It seems nary a week passes without a story about a hacking incident making the evening news. Additionally, many CIOs report a skills gap when it comes to employing experienced information security professionals. As such, the demand for these IT pros is now going through the roof – as well are their salaries.
So what about DevSecOps, the cybersecurity focused variant of the DevOps methodology, slash, organizational structure? We’ve talked about it in the past and are wondering if it is truly making a difference in today’s technology world. Let’s take a closer look.
Last month, SD Times looked at what inroads DevSecOps is making throughout the software development industry. They asked the same question as us: is it truly making a difference considering the never-ending scourge of cyber attacks and similar forms of nefarious behavior. Considering the difficulties some organizations encounter when implementing DevOps itself, it is simply too new to make much impact?
Derek Weeks, vice president and DevOps advocate at Sonatype, echoes that opinion. “I will say I think we’re early on in the DevSecOps movement of practices that are being implemented. I think with the organizations that have attempted to do it, they are seeing early successes and are happy with that. The vast majority of the market has not gotten their feet wet with DevSecOps practices yet,” said Weeks.
When looking at the recent tech news, however, it becomes time to quote Spock: “Mr. Scott, speed is of the essence.” The core of the issue involves successfully implementing security within a software engineering organization’s current DevOps initiatives. If those practices are still emerging, obviously adding the “Sec” to DevOps becomes more difficult.
A successful DevSecOps implementation requires both a cultural shift within a software development shop as well as buy-in from the executive team. Of course, these same things are necessary for switching to DevOps itself. Obviously, a mature DevOps organization will likely find it easier adding security to an existing framework.
Weeks feels security practices need to be actually embedded in the software development workflow, as opposed to tacked to the process after the fact. Making information security practitioners serve as a gatekeeper instead of collaborator isn’t the best approach. They need empathy for the entire SDLC.
Training software engineers in the proper application of cybersecurity technology ultimately works better. This serves to foster the kind of teamwork and collaboration that is the hallmark of DevOps itself. It also provides companies the chance to close their information security skills gap in an internal fashion.
John Martinez, vice president of customer solutions at Evident.io, commented on the inroads DevSecOps is making at his firm: “I think the DevOps side of DevSecOps has definitely been much faster to respond and I think we’re starting to see, at least on our side, the cross-pollination on the security side where a lot of the agile practices are starting to fit over on the SecOps side.”
Ultimately, DevSecOps is a still emerging practice. However, the importance of companies successfully implementing it cannot be overstated.
That’s it for this edition of the Betica Blog. Stay tuned for additional insights from the wide world of software development. Thanks for reading!
Posted on April 20, 2018 | Categories News, Software Development, Team | Tags Agile, Cybersecurity, Development News, devnews, DevOps, DevSecOps, InformationSecurity, Quality Assurance, Security, Securitypractices, Software Development