DevOps and Security: Striking the Balance Between Speed and Protection

What is DevOps security?

DevOps can also be referred to as DevSecOps (Development, Security and Operations). It is a set of tools, cultural approaches and practices that brings together Development, security and operations teams to deliver services and applications at high velocity.

New application functionality can be delivered frequently and rapidly with DevOps methodologies and approaches. They are also updated with incremental updates.

Following are some of the DevOps security best practices:

1. The DevOps security tools and processes need to be automated: Security to DevOps processes can be scaled by automated security tools that focus on vulnerability management, patching, configuration management, code analysis etc. Risks are also minimized that arise from vulnerabilities, associated downtime and human errors.

2. A DevSecOps model needs to be embraced: When there is a misalignment between DevOps and security teams, the fallout can include application security weakness, unsecured hardcoded passwords, misconfigurations, vulnerabilities and insecure code that cause operational dysfunction.

DevSecOps includes embedding governance and cybersecurity functions such as vulnerability management, configuration management, code review, firewalling/unified threat management, privilege management and Identity and Access Management (IAM) throughout the DevOps consulting .

3. Managing vulnerabilities: Vulnerabilities should be remediated, assessed and scanned across integration and development environments. When an operational environment is used to launch a product, tools and tests can be run by DevOps security against the infrastructure and production software, so that exploits and issues can be identified and patched.

4. Managing configuration: There is a certain scale and speed at which DevOps environments move and hence any configuration mistake could be rapidly multiplied and copied. Misconfigurations and potential errors should be identified and remediated through the scanning process.

Hardening baseline scanning and continuous configuration should be scanned across code/builds and servers for virtual, physical and cloud assets. Configuration management should be ably tackled by the team and properly streamlined for optimal performance.