DevOps Course

DevOps and/or DevSecOps

If you are of the opinion that “DevOps” or “DevSecOps” are interchangeable terms, think again. Teams that can successfully distinguish between DevOps and DevSecOps are well-equipped to make vital decisions to boost the efficiency of the app development pipeline. Furthermore, it also assists them in making required changes to the existing process, thereby focusing more on speed, agility, and security.

Although the two sound extremely similar,  “DevOps” or “DevSecOps” have critical differences that can impact overall business efficiency, thereby restricting your ability to move ahead with the best application development framework.

Here’s everything you need to know about DevOps and DevSecOps:

In the recent past, the role of security was allotted to a specific team, that too in the final stage of development. This practice wasn’t very problematic as long as development cycles lasted months or years. In agile development, there has been a considerable reduction in the development cycles, some of them lasting days or weeks. This is where DevOps come handy. Effective DevOps helps in ensuring the frequency and rapidity of development cycles by eliminating outdated security practices that can undo even the most efficient DevOps initiatives.

In today’s world, given the collaborative framework of DevOps, security has evolved to be a shared responsibility which is integrated from end to end. It has grown to be a mindset, encouraging some to coin the term “DevSecOps” to essentially emphasize on the need to create a security foundation into every DevOps initiative.

The term DevSecOps stands for development, security, and operations. It is an approach to automate and culture platform design by integrating security as a shared responsibility throughout the entire lifecycle. As opposed to the prevalent practices of the past, DevSecOps extends beyond development and operations teams. If you want to take complete advantage of the agile and highly responsive DevSecOps approach and modernize your approach to application development, it is essential to acknowledge the integrated role of IT security in the entire life cycle of your apps.

Here’s everything DevOps and DevSecOps have in common:

1. A highly collaborative culture: Collaboration is central to both DevOps and DevSecOps as it helps in ensuring that stages like deployment or rapid iteration do not compromise with the safety/security of the app development process. It also helps to ensure on-time achievement of development goals by creating a highly agile environment. Since most modern applications run on widely distributed multi-cloud infrastructures, the feature is essential for the ever increasing IT perimeters.

2. Convergence of multiple teams: Both DevOps and DevSecOps require convergence of multiple teams, thereby eliminating every chance of siloed development. It leads to higher levels of transparency between IT development, IT operations, and security. It also helps in increasing visibility across all the stages of the application lifecycle, starting from planning to app performance monitoring.

3. Rapid automation: DevOps as well as DevSecOps have the capability to make the most of AI, thereby automating the steps involved in the app development process. While DevOps uses tools like anomaly detection and auto-completed code, DevSecOp does the same with the help of continuous and automated security checks, automated anomaly detection to successfully locate probable security threats and high-risk vulnerabilities in highly complex and widely distributed environments.

4. Continuous monitoring: Regular data monitoring is pivotal to DevOps as well as DevSecOps as it helps in continuous learning, capturing and analyzing application data, thereby driving improvements in any app environment. It also facilitates unrestricted access to real-time data that assists in optimizing the application’s overall performance, reducing the app’s attack surface, and boosting the organization’s overall security.

Here’s what makes DevOps and DevSecOps different:

1. DevOps focuses on collaboration, DevSecOps focuses on application & infrastructure security: 

DevOps primarily focuses on increasing collaboration between multiple teams all throughout the application development process. It encourages operations and development teams to work together by implementing shared tools and KPIs. It also focuses on increasing the frequency of app deployments with higher levels of efficiency and predictability, thereby causing minimal disruption to overall user experience.

On the other hand, DevSecOps emphasizes on thinking about application and infrastructure security from the start.These teams always prioritize the prevention of security threats along the way, thereby preventing the chances of vulnerabilities which can compromise the application’s security, threaten end user data and other proprietary assets.

2. DevSecOps evolved to address security concerns of DevOps:

It didn’t take long for development teams to realize that the DevOps model didn’t address security concerns. Therefore, rather than retrofitting increased security into the existing build, DevSecOps evolved to integrate security management earlier into the development process.

Thanks to DevSecOps, application security starts at the very outset of the build process. A DevSecOps engineer aims to ascertain that all apps are secure from vulnerabilities like cyberattacks even before being delivered to the user. He/she also ensures that the apps are continuously secure during multiple app updates and emphasizes that the developers create codes with security in their minds, thereby addressing security related issues that DevOps fail to address.

3. Difference in activities between DevOps and DevSecOps: 

DevOps primarily involves the following four practices:

  • Continuous delivery and deployment by automating the process of releasing updates, thereby increasing efficiency
  • Continuous integration by efficiently merging code changes to ensure that nothing but the most updated version is available to developers
  • Prioritizes microservices by building an application as a subset of smaller services
  • Designs, implements, and manages app infrastructure with the help of codes

DevSecOps involves the practices mentioned above, and extends to include the ones listed below:

  • Increases the quality of code used by developers and boosts existing levels of security right from the start till the end of the app deployment process
  • Implements security testing during the development pipeline, thereby saving time and unnecessary expenditure
  • Automatically tests for vulnerabilities in the newest builds regularly
  • Establishes a standard framework to respond to security-related incidents

Now that you have made this far into the page, identify the needs of your organization wisely and choose a method that effectively addresses the challenges faced by your business. If you want to increase agility, improve reliability and improve security levels, then DevSecOps is the right fit for your needs.

If you are considering shifting from DevOps to DevSecOps, it is essential to get all your teams on board with the concept of DevSecOps before initiating the shifting process. Ensure all your employees are on the same page about the requirements and benefits of DevSecOps. Check out DailyAgile courses page and learn more about our SAFe DevOps workshop.

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