DEVOPSdigest

DevOps processes play a vital role in how businesses approach their software development projects. This streamlined way of harmonizing development and operation teams results in improved efficiency and much faster time-to-market when introducing new products.

That being said, many times, focusing solely on these two elements doesn't leave much space for security planning. However, for organizations to be successful, it's important that regular security auditing finds its way into modern DevOps workflows to minimize liabilities and ensure safer and more reliable deployments.

Why Are Security Audits Critical in Business Operations?

Many organizations rely on a network of connected systems to operate effectively. However, the highly digital nature of modern operations makes businesses more exposed to cybersecurity risks than ever before. Regular security audits are an essential element for helping to reduce this risk profile.

There's a difference between a security audit and a simple vulnerability scan, however. Security auditing is a much more comprehensive evaluation of various elements that make up an organization's cybersecurity posture.

Because of the sheer amount of data that most businesses store and use on a daily basis, it's critical to ensure that it stays protected. Failure to do this can lead to costly data compliance issues and also lead to significant financial losses.

Practical Steps for Incorporating Security Auditing Into DevOps

Integrating security auditing into all stages of your business DevOps workflows is important to keeping your software deployments safe and reliable. Below are some practical steps you can take to support this effort:

Make Security a Higher Priority

Quick development and rapid deployment are the primary focus of most DevOps practices. However, security has also become an equally, if not more important, component of modern-day software development. It's critical that security finds its way into every stage of the development lifecycle.

Changing this narrative does, however, require everyone in the organization to place security higher up on their priority lists. This means the organization as a whole needs to develop a security-conscious business culture that helps to shape all the decisions made.

Integrate Industry Standards Into Your Pipeline

In order to meet certain industry standards when designing new products and services, it requires more than just checking off a few security boxes. It requires that every product from start to finish has compliance planning and execution as an essential element.

However, regulatory compliance covers more than just protecting your customers from data breaches. There are also ethical standards that come into play, especially when using newer AI technology that collects and analyzes larger data sets.

By considering all of these elements at the outset of development, you'll actually improve the quality of your deployments while reducing the need to put a lot of time and resources into fixing issues after the fact.

Adopting "Everything as Code" Principles

In product development, the concept of "Everything as Code" has become another important approach to better managing essential IT operations. This includes everything from how infrastructure is set up to support software deployments to security protocols and incident response planning. An Everything as Code approach makes it easier to implement and track version controls, review, test, and automate various stages of the development cycle.

When looking at security auditing, applying code-centric design processes can significantly improve its accuracy and efficiency. For example, compliance requirements can automatically be enforced through the design process by referencing pre-coded security policies and other associated rules. This also makes it easier to identify and remediate any potential security gaps discovered.

Use Data to Optimize Your Security Program

Benchmarking is another important part of security planning. This process involves establishing a standard or point of reference to measure the effectiveness of new implementations.

Once you've established clear benchmarks, the next important element is to track the progress of your security data over time. Doing this gives you more control over where and how you add new security initiatives and helps you monitor their effectiveness.

The information you collect can also help you make better future decisions regarding where and how you add new security protocols. For example, if the data you're collecting points to a particular threat or vulnerability as the most critical concern, your organization can focus more on closing that gap.

Streamline Security Auditing With Automated Tools

Automation can be a valuable asset when integrating security auditing into DevOps processes. For example, many security testing tools can be automated to actively look for vulnerabilities in coding as it's being developed. This allows developers to quickly identify and fix issues earlier in their SDLCs, preventing larger issues from surfacing further down the road.

Another way that automation can be used in software development is continuous security monitoring. In this scenario, specialized monitoring tools are used to regularly monitor an organization's system in real time. Having these ongoing automation running helps to detect suspicious activity spreading across different systems or applications while alerting security teams of their presence and allowing them to investigate.

Keep Your DevOps Pipeline Secure from End to End

Integrating security into your DevOps pipeline is critical to optimizing your development processes and the delivery of more reliable applications. By using continuous security auditing right from the initial design phases, you'll not only save valuable time and resources for your DevOps teams but also drastically reduce the risk of security vulnerabilities in the future.