Critical best practices for DevOps security

DevOps has taken the IT world by storm. The tech community turned to DevOps and microservices in order to develop and implement code faster and more efficiently than older-style cascade projects.

High velocity IT is vital when it comes to staying competitive in the market. In order to survive, businesses have to develop as quickly as possible while delivering innovation at the same time. And let’s not forget that one of the most important things everybody has to pay close attention to now is cybersecurity.

When security meets DevOps

DevOps, as the name implies, is bringing development and operations together. But it’s more than just that. If you want to make the most of the agility and responsiveness that DevOps offers, IT security must become an integral part of every single stage of the development process.

In theory, the DevOps team responsibilities include maintaining security by design. In practice, however, security is often included later in the product life cycle as an afterthought.

DevOps security best practices

Thus, the idea to build security into the DevOps workflow concept was born. This type of “baked-in” DevOps security led to the rise of a brand-new term called “DevSecOps,” which is aimed at enhancing security through increased collaboration and shared responsibility.

DevSecOps best practicesWhy join the DevSecOps army

Companies that go for DevSecOps benefit in multiple ways.

DevOps implementation scheme

DevSecOps is a robust approach that places each team member in charge of security. It’s unacceptable for someone to roll out an application and then just leave it to colleagues to think about security. This collaborative framework holds a lot of other advantages:

Detecting and fixing security issues throughout the development workflow increases the speed of delivery and reduces costs.

There is faster recovery speed in the event of security breaches thanks to templates and pet/cattle methodology.

Automated testing and processes make tests more coherent and the overall DevOps chain more consistent.

Effective management and deployment of security auditing, monitoring, and notification systems allow addressing cybercrime “trends”.

DevSecOps fosters a culture of continuous iterative improvements.

Secure products ensure increased customer value.

DevOps security best practices

Any company should take privacy and security principles seriously and translate them into concrete actions through DevSecOps best practices. As DevOps includes cultural, organizational and technological components, it goes perfectly with security programs that usually include 3 components:

People

Processes

Technologies

Here are the main DevSecOps best practices across these three key pillars.