DevOps: What is the Future of DevOps?

Security Implementation Will be a Driver

Security plays a significant role in the world of DevOps. The more automation occurs, the more problems can arise. That means, the more connected we become, the more exposure we also create.

What are the Benefits of Security Implementation?

• Improvements in the effectiveness and efficiency of operations.
• Teams across the company experience healthier and stronger collaborations.
• Security teams experience stronger agility.
• Quality assurance and automated builds have a more conducive environment.
• Easier to identify vulnerabilities for applications and systems.
• More freedom to focus on high-value projects.
• The cloud experiences improved scalability.
• An increase in the company's ROI.

Make Security a Priority

Because DevOps practices are driven by (CI/CD) integrations and deployments that occur continuously, big releases are replaced by faster, agile release cycles. It's possible to address your customer's needs and demands daily by using the CI/CD pipeline to employ rapid changes. Because it's possible to automate the CI/CD pipeline, security must be a priority. Therefore, it cannot be thought of as an add-on feature. Instead, it must be included in the software's design.

Anthony Israel-Davis writes, "As with prevention, DevOps is uniquely positioned to take advantage of detective controls. In traditional IT environments, detection tends to be a runtime concern, with DevOps, detection, correction, and prevention can be wrapped into the pipeline itself before anything hits the production environment."

Even though DevOps and security have always worked in conjunction with each other, you must ensure your developers are using the same software packages, dependencies, and environments throughout the software development process. The expectation is that, as DevOps continues growing in the world of IT and being adapted globally, more focus will be placed on it in the fields of cloud computing, IoT, and security.

Expect Some Challenges

Despite solving many challenges throughout the software development process, DevOps security does introduce new ones. According to a survey conducted by SANS, fewer than 46% of IT security professionals are "confronting security risks upfront in requirements and service design in 2018--and only half of the respondents are fixing major vulnerabilities."

As a result, environments end up with an uncoordinated, reactive approach to incident mitigation and management. Under many circumstances, this lack of coordination isn't apparent until incidents occur, and a system attack or break occurs.

Security breaches can reap havoc on systems that have long-term effects. One example of a massive breach is Uber's in late 2016. Two hackers broke into the company's network, stealing personal data, including names, email addresses, and phone numbers of 57 million Uber users. During this breach, the hackers also stole the driver's license numbers of 600,000 Uber drivers. According to Bloomberg, they used Uber's GitHub account, which is where Uber's engineers track projects and store code, to obtain the username and password. Then, they were able to access Uber's data that was stored in one of Amazon's servers.

Security is Everyone’s Responsibility

Jayne Groll, co-founder, and CEO of the DevOps Institute states, "DevSecOps basically says security is everybody’s responsibility with security as code. We need to start testing security much earlier in the cycle rather than making it a downstream activity. I think the security community is starting to embrace that from a tools perspective and for their personal future. I think two years from now we are going to see security as code being the norm."

The problem with this security breach is Uber paid off the hackers to keep them quiet. However, it wasn't long until the data breach was eventually discovered. At that point, it became a nightmare regarding public relations. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s C.E.O. at the time of the hack, indicated in a statement, “While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes." Khosrowshahi remains on Uber’s board of directors.

When a DevOps environment is running securely, it's operating on different policies, processes, and tools to facilitate secure and rapid releases. Use the Uber example, there needed to be a final scan to ensure there were no credentials left embedded anywhere in the code. When these pieces come together, they provide a bulletproof security system throughout the development, release, and management phases of the application.

That's where DevSecOps comes into play. DevSecOps is a combination of both security and privacy. It's where security is implemented into the design lifecycle of software development. In doing so, there are fewer vulnerabilities. These security features also help bring security features closer to meeting business objectives and IT standards. The use of these models helps ensure everyone is responsible for security.

Protection Against New Risks

DevSecOps offers protections against the new types of risks found when introducing CI/CD within the testing framework of DevOps. Security checks are now integrated into the process while building the code. DevSecOps covers the analysis of code, automated security controls, and post-deployment monitoring. Because DevOps professionals remain engaged throughout the process, they'll find and mitigate issues before launching.

As a result, the development process is a more cohesive experience, as well as an improved user experience. Thanks to the improvements in the delivery chain, users receive feature updates quicker, more secure software, and they no longer have to deal with technology that lags.