this end, a growing number of teams are transitioning from DevOps to DevSecOps and integrating Security into their development lifecycle.
What is DevSecOps?
Due to rising cybersecurity concerns and widespread cloud migration, however, DevOps is now evolving. Increasingly, enterprises are embracing DevSecOps, a philosophy that is reshaping the software development landscape. DevSecOps — or development, security, and operations — is a cutting-edge approach to software development that involves “shifting left” and making security a fundamental part of the DevOps process instead of an afterthought.
In a traditional software development workflow, security testing typically occurs at the end of the process before the release. This always leaves the security team in the undesirable, and arguably unfair, position of having to block a release at the 11th hour should issues be found or on the flip side, let a less than secure application go to market. Having the security gate at the very end of the process makes remediating security issues time-consuming, expensive, and often non-trivial. In a DevSecOps model, security is involved throughout the entire software development lifecycle ensuring that things are built securely from the foundation on up.
The benefits of DevSecOps security tools
Now that you have a high-level overview of DevSecOps, let’s take a look at some of the most persuasive benefits that come along with it.
Lower operational costs
By catching issues earlier in the software development lifecycle, you can reduce rework and prevent vulnerabilities from slipping into production. This dramatically saves you production costs in the end. As the old adage goes, it is $1 to fix it in the lab and $1000 to fix it in the field. Now imagine if you are releasing to the field every two weeks.
Faster development cycles
DevOps teams today are under enormous pressure to move quickly and at the same time to release stable, secure software sooner and sooner. By shifting left with DevSecOps, security is part of the process ensuring that it does not become a critical roadblock in the final hour.
Enhanced collaboration
DevSecOps requires breaking down silos between developers, operations, and security teams. By integrating security, team members can work collaboratively throughout the entire process. This is not only a great way to build a highly secure product, but also build culture that prioritizes security and privacy. The security team has the added benefit of acting as a consultant to the development teams, to ensure that they are not seen as the “team of NO”, but instead a valuable resource.
Happier customers
DevSecOps helps create highly stronger products which in turn, results in happier users and a stickier product.
DevSecOps security tool recommendations
The DevSecOps landscape is becoming increasingly saturated with new tools and services designed to help software teams accomplish more. Before you get started with DevSecOps, you’ll definitely want to peruse the available options.
With that in mind, here are some tools that can make DevSecOps infinitely easier and more effective.
GitLab
GitLab is an open source platform that lets you develop, secure, and manage software from a centralized location. This is a leading tool for security automation.
WhiteSource
WhiteSource helps identify open source components and dependencies. Check out WhiteSource if you want to achieve greater visibility into your software.
Grafana
Grafana provides open source visualization and analytics that enable you to measure the performance of your applications. The company offers flexible visualizations that make it easy to discover and follow emerging trends and insights.
Mattermost
Mattermost is an open source collaboration platform that combines chat, collaboration, project management, and automation to help developers organize their work and reduce context switching. This platform integrates with popular developer tools and can keep communication and collaboration flowing in DevSecOps teams.
Prometheus
Prometheus is a powerful open source tool for event monitoring and alerting. Prometheus uses a time-series database to record real-time metrics and enables teams to detect any issues in their software.
Sonrai Dig
Sonrai Dig is a cloud security solution that continuously identifies all relationships between data and identities in your public cloud. Among other things, Dig’s Governance Automation Engine is useful for automating the discovery and routing of problems to the teams responsible (be it Security, Operations or Development.) This intelligent workflow reduces alert fatigue and ups your business to work at the speed and scale of the cloud.
Tips for integrating DevSecOps
Making the leap to DevSecOps may seem straightforward. But in reality, it takes careful planning and consideration. Truth be told, it can be a big change for DevOps and security professionals — especially industry veterans who are used to certain ways of working.
It’s a good idea to keep these points in mind when planning a DevSecOps strategy so that you ensure a smooth and efficient transition.
Educate team members
Before you shift left and adjust any workflows, it’s a good idea to educate team members about the transition and collect questions and feedback. This way, you can ease DevOps and security professionals into the process and provide a smoother transition.
Monitor progress
Switching to DevSecOps isn’t a process you should take lightly. It requires ongoing monitoring and real-time communication to successfully pull off this type of migration. Keep a close watch on your operation to avoid complications.
Adjust as you progress
The journey to DevSecOps will require plenty of adjustments and optimization along the way. The most successful teams constantly look for ways to streamline their operations. As you begin implementing DevSecOps, don’t be afraid to iterate your strategy just like you do when creating software.
How Sonrai supports DevSecOps
Sonrai is on the front lines of DevSecOps, with Sonrai Dig giving teams the visibility and reassurance they need to explore new cloud-based development models.
With Sonrai Dig, security concerns are monitored 24/7. Organizations can rest assured knowing when a vulnerability is detected, Dig’s intelligent workflows notifies the responsible party with the right level of urgency. Meaning, not just the security team is involved when there is a vulnerability, but audit, cloud or development teams too. This automation collaborative process is a critical component of meeting the DevSecOps model.
Dig doesn’t stop at just notifying the necessary parties. If an issue slips by the approved CI/CD pipeline, Dig steps in with remediation bots. However, when you’re working with Sonrai Security, you’ll have access to our Governance Automation Engine. Effective automation involves much more than writing a lambda “bot.” It means automatically identifying, classifying, and prioritizing problems with machine learning and graph analytics.
We’ve only just scratched the surface. To see Sonrai in action or learn more about our DevSecOps security tools, request a demo today.
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