Importance of Integrating Security into DevOps
DevOps jettisons traditional development practices that lead to inconsistent infrastructure and siloed teams, instead favoring automation, rapid development cycles, and reproducible infrastructure builds. The DevSecOps approach, which emphasizes security throughout development, provides numerous additional benefits, including:
- Faster identification and remediation of vulnerabilities.
- Proactive detection and response to problems found in previous development cycles.
- Improved collaboration and communication among teams.
- Establishment of a culture of shared responsibility for security.
- Increased visibility into the software supply chain.
- Enhanced ability to respond to security incidents.
With cybersecurity threats continually growing in scope and severity, DevSecOps (and related Secure SDLC practices) offers a more stable, effective, and resilient approach to software development to reduce the impact of malicious actors, malware, and related developer security risks.
Secure Development Practices
#1. Shift Security Left
Shifting security left is an approach to coding practices that encourages focusing on security early in development. This requires prioritizing security in all stages of the SDLC, encouraging responsibility, accountability, communication, and collaboration between the development, security, and operations teams to create, deploy, and manage secure software.
In practical terms, shift left means performing threat modeling early in development, adding automated static and dynamic application security testing (SAST/DAST) practices, using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools to establish and standardize secure infrastructure, and adhering to secure coding standards.
#2. Enforcing Secure Coding Standards
Secure coding standards help guide developers to write code free from flaws and vulnerabilities that could result in a data breach. Because every organization is different, there are a number of policies and standards to choose from, like OWASP Top 10 or SANS Top 25. Use automation to enforce secure coding practices, including use of linters, code scanners, and security checks within continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
Automated and Integrated Security
#3. Automate Security Testing
Security testing helps to identify and address vulnerabilities during development, and the use of automated testing practices reduces the likelihood that security flaws make their way into production.
SAST tools evaluate code without actually running it, analyzing code at compile time or during build processes. They use the code to pinpoint common security flaws and bugs, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS) weaknesses, or authentication bypasses.
DAST tools analyze running applications to uncover vulnerabilities that may not be evident using static testing alone. They simulate real user behavior, testing HTTP input exploits, attempting API exploits, or throwing random combinations of data and inputs to understand reactions (a practice known as fuzzing), all in an attempt to break the application.
#4. Secure CI/CD Pipelines
Augment the CI/CD pipeline with security capabilities to ensure only tested and verified code that is free from defects reaches production. Using the principle of least privilege (PoLP) as a guideline: restrict access to CI/CD tools, pipelines, and infrastructure to minimize the risk of unauthorized access. Deploy tools such as data loss prevention (DLP) to monitor the presence or changes to sensitive files.
Implement approval gates. These can either be manual or automated processes that demand code quality to pass a certain threshold or meet specific criteria before merging changes into a version control repository. Those criteria could include passing security tests, adhering to code quality standards, or other relevant conditions.
#5. Monitor and Log Security Events
Monitoring and logging enable both proactive protection against, and rapid response to security incidents. Use security information and event management (SIEM) tools such as Splunk or LogRythm to analyze logs, detect suspicious patterns of activity, and identify potential threats or incidents.
Intrusion detection systems (IDS) and user behavior analytics (UBA) may be deployed to continuously watch for suspicious user activity, anomalous application behavior, unusual network traffic patterns, or unauthorized infrastructure access indicative of a breach in progress.
Proactive Security Measures
#6. Regular Vulnerability Assessments
Vulnerability assessments help to identify weaknesses that attackers could exploit to gain unauthorized access to systems, applications, or infrastructure. Whether contacted by internal security staff or via third-party services, these assessments ultimately rely on both automated tooling and manual processes to assess the organization’s technology layer for flaws.
The assessments should cover web applications, APIs, network devices, operating systems, configuration management databases, cloud environments, and storage systems, among other assets.
#7. Infrastructure as Code Security
IaC allows for automation in the provisioning and management of infrastructure, but those same elements can themselves be targeted by hackers to gain unauthorized access or disrupt services. Protect IaC tools and processes to ensure this doesn’t happen.
Follow the PoLP when writing and storing IaC templates, only granting the minimum necessary permissions to resources. Control IaC templates with version control and tools like DLP to track changes and easily audit access. SAST tools may also be used against IaC assets to detect potential security issues before production deployment.
#8. Plan for Incident Response and Recovery
Security incidents are inevitable. An incident response (IR) plan protects the organization from attacks, breaches, or other incidents, allowing for rapid response and recovery and ensuring continued business operations.
The IR plan should outline the roles, responsibilities, and procedures to detect, contain, eradicate, recover from, and learn from security incidents. Designate teams with relevant stakeholders from IT, security, legal, and communications to coordinate response to incidents. After every incident, conduct a post-incident analysis to identify root causes and develop a course of action for remediation.
Advanced Security Practices
#9. Leverage Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
AI and ML have made significant inroads into security software, allowing for advanced pattern-matching and learning capabilities that increase the likelihood of detection and response to cybersecurity threats
AI transforms how security systems respond to threats, with automated remediation that automatically fixes low-severity issues or initiates the initial stages of resolution for high-severity issues. Predictive analysis tools with AI-enhanced functionality can rapidly analyze both historical and emerging data to identify trends that indicate a potential future threat, allowing for proactive mitigation.
#10. Adopt Zero Trust Principles
Zero trust is a foundational shift in the approach to security, rejecting the traditional “trust but verify” model and preferring the “never trust, always verify” ethos instead. Here are guidelines to implement zero trust:
- The PoLP is the backbone of zero trust. Grant users only the minimum permissions needed to perform their job functions, and no more. Use role-based access control (RBAC) and other security controls to enforce minimal permissions.
- Restructure the local and cloud networks with zero trust network architecture (ZTNA) principles. Microsegmentation involves the creation of smaller networks with controls like firewalls separating them, ensuring that if a breach happens, it is better contained and the intruder’s lateral movement capabilities are limited.
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA) challenges add an extra layer of verification that a user is who they claim they are. Make MFA mandatory for all users, particularly those with privileged access.
- Implement systems, such as UBA, to continuously verify identities, regularly validating user access and authorization.
DevSecOps with CloudGuard
Effectively implementing DevSecOps means prioritizing secure coding practices, embracing automated testing, and adopting the zero trust philosophy throughout the information technology stack. These approaches, along with the other best practices mentioned, dramatically reduce risk exposure and facilitate the development of more resilient applications.
Check Point’s CloudGuard, a comprehensive cloud security solution, is designed to integrate seamlessly into existing DevOps pipelines. CloudGuard enables automated security testing and policy enforcement, ensuring continuous protection from development to runtime.
It’s never been more important to safeguard your organization’s code assets from cybersecurity threats. Request a free demo of CloudGuard today.
Feedback