The DevOps approach gives developers the scope to integrate security at a very early stage of software development and deployment process, as long as they are ready to accommodate all the available cultural changes that come with the territory. According to the World Quality Report, it is considered as an important part of software quality.
According to Statista, the rate of implementation fo DevOps in businesses have risen from 85 to 105 in the year 2107 itself. According to another report from IDC, DevOps software market predicted to grow from 2.9 billion in the year 2017 to a whopping 6.6 billion by the year 2022. Experts feel that soon DevOps is going to reach its peak and turn mainstream.
The current popularity of the technology of DevOps is due to its immense degree of security. The quality of security features of DevOps is also apparent from the mammoth companies and brands who have already implemented it. Names like Adobe, Etsy, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon and Walmart are just a few of those names.
In other words, DevOps is responsible for revolutionising how new applications are released, but the work of the security teams is immensely important as well. According to a report by Hewlett Packard Enterprise on application security, “ While automation and team integration could lead to greater adoption of application security in the future, the current state is that most organizations are not implementing security within their DevOps programs.”
Before considering the role of security in DevOps, it is important that you are informed about the basic definition of the platform and why businesses need it.
What is DevOps And Why Do Businesses Need It?
In simple words, DevOps refers to the situation, in which both the development and operation teams work together with ease. The main set of functions that both the teams perform together involve building, testing, monitoring and deploying applications. DevOps is also responsible for ensuring speed, control and quality of a particular application.
DevOps serves a very critical purpose that is beneficial to businesses, that is to drastically improve the process of software development. This is only possible because of the seamless collaboration between the CI/CD developers, DevOps developers, QA experts and other experts.
With the implementation of DevOps, companies have the ability to create software products and update them on a regular basis. DevOps practices can be adopted in two ways, one is to create and set up an in-house DevOps team which can prove to be an extremely tedious methods t, and another way is to hire capable DevOps service providers.
The next section of the article deals exclusively with the need for security in DevOps. Following are the factors which create an urgency for integrating security into DevOps.
Why Should Security be Integrated into DevOps?
- The three teams of DevOps, Engineering and Security, each have their lexicon and manner of communicating reinforced by systems that are siloed
- Launch and time-to-market delays are very common when the DevOps, engineering and security teams, do have a system to use, which includes automation tools, which are helpful in scaling tasks and managing updates.
- Generally, Developers are conducting Application Security Test or AST, using tools which are are not integrated into their regular development environments. This, in turn, makes the whole process challenging and time-consuming.
- Another factor that jeopardizes launch date and compliance of any of the new projects, is limiting the security team to test only the deployment phases of a software development lifecycle.
- According to DevSecOps Global Skills survey, around 705 of the number of DevOps team members, do not have the knowledge of how software can be secured adequately.
Code Security Is a Priority
There exists a total of around 44% of developers in the world, who do not know how to code securely. This sums up to almost half of the total number of developers. This hugely impresses upon the fact that developers need the assistance of the security teams, so that they can effectively scan codes to look for malware and bugs of any kind.
Malicious code can be injected during the creation process, which is why constant checking is crucial. For instance, a hacker who wants to put a bug, will not obviously wait for the entire development process is concluded. He has the knowledge to enter just a single line of code to create a back door. Only the developers, who have the ability to understand the nature of a threat like this will be able to recognise and combat it effectively.
Conclusion
Integrating security in DevOps is nothing less than a challenge, but is beneficial, as it allows businesses to become immensely customer-centric. It also gives businesses the ability to develop a DNA which is data-driven.
These three objectives are achieved successfully, only when companies are focused on how they can improve upon their existing strengths and prepare themselves for the future. Checkmarx’s initiative to put security at the centre of DevOps is speeding up the process of breaking down the silos that exist between security, DevOps and engineering.
