DEVOPSdigest

Chef announced InSpec 2.0, a compliance automation solution that accelerates DevSecOps by allowing cross-functional application, infrastructure and security teams to assess and remediate compliance issues from development through the entire software delivery lifecycle.

InSpec 2.0 provides cloud configuration testing (including Microsoft Azure and AWS), more than 30 new conformance capabilities (including Docker, IIS, NGINX and PostgreSQL), enhanced integration with third-party tools and improved ease-of-use and customizability.

InSpec is the first step in Chef’s "Detect, Correct, Automate" approach to cloud migration and continuous automation. It helps organizations maintain an up-to-date view of compliance status in production, detect security issues long before they reach production and reduce risk while delivering applications faster. An open-source framework for describing security and compliance rules that can be shared between software engineers, operations and security engineers, InSpec enables compliance at velocity at all stages of the software delivery process, from the developer’s workstation all the way to production, with no performance impact or side-effects. InSpec’s readability means it is easy to use and understand for all team members, including those whose roles involve minimal coding.

New Capabilities

- Cloud configuration compliance: InSpec 2.0 gives users the ability to write compliance rules against cloud resources, including AWS and Microsoft Azure, with user-defined custom compliance policies.

- Improved user experience: InSpec 2.0 contains more than 30 new resources, allowing users to write compliance rules for many common applications and configuration files without requiring any programming knowledge. These include Docker, security keys (RSA/DSA/x509), webserver (IIS/nginx/Apache) configurations, packages (both system as well as Perl/R/etc.), PostgreSQL and MySQL database configurations, XPath matching in XML config files, ZFS storage pool configurations and many more.

- New integrations: InSpec results can now be exported as JUnit format for integration into continuous delivery tools such as Jenkins and can pull compliance profiles from Chef Automate. Previously-announced integration with Amazon Systems Manager (SSM) provides a frictionless on-ramp to InSpec in the cloud.

- Improved performance: InSpec 2.0 runs 90 percent faster than InSpec 1.0 on Windows and 30 percent faster on Linux.

“InSpec 2.0 builds on our commitment to build the essential tools and services needed for modern application teams to truly deliver on the promise of DevSecOps, fully integrating security with development and deployment for traditional and cloud-native software delivery,” said Marc Holmes, VP of Marketing at Chef. “InSpec provides an easy-to-learn, open-source path to incorporating security and compliance requirements as code directly with the delivery process, ensuring that applications and infrastructure are compliant every step of the way -- not just at the end of the process.”