Businesses and development teams are embracing DevOps with a rapid pace in order to become more agile, provide more value to the customers, and deploy codes rapidly. Hallmarks of DevOps initiatives are supported for flexible provisioning, end to end automation, and cultural support for mutual responsibilities. Due to this, security testing teams have become uncomfortable, and are finding themselves on the receiving end with less power to slow down or stop these changes. However, the shift to DevOps has also opened new doors for security test practice to exercise power to improve the security of applications.
- Cyber Security And Devops
- What is DevSecOps?
- Importance of DevSecOps
- Role of Security testing
- Conclusion
Cyber security has always been the critical and most controversial subject of recent times. The idea of being hacked and being driven to bankruptcy has always haunted small and medium enterprises. There has been a persistent need for robust security testing and to bring a change in the world of security. Gartner has coined a very interesting name keeping in mind the criticality of Application Security aspect in DevOps implementation – “DevSecOps”
According to a report from Gartner on “Information security architects must integrate security at multiple points into DevOps workflows in a collaborative way that is largely transparent to developers, and preserves the teamwork, agility, and speed of DevOps and agile development environments, delivering “DevSecOps.”” (*)
What is DevSecOps?
Gartner’s new concept of “DevSecOps,” which is a merger of DevOps and security aims in bringing the mindset and culture of DevOps into security testing practices. The DevOps mindset displays that security is everybody’s responsibility. The scarce supply of security skill sets to embed in the value creation process has caused a significant slowdown in business outcomes.
With the growing business demand for Agile, DevOps, and Public Cloud Services, traditional security testing processes have become a major obstruction. Once a system has been designed, its security defects can be identified by security test teams subsequently and corrected by business operators before its actual release. The process designed this way can only work where the pace of business activities is a waterfall, but with DevOps in tow, it seldom works. However, with the introduction of DevSecOps risk reduction can in no way be abandoned by either the security staff or the business operators. Instead, it should be embraced and improved by everyone within the organization. Everyone having a responsibility of being an essential part of this process can contribute with the appropriate knowledge and skills they have
Importance of DevSecOps
Recent Gartner research indicates that 38% of enterprises are now using DevOps, and 50% will be actively using it by the end of 2016. In the same survey, security and audit tools represented the single highest-rated category of tools in terms of importance to an effective and efficient DevOps implementation, and 82% of respondents indicated that they had to deal with one or more regulations in their DevOps initiatives.(*)
Information security professionals have been involved in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Although, it is crucial for QA engineers, software developers, and operating officials to work together, which would result in improving and optimizing the security measures with the help of continuous integration of security measures.
The best way to resolve issues that arise with application security lapses is to invest upfront in security testing.
Role of Security testing
Security testing plays an integral role in forming a company’s business strategy which could consistently be aligned with DevOps. Security testing and its tools are made highly customized to suit the need of the business and integrate effortlessly with the existing DevOps process and agile methodology. This is the primary reason it is important to have a trusted brand for the security testing services.
Over these years, TestingXperts has built capabilities, test accelerators, and knowledge repository leveraging over 250 engagements using the latest industry standards such as OWASP, tools, and methodologies. Our team of experts understands that DevOps is a cultural change and a mindset, bringing resources from development and operations into an ongoing process.
TestingXperts offers exhaustive security analysis supported by comprehensive dashboards and reports, along with curative measures for all issues found. Our profound expertise in security testing of mobile applications, web applications, web services and software products makes us the industry leaders in the QA and software testing industry.
Source (*): DevSecOps: How to Seamlessly Integrate Security into DevOps, 30 September 2016, Neil MacDonald, Ian Head
https://www.scmagazine.com
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