DEVOPSdigest

Start with 12 DevSecOps Trends to Watch Right Now - Part 1

Dheeraj Nayal
Global Community Ambassador & Region Head - Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa region, DevOps Institute

The latest trend has been of embedding DevSecOps with development processes as quality assurance was adopted into development via automated testing. It is not just enough to detect vulnerabilities and non-compliance to standards early in the development process, but it is important to correct them in an automated manner. We can only expect to see how such automation will further accelerate the adoption of DevSecOps. Compliance automation tools will play a key role to strengthen security and compliance policies across applications and infrastructure.

According to IDC, by 2023, 90 percent of new apps are expected to be built or released on demand using policy-driven security and compliance assessments in the delivery pipeline. The influx of automation will help make the end-to-end software development process consistent and faster.

Over the next few years, DevSecOps will gain more importance as development teams combine security and quality to meet the ever-growing business needs. Operations monitoring, security monitoring and protection use cases will be shifting left in the development process, driven by DevSecOps-style collaboration and integration.

Martin Chan
IT Analyst, Global Executive Consultants Ltd.

DevSecOps can automate checking security issues like vulnerabilities and identity access management into the process. It can also automate the reporting process so that it can be easy to integrate with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM).

Supratip Banerjee
Solutions Architect, Principal Global Services

Digital transformation is relevant, thanks to the software industry's agility. With it comes a slew of new methodologies, platforms, and technology, as well as cyber risks. As a result, software security has become a hot topic.

Hence one of the primary DevSecOps trends is to shift left security in the software development lifecycle and enable it as part of the development process. Not only must vulnerabilities and non-compliances be detected early, but they must also be fixed in an automated manner.

Peter Maddison
Founder, Xodiac Inc.

Continuous compliance as a way to shift away from annual audits finally seems to be catching hold. Moving from control gate-driven checks in a static one size fits all SDLC to a continuous, context-aware compliance system. The reality is that this is the only way to maintain the pace of change introduced with DevOps practices. The shift to value stream management and focusing on flow is also driving this conversation.

Neelan Choksi
President and COO, Tasktop

One of the hottest topics in DevSecOps is (or should be) supply chain and CI/CD security. Within our own customer base at Tasktop, we are seeing increasingly that third-party risk is quickly getting board-level visibility, and tech companies and software delivery teams need to have a good story if they want to stay ahead of the curve.

Recent high-profile breaches have shown that the risk is real and not just imagined by the "professionally paranoid" security teams, and "why would anybody want to hack us?" is not a good strategy. In Dr. Mik Kersten's best-selling book Project to Product, the best practice is that "Risk/Security" needs to be measured and tracked as a first class-citizen just like customer satisfaction, quality, and technical debt reduction.

"Shifting left" continues to be a very much relevant topic. The earlier in the lifecycle security is introduced and the shorter the feedback cycle for various security tools and "signals," the more efficient and cost-effective your product security program is. This is nicely aligned with DevSecOps principles and things like developer-driven threat modeling, and overall responsibility for security.

Maybe not such a hot trend, but definitely a challenge that hasn't been universally solved yet is reconciling compliance requirements with modern tools and practices for software delivery, as well as making compliance controls automated and nimble. As an example, think about the typical "asset management" requirement and mapping it into the world of horizontal auto scaling realities of modern application stacks.

Mark Peters
Technical Lead, Novetta

The trend is actually DevSecOps. The future is in being able to bake security in and accelerate value. Organizations tend to look at how they can shortcut culture through technological improvements. Vendors will sell you Bill of Materials software, CI/CD improvements, north/south/east/west observability on cloud, improved vulnerability scanners and all manners of other functions to improve your DevSecOps.

In my opinion, I still see DevSecOps as a cultural change, an improvement to how your business values security and how those measurements are aligned to functional product delivery. DevSecOps happens when the security team becomes part of the overall team, explaining where security is employed, and why those improvements matter. The goal lies in integrating security, making security part of the value structure rather than an add-on to the value structure. When each product has a security requirement or is compared to the previous product in terms of new risk, similar risk or reduced risk, that is when your organization is on top of the DevSecOps trend.

Learn more about DevSecOps and similar topics, by registering for an upcoming SKILup Day. Or, start your upskilling journey by learning more about the benefits of DevOps Institute membership.