DevOps focuses on integrating security throughout the development cycle. Running manual security checks in this model can be intensive. Hence automating DevOps security is the key to enhance the efficiency of the development process. Here we have discussed the need for DevOps security automation.
People Make Mistakes
According to experts like https://sonraisecurity.com/who-we-serve/devsecops/, humans make mistakes that can be costly in a DevOps environment. Most engineers work late at night to meet deadlines. Also, many times engineers work under immense pressure.
For example, a critical service or API has failed and affected the application. DevOps development work and its success depend on effective collaboration that cannot be guaranteed. When working under stress, engineers are more likely to commit mistakes.
People Bend Rules
It is a common trait in people to bend the rules to collaborate or be helpful. When people bend the rules, it creates a gap and imperfection in products.
People act with bad intentions.
DDoS attacks are one of the most significant security risks for networks. While it may seem like a coordinated attack of remote computers on a server, humans are behind it.
Security automation removes the human element and reduces the risk of human errors or bad intentions. Hence automating DevOps security should be your biggest priority. To make things easy for you, we have discussed a few tips to enable security automation.
Automate Thoughtfully
When automating security, tread carefully. It would help if you integrated security at the early development stages of your DevOps processes. It should not be at the end of the delivery pipeline. Security should be a quality requirement, and security tests should be run like other software testing processes.
Continuous integration in DevOps allows “Shifting Left” by accelerating tests and feedback and enabling bugs discovery at the early development stages. You can implement automated DevOps security testing to secure applications/processes and meet compliance.
Fix Issues Quickly
When employing automated security testing, you might come across a breach unexpectedly, and you need to resolve the issue quickly. The principle of the DevOps model is to accelerate development so that you can design, develop, test, and deploy solutions quickly.
You need to perform accurate tracking of all issues that come up during the development process. By automating security, you can ensure the tools monitor and track the processes and record any vulnerability. When vulnerabilities are discovered, you can ask the engineers to fix the issues quickly before moving ahead in the development pipeline.
Check Code Dependencies
The DevOps environment is built on code. It is essential to all DevOps practices. Developers using open source libraries don’t have the time to review the code, making the application vulnerable. By automating security, you can enforce scanning of code dependencies and vulnerabilities and give a report. It will allow the developers to fix the code before the application moves to the production stage.
Several utilities can conduct code dependency checks in the DevOps environment and see if they contain any flaws.
To sum up, DevOps security is an essential aspect of the development that ensures the application or the services can work flawlessly and does not put user data or system at risk. Automating security can make development faster and ensure the application or service functions as intended.
