The speed at which technology is advancing is mind-blowing. This rapid evolution of technology has forced businesses to transform their technology infrastructure and product delivery model to keep pace with this change. That is the reason why many businesses are adopting DevSecOps and switching to native cloud technologies.
Must read: Build a DevSecOps Culture at Your Company
This shift is blurring the lines between code, infrastructure, and IT roles, which are no longer the same. This will allow you to analyze code in the earlier stages of the software development life cycle, which in turn can reduce the attack surface area and enhances your cybersecurity.
In this article, you will learn about six DevSecOps goals your cybersecurity teams should set and achieve in 2021 and beyond.
1. API Security
The exponential rise in the adoption of microservices architecture has led to healthy growth in API-based traffic. In fact, 83% of web traffic is now API traffic. Yes, using APIs makes it much easier to build, fix and improve applications but they also pose a security risk, especially if you don’t have control over API security.
Most businesses adopt dozens of APIs just because it ensures faster delivery and better final outcome, but they ignore the security risk attached to it. With these APIs making calls to public networks, they can easily become a target for cybersecurity attacks. You need to have DDoS protection in place. With companies using hundreds of thousands of APIs, it will impossible for your cybersecurity team to enforce policies and ensure the security of all these APIs and opensource call center software
2. Align DevSecOpsWith Security Standards
With DevOps having highly integrated development and operation processes, developers looking to turn their infrastructure upside down and automation empowering software teams, will accelerate delivery and discourage silos. On the flipside, auditors will compel businesses to redefine boundaries.
Must read: Build a DevSecOps Culture at Your Company
CISOs will try to implement cybersecurity standards in their DevSecOps teams. Wendy Nather, RSA Conference Advisory board member and head of advisory CISO at Duo Security currently known as CISCO said, “The need to reference a reliable, repeatable security process. This will persuade tech giants to share their experiences in working groups, which would convert these practices into standards.”
3. Privacy Implications
The quest to improve reliability and improve practices has led to the hyper instrumentation of software and infrastructure. Many DevOps teams are already leveraging AI to collect and analyze large amounts of data and identify useful insights from it. This will move data from the data centers to the edge, which can raise privacy concerns. Get more at Extratorrent2.
Companies must implement strong monitoring mechanisms and keep an eye on all the devices and also make sure that this monitoring control stays in the right hands. How businesses cope up with these increased Ops visibility and address the privacy issues is critical for its successful adoption. Security leaders should work together with the legal and HR departments to find the right balance
4. Policy as Code
If you want to achieve the best results, you will have to treat everything as a code. This will make it easy for you to tweak reusable infrastructure components. You will have to bridge the gap between security and DevOps teams. Tim Hinrichs, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Styra think that businesses should focus on adopting policy-based controls.
By treating policy as a code, you don’t need manual code reviews and you can also remove process bottlenecks. Moreover, you can ease compliance efforts. The popularity of DevOps tools that automate compliance-related tasks will only grow as time progresses. All this will change the way the DevOps team approaches application security.
5. Create a Security Champion Program
Your security team might not have the human and technical resources to cope up with emerging threats. That is why it is important to make cybersecurity a shared responsibility. Chief Technology Officer of Coveros Tom Stiehm said, “The best organizations tend to follow a 100-10-1 ratio. This means that if your organization has 100 developers, you should also have 10 DevOps professionals and one application security expert.” Even then you are optimistic.
Due to the shortage of application security experts in the industry, you should not use them as an enforcer but as a facilitator. Design a security champion program and let these application security professionals teach developers. Make sure that the cybersecurity team also takes input from DevOps to design future security policies and decide on which tools and technologies you should deploy. They can also help you put together secure coding guidelines, which minimizes the risk of security vulnerabilities in code that can easily be exploited by cyber attackers
6. Automate, Automate, Automate
As businesses move their application security to software delivery, defining security requirements and implementing checks become even more important. As automation starts to influence development and businesses move towards serverless architecture, it will give rise to new security issues. Can your cybersecurity team cope with them?
The best way to keep tabs on cybersecurity threats is to take advantage of automation. DevSecOps must move beyond the testing automation phase and implement it on security policy enforcement and incident response. James Condon, Director of research at Lacework thinks that automation will play a big role in the implementation of security policies in the future.
He predicted, “Just like automation and technology have empowered developers and applications, it will also empower security. Only time will tell how tough it would be for automation to resolve security issues. This will span across the entire application development lifecycle from start to finish.”
Conclusion
The DevOps industry will go through a paradigm shift and if you want to thrive, you will have to set the right goals. Harness the power of automation to cover up for the shortage of resources and use your existing resources smartly. Your focus should be on aligning your DevOps with cybersecurity standards. Treat policy just like you treat the code and don’t keep your eye off the APIs as they are vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks.
What are your DevSecOps goals for 2022? Share it with us in the comments section below.
