All You Need to Know to Implement DevSecOps In Your DevOps

With each passing year, the malicious attacks on software systems are increasing. Today there are more attacks targeting, not just systems but user data as well, than ever. So, what to do to safeguard your system? Securing systems is not imminent, but how? In this post, we will be looking at DevSecOps tools to answer this question. These tools are integrated with the software development process to ensure software security at each level of the development process. This will also help in securing the systems against malicious attempts.

Understanding Security Threats

Almost all of the software being used does not function standalone. They are always connected with the outside systems or expose the endpoints for remote, over-the-network access. Systems also include storing private confidential data. This data is stored in the databases which are also nodes on the network. Having the systems on the network increases the chances of security breaches. This does not mean that the systems that are not present on the internet are not vulnerable to threats. Malicious code and bugs can exist even in the libraries being used.

Software security issues can be about unauthorized access of data. It also means locking the system for ransom, external code libraries with vulnerabilities, bugs, and trojans.

Problem With the Existing Approach

While most of the software teams check the security issues after the software has been developed, this strategy poses significant challenges. First, it becomes very difficult to test the whole software system for vulnerabilities at the end of the development, since the software can consist of several modules both internal and external. Secondly, testing the software for security becomes a problem if security issues emerge and the go-live date is near. It takes time for the threats to be removed.

DevSecOps is Your Savior

So, the solution to this problem is enabling security threat assessment during the software development process in the process called DevOps. This helps in building the security assessment pipeline during the software process so that issues do not appear at the 11^th hour.

Until recently, the development team used to work separately, the security team used to be separate, and the deployment team also used to be separate. Recently these processes are clubbed into one and called DevSecOps.

Why DevSecOps?

1. It reduces the time needed to fix the security threats
2. Ensures that the teams are working collaboratively.
3. Ensures that security assessment is done from day one.
4. Ensures that the final product is well tested and developed keeping a security-first approach.
5. Builds products that are more compliant than ever with the security standards.

Tools for DevSecOps

Before we go into the DevSecOps tools, it’s necessary to know what kinds of tools are existing. DevSecOps tools fall into fall categories: threat modeling, monitoring, alerting, and visualization.

Threat Modelling: These are the tools that identify issues keeping in sight the current system. These systems also identify the issues and security threats currently existing in the system and the patching of the system.

Alerting: When it comes to software security threats, the issues must be fixed as soon as they arise. For this, we need to have a very effective alerting system. These tools integrate with the software code being built so that the code repository is consistently scanned and highlighted.

Monitoring: Now that we have seen threat modeling and alerting, the next type of DevSecOps tool is monitoring. These tools collect the data and analyze it for security threats.

Visualization: Data collection is not enough. Software teams need to visualize the data to know better what is happening in the system. These tools visualize the KPIs and know what the current security situation is.

Now that we know what kinds of tools are existing, let’s see the tools:

Threat Modelling:

• TheHive: An open-source threat detection software, which is free and scalable.
• Cortex: Cortex can observe the security threats, analyze them, and finally take action against the threats.
• MISP: An open-source intelligent threat detection software.

Alerting Tools:

• RunDeck: An open-source tool that can be used for incident management and self-servicing operations. RunDeck can automatically run the automated jobs.

Monitoring:

• Sentry.io: Sentry.io is a helpful tool that can be integrated with the existing software development pipeline. It can help monitor and fix issues in no time.
• ServiceNow: It is a cloud-based tool helping organizations to manage their workflows. It can raise alerts by running jobs.

Visualization and Dashboard:

• Splunk: It is a service-based tool that can display and organize logs that can be searched quickly. It also helps in managing the alerts, results, and configured jobs.
• ElasticSecurity: It helps security operators identify, fix and visualize security threats.

Please note that there are many other tools that we have not included in this post.