The Power of DevSecOps: Achieving Speed and Security in Software Development

DevOps can be defined as a set of tools and practices used to drive the rapid deployment of applications. It combines software development and IT to ensure continuous delivery of high-quality software products. Continuous Delivery is the process of consistently packaging, testing, and storing application units, so they are always ready for production deployment.

A crucial aspect of successful DevOps is achieving continuous integration. Continuous integration involves merging source code from different developers or teams into a single application, followed by running automated tests on the integrated application. This integration process runs continuously, either by regularly checking the source control or triggered by code check-ins.

When continuous integration and continuous delivery are successfully implemented, you will have an application unit that undergoes sufficient testing, compliance, and validation, making it ready for production use.

The DevSecOps Challenge

At the core of DevSecOps lies the need for speed. There is a growing demand to accelerate time-to-market from a software development perspective. Clients want innovative and scalable solutions that meet their business needs, and they want them quickly. As a result, many software development frameworks prioritize the speed of delivering valuable products to the market, often neglecting security risks. This approach leads to inadequate security controls in software products, exposing companies to significant security risks. If left unaddressed, these risks can result in penalties for regulatory non-compliance.

DevSecOps aims to integrate security and compliance as integral parts of the development framework, giving equal priority to security, speed, and agility. To illustrate, think of baking a cake with cocoa powder representing security controls. With a DevSecOps approach, the cocoa powder is mixed into the batter before placing the cake in the oven, rather than simply sprinkling it on top just before delivering the cake to the client. The difference? A fully infused chocolate cake versus a cake with a mere hint of chocolate. Similarly, a software product developed with DevSecOps ensures security from the start, rather than adding security features as an afterthought.

What We Deliver

Our DevSecOps service offers leadership, team training, continuous process improvement support, and a repository for shared best practices, blueprints, and code. Since our I&O resources are not dedicated full-time to a software delivery team, this model works most efficiently with our standardized set of tools used across all automated delivery pipelines. The DevSecOps team also actively promotes the benefits of DevSecOps to the wider IT and development community.

While the integration of automation tools has been a driving force behind achieving DevSecOps, concerns remain regarding secure design, governance structures, developer responsibilities, and skills gaps in light of the increased exposure of applications to security breaches. Our Development-centric approach to DevSecOps addresses these concerns by overlapping Engineering, Operations, and Security Compliance.

Our DevSecOps implementation incorporates Agile software development principles and embraces several Lean principles. Requirements and solutions are collaboratively developed by self-organizing, multi-functional teams. This approach ensures adaptive design, evolutionary development, early implementation, and continuous improvement. Consequently, processes are established to facilitate the rapid and flexible deployment of changes to software products.