Making DevSecOps Mistakes

Are You Making These DevSecOps Mistakes?

Forrester’s Security Survey, 2024, Reveals Alarming Truth

According to Forrester’s Security Survey, 2024, 56% of security decision-makers at firms that experienced an external attack indicated that the breach was the result of an application-related exploit. Why do we continue to be so bad at this? Part of the problem is that the journey to DevSecOps is bumpy and long. But don’t give up! We’ve identified four key phases of the DevSecOps journey as well as the best practices in each phase to either jump-start your transformation or restart your journey.

Phase 1: Prepare for Your DevSecOps Journey

• Confirm your agile and DevOps methodologies.
• Organize DevSecOps practices around cross-functional product teams.
• Use key performance indicators to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of DevOps practices.

Phase 2: Crawl and Build Trust

• Foster a culture of collaboration and open communication between the security and development teams.
• Share unique challenges and responsibilities to develop a shared perspective.
• Empower early-adopter cross-functional product teams to identify common security gaps and initiatives to close those gaps.
• Establish baseline metrics, such as the mean time to remediate security findings, to provide a tangible measure of progress and success.

Phase 3: Walk and Scale Success

• Adoption of DevSecOps practices scales across the organization, propelled by the successes of early-adopter teams.
• Product teams automate security validation, such as static application security testing (SAST), software composition analysis (SCA), and security scanning, embedded into their pipelines.
• Normalize security findings, taking into account exploitability and other additional intelligence to prioritize them effectively.
• Monitor developer velocity in this phase, as you should realize faster development cycles.

Phase 4: Run and Achieve Continuous Security

• Implement a developer security champion program to give security professionals more time to adopt a risk-based prioritization approach.
• Adapt and scale security knowledge accordingly, focusing on standardizing security templates and policies for continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines.
• Monitor metrics, such as the time to detect a security issue, patch it, and restore service in production.
• Avoid reducing investment in security initiatives and resources, as teams that pause or scale back on security will be ill-equipped to tackle emerging security challenges.

Conclusion

To avoid the pitfalls of DevSecOps, it’s essential to understand the four key phases of the DevSecOps journey and the best practices in each phase. By following these guidelines, you can jump-start your transformation or restart your journey to achieve continuous security.

FAQs

• What is the primary cause of breaches in an application-related exploit?
  • According to Forrester’s Security Survey, 2024, 56% of security decision-makers at firms that experienced an external attack indicated that the breach was the result of an application-related exploit.
• How do I organize my DevSecOps practices?
  • Organize DevSecOps practices around cross-functional product teams and use key performance indicators to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of DevOps practices.
• What is the importance of collaboration between the security and development teams?
  • Collaboration between the security and development teams is crucial for fostering a culture of open communication and understanding, leading to better outcomes in DevSecOps.