Environment-Automation-on-Demand

Security-as-code: A smart solution to a complex endeavor

A BFSI company, housing a portfolio of 60+ applications with 30 outsourced to external vendors, is facing significant challenges in its software development and maintenance processes.

 

Security-as-code gives pragmatic meaning to the concept of DevSecOps. By embedding security throughout your SDLC, security controls can be automated and consistently applied. As the use of infrastructure as code accelerates, this automated approach to security policies becomes a critical necessity to keep up with DevOps velocity.

Predefined security policies boost efficiency, and also allow for checks on automated processes to prevent misconfigurations that result in exploitable security flaws.

Six security-as-code capabilities to prioritise

Francois Raynaud, founder and managing director of DevSecCon, said that security as code is about making security more transparent and getting security practitioners and developers to speak the same language. In other words, security teams need to understand how developers work, and use that insight to help build the necessary security controls into the SDLC—ones that accelerate development, not hinder it.

Developers want to create secure code, but they’ve lacked the tools and practices to do so. By embedding security into the DevOps workflow, developers are finally empowered to resolve security flaws that they create, resolving them early when it is most efficient and before vulnerabilities can be introduced for exploit.

Automate

Security scans and tests (such as static analysis, container scanning, and fuzz testing) within your pipeline so that they can be consistently applied across all projects and environments.

Build

An immediate feedback loop by presenting results to developers, allowing them to remediate issues while coding and learn best practices during the coding process.

Evaluate

Evaluate and monitor automated security policies by building checks into the process. For instance, verify that sensitive data and secrets are not inadvertently shared or published.

Standardize

Standardize exception-handling. When vulnerabilities are found, automate simple remediations as well as approvals for more complex issues.

Test

Test new code at every code change..

Monitor

Monitor vulnerabilities and track their remediation using both scheduled and continuous methods. Features, such as GitLab’s Security Dashboard and Compliance Dashboard, can improve visibility while simplifying efforts.

Once you have these six best practices in mind, your team can work toward becoming a well-oiled DevSecOps machine; along the way, security-as-code will inevitably become the smart solution within a complex endeavor.

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