How You Can Use DevOps to Make You More Secure

It’s Time to Bring Security into the Picture

If your organization already has a DevOps mindset and approach to building software and managing it, you’re on the right track. But what’s needed now more than ever is to integrate security in DevOps for protection, not just post-deployment but now. As we recently covered, there are a number of benefits when it comes to integrating security and DevOps into a security-focused strategy.

But how should you actually do it? It’s not a simple, straightforward process. Fortunately, our own chief information security officers (CISOs) have put together five recommendations for how you can use DevOps to make your organization more secure. Let’s dig in.

Top 5 Recommendations for DevSecOps

1. Build Relationships

While development and IT teams have their respective workloads, KPIs, and cultures, the relationship between them matters. The relationship between them and security matters, too. If you’re considering how you can use DevOps to become more secure, it’ll be important to manage the relationships between all three teams carefully to ensure everyone is on the same page and collaborating efficiently.

Partner closely with your DevOps team and any other developers or system administrators to ensure total alignment between them and security. With everyone connected and working off the same page upfront, your organization will be in a stronger position to build a truly successful and productive DevSecOps group from the start.

2. Integrate Security Early

When you’ve coordinated involvement from all three teams, make it a point to involve your security team as early as possible in the DevSecOps lifecycle. Gaining their insights and understanding upfront not only ensures the final product is as safe as possible, but it also helps  keep overall costs for the initiative down, as you won’t have to cycle back to an earlier stage of development, spend more resources and time on finding solutions, or obtaining more security solutions to resolve any identified challenges.

3. Take Time to Understand

While bringing development, operations, and security together can help to streamline the process, ensure overall security, and help to reduce costs, it will all be for naught if the process and the results aren’t in alignment with your organization’s business strategy.

DevOps is complicated, and your respective implementation will be specific. What is the solution intended to achieve? More importantly, how is this solution going to support your organization in achieving a strategic objective? Everything an organization does should be aligned with its ultimate strategy, otherwise, it is a waste of both time and resources.

4. Build an Architecture Diagram

At this point, hopefully the benefits of how you can use DevOps to become more secure are clear, but one thing you’ll need early on is an architecture diagram or framework. This is a zoomed-out view of how the process will flow, what the moving pieces are, who is responsible for what, and so on.

The biggest challenge here is that the overall view of this shouldn’t reside in one individual’s head. All three teams need to be brought together, along with a project sponsor or other leader to shape this architecture, identify any dependencies, specify workstreams, etc. until the final architecture has been developed.

5. Know Where to Push

Throughout this process, it’ll be important to remember that transitioning into a DevOps and ultimately a DevSecOps environment is a new territory for everyone involved. The processes that these teams have been using to navigate will be changing, and it may take some time to manage the transition and adapt to it.

That said, don’t be afraid to challenge assumptions. If one team pushes back on some new process, tool, or approach, ask why. Doing something one way for a long time is not a justifiable reason to continue doing it. After all, nothing changes if nothing changes.

Let Inversion6 Help You Make the Transition with Confidence

Our chief information security officers (CISOs) have worked with numerous companies to support their transition to a more secure development model. If you’ve been thinking about how you can use DevOps to make your company more secure, Inversion6 is here to help. And through our industry partnerships, we can provide state-of-the-art solutions to help you along the way. Get in touch with us today to learn how we can support your goals.