What Is A DevSecOps Pipeline?

What is a DevSecOps Pipeline?

DevSecOps (short for development, security, and operations) is an approach to secure software development that integrates security practices throughout the entire software development lifecycle. It emphasizes collaboration and communication between development teams, security teams, and operations teams to ensure that security is seamlessly built into every stage of the software development process.

Within the context of software development, a DevSecOps pipeline is a CI\CD pipeline with integrated security tooling and processes for application security testing, remediation, and security & compliance governance. Instead of bolting security processes on to the end of software development projects with point-in-time audits and penetration tests after code is deployed, DevSecOps seamlessly integrates security and shifts it left, which essentially means that security is applied as early as possible in each phase of the software development lifecycle.

Organizations that can leverage DevSecOps pipelines successfully achieve stronger security posture and code quality without impacting developer productivity and velocity. 

DevSecOps Pipeline Tools And Services

A Successful DevSecOps practice relies on the use of the following application security scanners and governance:

‍Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Scanners

SCA is a security technology that protects applications against risks that originate from open source software (OSS). SCA solutions identify and manage vulnerabilities within open source libraries and components, in order to meet security & compliance requirements.

‍SAST (Static Application Security Testing) Scanners

SAST scanners are critical for uncovering and eliminating vulnerabilities in proprietary software early in the SDLC, before an application is deployed.

‍Secret Detection Scanners

Secret scanners automatically scan text and files for secrets, such as passwords or API keys.

‍Container Scanners

Container scanning involves comparing the contents of each container to a database of known vulnerabilities. If the scanner determines that a library or other dependency within a container image is subject to a known vulnerability, it will flag the image as insecure.

‍DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing)

DAST scanners are used after application deployment to spot issues that manifest at runtime, such as authentication and network configuration flaws.

‍Infrastructure-as-Code (Iac) Scanners

IaC scanners enable the identification of all the variables for which the proper settings are either undefined or are set incorrectly. Scanning IaC involves checking templates, files, and modules and their variables against known policies. 

‍Policy-as-Code Governance

DevSecOps pipelines require strong governance to ensure that vulnerable code isn’t deployed or promoted to the next pipeline. This requires enforcement of policies throughout the pipeline, such as ones that break the pipeline upon discovery of certain types or severity of vulnerabilities.

Key Benefits of DevSecOps Pipelines

The primary objective of DevSecOps is to deliver more secure software without degrading developer velocity. If DevSecOps pipelines are implemented correctly, software-producing organizations will reap the following benefits:

• decrease in application security incidents 
• decrease in time spent on compliance audits
• increase in deployment frequency
• decrease in change failure rate
• decrease in the number of vulnerabilities deployed to production 
• decrease in lead time to zero day vulnerability remediation

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Want to learn more about how Harness Security Testing Orchestration helps you build robust DevSecOps pipelines? Visit the STO product page or sign up for a demo with one of our experts!

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