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As the world becomes increasingly interconnected and dependent on digital innovations, it is no surprise cybercrime is experiencing a surge. According to a Cybersecurity Ventures report, the total annual cybercrime cost is projected to hit $10.5 trillion by 2025 and Mordor Intelligence anticipated that the total cybersecurity market value will reach nearly $315 billion by 2029.
With businesses globally being attacked every second across all industries, cybercriminals and malicious hackers are getting more persistent than ever before, capitalizing on sensitive data through unauthorized access and identity theft. Worse yet, these cyberattacks are wreaking havoc for companies and the repercussions are far-reaching. Cyberattacks showing no mercy to any industry and product development operations (DevOps) in software development lifecycle is one emerging frontier exposed to cybercriminals today.
The pulse of seamless product development operations relies on the cutting-edge security posture wherein software delivery and security excellence cannot be overstated. With a software development team has so much to handle on their plate - right from managing sudden workloads, applications, and infrastructure services to continuous integration and product delivery to delivering a superior quality software application, and meeting tight deadlines - prioritizing DevOps to DevSecOps pipeline is paramount for successful software delivery excellence.
The journey of formalizing development and operations process on the safe grounds of the DevSecOps Center (when deployed at a very early stage) enables SDLC experts to
- Analyze an organization's security posture
- Identify serious security breaches and unmanaged access controls
- Improve threat detection and poor vulnerability management issues
- Mitigate cybersecurity threats and fix vulnerabilities early on
- Uphold regulatory compliance faster
Built upon the strong foundations laid by DevSecOps pipeline, the core team enables enterprises to incorporate security and reliability seamlessly throughout the software delivery lifecycle, fostering a culture of shared responsibility and proactive risk management.
What is DevSecOps?
DevSecOps in the software development landscape can be explained as a centralized team within an organization designed to manage all security measures required to safeguard the systems, digital assets, and data from potential threats across digital operations. Think of it as the nerve center for cybersecurity that is responsible to monitor, detect, analyze, and respond early to cybersecurity incidents in real-time that may arise.
The traditional DevOps approach primarily accelerates the software delivery process via automation, collaboration, and continuous integration and deployment. However, companies while embarking on this journey unintentionally neglect crucial security considerations, leaving their organizational security posture at high risk to cyber threats and compliance violations.
Adoption from DevOps to DevSecOps principles will instantly enable these organizations to bridge the widening gap between development, operations, and security teams. As a result, a culture of shared responsibility for proactive risk management will get established with greater improvements in the existing organization's overall security posture.
Furthermore, this integration of security into the DevOps process streamlines security assessments, vulnerability scans, and remediation efforts at every stage from code inception to software deployment while helping in the early detection of potential deployment setbacks.
What’s more? DevSecOps pipeline enables the SDLC team to fix the security related bugs when they write the code. This shift-left approach not only decreases the cost and effort of fixing security issues but also improves the security profile of the application.
Top DevSecOps trends in 2024 dominating DevOps
Looking ahead to 2024 and beyond, the rapidly evolving nature of technology and cybersecurity demand specific trends. However, based on existing trends and the direction of the industry, here are some potential areas of focus for DevSecOps in 2024:
1. Cross-team collaboration and DevSecOps automation:
Collaboration between members of the DevSecOps team, developers, operations personnel, etc. will be the key factor while trying to incorporate security practices into DevOps workflows. This implies the breakdown of barriers and creating a culture of shared security accountability among all teams that are responsible for the software delivery lifecycle.
Automation and orchestration tools will perform a key role by facilitating the security processes, information sharing and providing quick responses to security incidents. The team will use these tools to automatically test the security, scan for vulnerabilities, and execute remediation actions inside the DevSecOps CI/CD pipeline. Hence, security checks will be incorporated during the development process.
2. Compliance and regulatory requirements:
With more and more companies adopting cloud and DevOps technologies, compliance with industry regulations and data protection laws will persistently be a major task for the DevSecOps automation teams. To this end, employees must remain aware of the changes in compliance requirements and the DevOps methods should be in line with the regulatory norms.
These measures will involve putting controls in place to protect sensitive information throughout the life cycle of software development, performing regular security audits, and maintaining detailed audit trails for compliance reporting. DevSecOps teams will collaborate with development and operations teams to bake the security controls and compliance requirements into the DevOps processes at the very start.
3. Securing containerized environments:
As the use of containerization and orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes continues to grow in the DevOps environments, securing the containerized workloads will be the next big focus for the DevSecOps teams in 2024. This will include the implementation of container security best practices, which involve scanning of container images for the presence of vulnerabilities, monitoring of container runtime environments for any abnormal activity and enforcement of security policies at the container level.
DevSecOps teams will have to incorporate container security tools along with DevSecOps Pipeline tools into the DevOps journey so that security monitoring and threat detection is conducted continuously throughout the containerized applications and infrastructure. Furthermore, they will need to work closely with the dev and ops teams to make sure that container security is tackled starting from the early stages of the software development lifecycle.
4. AI and Machine Learning for threat detection:
AI and machine learning technologies are becoming more and more crucial than ever before for threat detection and response in DevOps scenarios. The DevSecOps team across industries are relying on AI-based analytics to process large data sets, including logs, network traffic and endpoint telemetry, to discover peculiarities and patterns of the potential threats.
With the usage of AI and ML in their security operations, DevSecOps teams can have more timely and accurate threat detection that will enable them to take quicker actions against security incidents. Furthermore, they can be employed to computerize and simplify several security procedures for instance, vulnerability scanning, compliance monitoring and incident response.
5. Zero Trust Architecture:
The Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) approach of not trusting anyone or anything by default gains more relevance in the DevOps environments. DevSecOps automation teams would need to carry out and supervise the implementation and management of the Zero Trust principles in the DevOps environment comprising microservices, containers and cloud infrastructure. This is going to be achieved by applying rigorous access controls, micro-segmentation, and continuous monitoring as well as validation of all connections and communications. Through a "Zero Trust" approach the team will be able to remove the attack surface and limit possible consequences of the security breach.
6. Cloud-Native security:
As cloud-native architectures and services become more popular among organizations, DevSecOps pipeline teams must put their resources into effectively securing cloud environments. This will entail implementing cloud security best practices, employing cloud-native security tools and solutions, and monitoring for threats and vulnerabilities particular to cloud platforms.
This will also provide DevSecOps teams more flexibility to work closely with development and operations teams so that security controls are included into cloud infrastructure and applications right from the beginning. Besides, they get an understanding on the latest security terrain of different cloud providers and modify their security strategies accordingly.
7. Shift left security integration:
"Shift left" approach implies integrating security practices into the software development cycle, so that security issues could be detected and resolved at the earliest stages. It will enable DevSecOps teams to coordinate with developers, implement security controls and automate security testing integrated into the DevSecOps CI/CD pipeline in collaboration with engineering teams.
Through the security shift left, the organizations can save the cost and effort that is involved in fixing vulnerabilities late in the development process. Besides that, it will help in creating a security-first approach and a shared responsibility for security among development, operations, and security teams.
8. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM):
The complexity of DevOps in environments where applications being deployed across multiple clouds and on-premises infrastructure surely call for SIEM solutions to fill the gaps of visibility and centralized log management. SIEM tools play a crucial role in gathering, figuring out and relating security event logs from different sources, helping DevSecOps automation teams to detect and react to prospective threats successfully.
Integration of SIEM systems into DevOps toolchains will allow real-time monitoring and analysis of security events across the whole software delivery chain. This journey will involve taking in logs from CI/CD pipelines, containerized environments, cloud infrastructure, and other components of the DevOps ecosystem.
What’s more? SIEM solutions resting on breakthroughs like advanced analytics, machine learning, and automation, will be in more demand as they offer more intelligent threat detection and faster incident response. DevSecOps teams leveraging SIEM solutions for discovering anomalies, ranking alerts, and automating remediation actions, will be able to manage the dynamic pace of the DevOps environments faster.
9. Network Detection and Response (NDR):
As the use of cloud-native architectures and microservices is growing, the traditional perimeter-based security approaches are losing effectiveness and dominance towards NDR solutions is expected to rise. With the greater visibility into network traffic, these solutions will enable the DevSecOps team to detect and respond to threats across distributed environments.
NDR instrumentation, when incorporated into the DevOps processes, will drive continuous monitoring of network activity, and analysis of communication patterns between microservices, containers and cloud resources. As a result, the DevSecOps team will be able to identify and intercept the potential threats, such as lateral movement, data exfiltration attempts, and malicious network behavior. Also, NDR solutions powered by machine learning and behavioral analysis to create profiles of normal network activities, will help in early detection of anomalies and possible threats more accurately.
10. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR):
DevSecOps teams in DevOps environments continue to deal with the security of endpoints, such as developer workstations, build servers, and production systems. EDR solutions will act as a key to giving visibility into endpoint activities, discovering possibly malicious behavior, and speeding up response and remediation.
EDR methods, when integrated more tightly with DevOps processes, will provide continuous monitoring and analysis of endpoint activities throughout the software delivery lifecycle. This entails the installation of EDR agents at developer workstations, build servers, and production systems, and integration with DevSecOps CI/CD pipelines and configuration management tools.
EDR technologies leverages powerful analytics, machine learning, and automation to speed up and enhance the detection and response to endpoint threats. When the DevSecOps teams will utilize EDR solutions, they will be able to identify malware infections, detect the insider threats and address compromised endpoints as quickly as possible, resulting in seamless DevOps processes and application delivery are not hindered.
These trends reflect the ongoing evolution of DevOps and cybersecurity practices and highlight the importance of integrating security seamlessly into the DevOps pipeline to mitigate risks effectively in modern software development environments.
The Final Thoughts
DevSecOps pipeline reflects a continued evolution for DevOps towards automation, collaboration, and security-conscious practices. In the software development landscape, organizations shifting from DevOps to DevSecOps, need to emphasise on proper planning. At Kellton, we help businesses unlock innovation, scalability, and resilience in their pursuit of DevSecOps journey through proper assessment of current security measures at every stage, and automate SDLC processes at the right code level.
From assessment to implementation, and support, Kellton delivers end-to-end DevSecOps support, enabling businesses to navigate complex enterprise-level roadblockers efficiently. This way, our experts drive business agility throughout DevSecOps automation journey and help companies unlock competitive advantage in dynamic and challenging environments.
