devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: checklist

  • DevOps Security: Your Complete Checklist

    DevOps Security: Your Complete Checklist

    In a fast-paced environment like DevOps, your security strategy needs to be even more agile. While moving fast is great for delivering application features and functionality, speed shouldn’t come at the cost of security.

    DevOps security incorporates security strategies directly into your DevOps pipeline, creating a culture of pre-secured software deployments that work seamlessly for the end user. However, this requires a complete shift in your operational policies and security mindset. You need to start viewing security as an integral part of your DevOps lifecycle instead of a separate department.

    Here’s a checklist of DevOps security strategies for your development teams to deliver secure and reliable applications faster:

    Your Complete DevOps Security Checklist

    1. Analyze your development process for security hazards.
    The first step in implementing a DevOps security strategy is finding and fixing loopholes in your existing development process.

    For instance, continuous delivery and development are key in a DevOps environment. However, if each change doesn’t go through a code review, it has the potential to break your application.

    Deploying changes without passing them through a security checkpoint is like driving at high speed on a road with many curves. Each curve (change) is a potential hazard, and the danger increases when the driver does not know a car is coming from the other side (bug).

    Therefore, you must turn the spotlight on your development process and find those curves.

    2. Create a common goal between development and security teams.
    Traditional roles of developers and security teams might look like they are at crossroads — Developers write code, and security teams find fault with their code. However, in a collaborative environment such as DevOps, security and development must work hand-in-hand to deliver a secure and seamless experience to end users.

    Your organization should have a common goal of integrating security directly into the development process. Therefore, encourage open and regular communication between development and security teams. Further, establish joint milestones and review them to ensure there are no silos between both teams.

    Once these teams get used to this collaborative approach, your deployments will become faster because fewer things will break.

    3. Integrate security procedures in the development phase.
    Automation is the lifeblood of DevOps security. Integrating scanning tools into development workflows is critical to your entire process.

    For example, automated tools can scan the code, network and infrastructure to identify security vulnerabilities and provide recommendations for remediation. With this, development teams can fix a few security concerns themselves before passing them on to the security team for a final check.

    4. Add observability to your pipeline.
    One of the biggest challenges of the distributed nature of DevOps operations is visibility. How do you efficiently monitor a large number of operation nodes spread across several different locations?

    Observability helps you do this by using logs, metrics and traces—i.e., the outputs of your application to determine internal application health. With observability tools, you can see much deeper into the operations of your systems and identify the exact details of any security concerns. You can also easily identify potential bugs and fix them before they cause problems.

    5. Make changes in small, incremental units.
    It is infinitely easier to test code in small units and deploy them as minor but incremental changes than handling large, unwieldy blocks of monolithic code. Deploying gradual changes means you can resolve vulnerabilities faster.

    6. Scan and secure your entire DevOps pipeline.
    A large part of the security hazards in your DevOps process comes from unsecured containers and operations nodes. According to a study from ThreatStack, 94% of organizations say containers represent a security risk.

    However, the risk is not limited to containers.

    Other services like APIs, third-party tools like Docker and imported code pose a potential security risk to your processes. This makes it necessary to scan all your operations nodes periodically for vulnerabilities. And once you’ve cleared them, remember to lock the door behind you by requiring strict credentials for access to your administrative dashboards.

    Ticking Items Off Your DevOps Security Checklist

    If you implement most of the security guidelines on this checklist, your organization will have a solid security foundation. However, DevOps security is not a one-time process.

    You will need to continuously integrate security protocols into each part of your DevOps life cycle. Furthermore, you will need to re-train your employees and invest in new technology that makes your security pipeline smoother, such as observability.

    However, since this entire process makes your applications more secure and compliant while shipping them to market faster, investing in DevOps security is well worth it!

  • 7 Things to Make DevSecOps a Reality

    7 Things to Make DevSecOps a Reality

    While talking about DevSecOps has become a hot trend, it is clear that many organizations claiming to follow such methodologies are actually mired in traditional waterfall development. Let’s figure out if you’re really ready to implement DevSecOps.

    In a world that relies heavily on distributed computing and third-party services, security is paramount for those who want to remain competitive. From open source applications to operating systems developed, deploying, delivering and correcting application vulnerabilities must occur rapidly before breaches or compromises occur.

    Here’s the good news: If your company practices authentic agile development and uses highly modular design patterns such as service-oriented architecture, you are well-positioned to achieve DevSecOps success. Why? Because you are already using key strategies that provide solid foundations for secure computing solutions, so you can immediately start experiencing the benefits that come from doing DevSecOps right.

    Follow the Exact Recipe: Don’t Cherry-Pick Ingredients

    DevSecOps emerged from people realizing that DevOps did not adequately highlight security concerns and security should be shifted farther left in the software development life cycle. You should think of DevSecOps as sweetening the existing “recipe” of DevOps by baking security in from the beginning without slowing down the development and release cycles. It may sound obvious, but increasing velocity while reducing risks will guarantee the release of better products because they are built with potential risks in mind (for instance, more and better error handling). This approach results in happier customers and repeat business, which will positively impact your bottom line.

    DevSecOps Requires a Shift in Culture and Mindset

    Let’s face it, the days of successfully deploying applications designed to meet business demands without embedding security controls early in the development life cycle are gone. Effective DevSecOps spans culture, practices and tools that break down silos, orchestrate integrated processes with automated tasks and simplifies security by bringing it out into the open. Instead of “security through obscurity,” boundaries and channels are clearly defined and narrowly focused.

    The benefits of DevSecOps are many and include:

    • Automating security review and application testing.
    • Increasing the speed of delivery enhances product quality.
    • Enhancing compliance with continuous monitoring and auditing.
    • Fostering transparent and open cultures.
    • Reducing costs, development church and application attacks.
    • Delivering increased security and confidence.

    A methodology that uses communication and collaboration to allow for dynamic development and deployment is crucial for responding to change and needs rapidly. When done right, this new mindset will make everyone in your organization accountable for security with a simultaneous mind and talent shift.

    Putting DevSecOps Into Practice: A Checklist

    An efficient DevSecOps program will require continuous management and developer education and process improvement through open collaboration, proactive monitoring and informed feedback. Here’s a short checklist to ensure you’re on the right path.

    1. Build an Environment Conducive to DevSecOps: Engage leaders with a new mentality that makes it incumbent on leadership to understand engineering practices, so they know when things need shorting up. Deeply integrate management, so they support the necessary investments in tools and training while encouraging teams throughout the entire development life cycle.
    2. Ensure Open Communication and Active Training: Promote collaboration and ongoing learning that leads to continuous improvement across the organization. Do this well by providing developers with the training and tools they need. Enable failing fast, early and often so you learn from it and create something useful.
    3. Adopt a Security-Conscious Culture: The driving force behind DevSecOps requires security to be defined at the beginning of a project for repeatable, consistent use. This practice will help you respond to security needs and changes quickly while increasing team collaboration.
    4. Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Without relying on manual processes, IaC helps manage and provision infrastructure automatically. This approach allows code to automatically be rolled out in a repeatable and consistent manner through a version-control system instead of relying on installation gurus and “component owners.”
    5. Use Genuine Agile: Instead of cherry-picking from the agile approach and using your own form of agile-flavored waterfall—focus on practicing “Pure Agile.” This method includes detailed and frequent stakeholder involvement, “fail fast” practices and processes, a “meet the requirements” values and principles mindset and technical excellence.
    6. Adhere to Modular Design Patterns Closely: While object-oriented design (OOD) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) mean different things to different people, the commonly understood key is decomposing large business problems into small business problems that can be addressed by discrete services through boundaryless information-flow sharing.  When done correctly, OOD and SOA will help your applications scale quickly while decreasing costs.
    7. Favor Resource Management over Pride of Ownership:  There is a now-famous analogy about thinking of software components more like cattle than like pets.  While grim, the point is a salient one: When something fails, you should be able to quickly replace it with a new or improved component instead of trying to nurse the ailing component back to health. This mindset better promotes modularity and discreteness of purpose, which, in turn, leads to faster fix and restoration times.

    As virtual environments and cloud usage grow, the need for DevSecOps to be done “the right way” is growing right along with it. But the sense of urgency to implement DevSecOps practices “the right way” hasn’t quite caught up yet. The challenge is to embrace all aspects of DevSecOps day in and day out, instead of just going through the motions of the select practices you adopted.

    The call to action is clear: Now is the time for organizations to move the speed of delivery and secure code out of the textbooks and manifestos into the mainstream.