DevOps vs. DevSecOps: Understanding The Difference

What is DevSecOps?

The integration of development, security, and operations is known as devsecops. In order to produce applications that are focused on security and are robust, this development practise integrates security at every stage of the software development cycle.

DevSecOps authorises the development team to take into account any significant difficulty that is in contact with security with DevOps speed, adding an additional layer of security to the CI/CD pipeline (continuous integration and continuous delivery).

When discussing old methods, security concerns and the methods associated with them were taken into account beforehand and incorporated at the conclusion of the development cycle.

However, as time went on, cybersecurity attackers developed more sophisticated tactics, which allowed the development teams to create more sophisticated procedures. As a result, DevSecOps became the go-to method for ensuring that apps are protected in this contemporary development ecosystem.

What Advantages Does DevSecOps Offer?

To understand this idea further, consider the top advantages of DevSecOps:

Robust application security

DevSecOps incorporates a solid strategy to reduce cybersecurity risks and threats right from the start of the development cycle. This implies that in order to test code immediately after doing security audits without delaying development, development teams will be relying on automated security solutions.

If any security flaws are discovered, the development team and security team will collaborate to address the problem and find a fix.

Deliver a more efficient model

By automating the process and empowering compliance teams to ensure that the security policies support rapid development cycles, DevSecOps has emerged with the goal of integrating security right from the start of the development cycle.

When it comes to conventional development techniques, the lifecycle of an application is completed without consideration for security issues. When security flaws are discovered, a remedy must be developed, which adds significant time to the process of putting the application into production.

Cross-team ownership and coordination

The main goal of DevSecOps is to bring together and encourage early collaboration between the application team and security team.

The guiding concepts of DevOps and DevSecOps are categorically opposed to dissimilar operations; instead, they adhere to a collaborative teamwork strategy that guarantees better and more efficient results in addition to a quick procedure.

Security vulnerabilities

The main benefit of DevSecOps is automation; you may use automation from the point at which security vulnerabilities are discovered until a remedy is obtained.

Any prebuilt container images in the build pipeline can be checked for CVEs using pre-built scanning tools. DevSecOps additionally assists you in keeping an eye on security precautions that not only reduce security risks but also provide insights to teams so that they can quickly collaborate when vulnerabilities are discovered.

The accelerated agile development process is still another advantage that DevSecOps provides; if it is carried out correctly, it can assist the development team with strong security and quite fewer safety vulnerabilities.

What are the Similarities Between DevOps and DevSecOps?

We cannot disregard the commonalities between DevOps and DevSecOps for the sake of the common contrasts between the two practises. Here are some similarities between DevOps and DevSecOps:

Collaborative environment

The major difference between DevSecOps and DevOps and conventional techniques is the collaborative mentality. These two ideas’ main goals are to speed up the development process while also saving a tonne of time and money. Discrete workplace cultures are categorically opposed by DevSecOps and DevOps.

In addition, DevOps and DevSecOps aid teams in achieving development goals like faster deployment and iteration while minimising risk and interfering with the app’s security.

In order to increase visibility throughout the application’s lifecycle, from planning to regularising application performance, both DevSecOps and DevOps involve the collaboration of multiple teams that were previously siloed (development and IT operations or development, IT operations, and security).

Infrastructure as Code (IAC)

You can design and implement the infrastructure you need using code thanks to a technology called infrastructure as code.

This technique does not require an IT specialist to carry out labor-intensive manual operations like managing operating systems, installing software, configuring servers, and other such duties.

Constant observation

Both the DevOps and DevSecOps paradigms encourage active data monitoring to foster learning and simple adaptation. To develop stronger and data-driven software in the future, it is a good habit to consistently monitor and analyse the app’s data.

Additionally, the team can improve current security procedures and repair application vulnerabilities more quickly thanks to real-time monitoring and data analysis, all in the sake of enhancing application performance.

Automation

Apart from cooperative effort, the term automation is what distinguishes the concepts of DevOps and DevSecOps. When it comes to DevOps and DevSecOps, automation is quite essential because it handles the elimination and management of routine repetitive chores without requiring the intervention of an IT specialist.

DevSecOps also use automation to run and monitor continuous real-time data for security objectives and avert security-related issues.

Microservices

If we were to put it simply, microservices are the little components of an application that are put together to form a whole system.

By dividing complex code into manageable chunks using a microservice architecture, developers can simplify and ease the burden of their work.

Quicker iterations and releases

We have already covered numerous times how shared responsibility is encouraged by DevOps and DevSecOps. Since the teams are cooperating and responsible for producing the greatest outcomes in each individual area, the time will be shortened quite short.

Teams are more productive and may complete more tasks in a shorter amount of time as a result of the time they are able to save. With the help of this method, the businesses are now able to run more iterations, increase the quality of their apps, and release more products.

These are the six main parallels between DevOps and DevSecOps.

Describe SecOps.

We are now presenting SecOps, a new member of the family. As the name implies, SecOps combines two distinct ideas: Sec stands for cybersecurity, as you would have guessed, and Ops is simply operations.

Key Objectives of SecOps

• To prioritise cybersecurity concerns throughout the whole development process.

• Taking into account the idea of security dynamic so that it can be enhanced and adaptable

• To distribute the responsibility for security to all teams engaged.

3 Key Responsibilities of SecOps

The three main functions of SecOps that influence an organisation to choose the same are as follows:

Incident response

When an unplanned and unexpected event occurs, SecOps teams are primarily responsible for overseeing and carrying out the incident response plan.

If there is an unforeseen security vulnerability or other risk element, incident response is the development team’s best buddy since it stops it before any end users encounter it.

Incident response notifies the team as soon as any unauthorised access is discovered or someone attempts to break the code in order to stop the attacker from gaining additional access to the network.

Root cause investigation

The SecOps team conducts analysis that goes beyond what is meant by the word “depth.” The team not only notices an unapproved problem or an unexpected risk factor that compromises the app’s security, but it also notifies the team and prompts it to take the necessary action. merely to stop it with specialised software.

Threat information

Threat intelligence is a two-step security process that includes gathering information and understanding the potential security dangers that the firm may face. Additionally, it creates plans to identify security issues and take appropriate action.

How Can DevOps Be Transformed Into DevSecOps?

Given how much SecOps and DevSecOps have inspired us, let’s discover how to transform DevOps into DevSecOps:

Start preparing a team for it

To ensure that there are no future obstacles, you should first establish a dedicated team for DevSecOps before beginning the conversion process from DevOps to DevSecOps.

You must educate your team members on the need of putting security first and applying security measures right from the start of the development process.

Shift security left

Before the application is set to launch, the security procedures will be integrated, or development will take a bit longer. DevSecOps only takes security into account so that it may be handled immediately and the necessary actions are taken in the event of any unauthorised access.

Choose the apt combination of security testing methods

There are many useful testing tools available, which will ultimately make it more difficult for you to decide which is best for you. Here, we provide our assistance in choosing one of the top 4 testing techniques:

SAST: Static application security testing, which lets you examine your code to find flaws.

DAST: stands for dynamic application security testing, which simulates an attack on an application to find gaps and vulnerabilities.

IAST: Interactive application security testing combines SAST and DAST to monitor application performance using software instrumentation (active or passive).

RASP: stands for Runtime Application Self-Protection, and it employs real-time application data to detect threats without the need for an administrator.

Setting coding standards for your DevSecOps team

The coding standards need to be strong enough because the DevSecOps team’s primary standard is to put security first. What you can do is make sure that your team has enough time to safeguard your code in the future because it will be robust and standard.

Additionally, if you lack it, you can quickly set up a system for educating engineers on good coding techniques and ensuring that code updates can be deployed without any issues.

These therefore are the four essential techniques that will enable you to transform your DevOps into DevSecOps.

Discussion of the differences between DevOps and DevSecOps

The most anticipated part of this topic, the main distinctions between the ideas of DevOps and DevSecOps, is finally up for discussion.

DevOps

The primary focus of DevOps is on team collaboration from the start of app development through the deployment process. Teams from development and operations collaborate to incorporate shared KPIs and tools.

The main goal of the DevOps concept is to increase deployment frequency while also emphasising the predictability and efficiency of the application.

As the DevOps team continues to put a lot of emphasis on maximising delivery speed, the team frequently overlooks the issue of security and threats, which later causes problems in the development of apps by encouraging security-related vulnerabilities that can destroy the application, end-user data, and confidential company assets.

DevSecOps

Development teams began to understand that the DevOps approach was not fully addressing security problems, hence DevSecOps is more like an advanced version of DevOps. DevSecOps evolved as a technique to integrate the management of security from the very beginning throughout the development procedure, as opposed to retrofitting security into the build.

This approach places the beginning of application security at the beginning of the build process rather than at the conclusion of the development pipeline. The engineers working in DevSecOps now have the job of making sure that programmes are secure. Prior to delivery to the end user, they make sure the applications are secure and safe from cyberattacks, and they continue to do so during software upgrades.

Developers should prioritise security when writing code, according to DevSecOps, which also strives to fix any security problems left unresolved by DevOps.

Wrapping Words

The word Security is the only distinction between DevOps and DevSecOps.

Just that the former prioritises streamlined custom software development company and delivery, whilst the latter takes the security of the programme into account before anything else (at the beginning of the development process). DevSecOps keeps security issues in mind so that if vulnerabilities are discovered later, they won’t have a negative effect on the application’s security.