Today’s businesses live in a more complex and interconnected world than ever before. As a result, we’re experiencing more frequent and sophisticated cyberattacks. The good news is that DevOps and security teams have an opportunity to work together to keep organizations safe from these threats by leveraging key technologies such as containers, build pipelines, and microservices architecture. Read on to learn more about these key technologies and how they can help you integrate security into your DevOps model.
DevOps and security have a complicated relationship.
While DevOps and security are not mutually exclusive, they often have conflicting goals. This can lead to tension between development teams, who need to ship more often and quickly, and security teams, which need time to do their job correctly.
For example, while you may be deploying a new feature that requires a critical security fix, the security team may be busy investigating a breach or performing a code review. This can frustrate both teams and cause them to work against each other instead of together.
However, the solution to this problem could be as simple as using a package manager such as the Helm repository by JFrog to authorize the security team to access the repository. This can be done using a role-based access control system that allows the security team to view and push changes into the Helm repository without giving them full access to your Kubernetes cluster.
That’s where the concept of DevSecOps comes in.
The DevSecOps approach attempts to integrate security into a continuous delivery pipeline by applying automation tools and practices. It’s a new way of integrating DevOps with security that is gaining popularity among organizations looking for a better way to manage both processes simultaneously.
Any successful implementation of DevOps starts with a build pipeline.
A build pipeline is a set of automated steps that build, test, and deploy code. It’s the heart of DevOps, and it should be automated as much as possible to speed up development and testing while reducing errors.
DevOps is all about automation—precisely automating manual processes so they can be repeated reliably. When we talk about automating security into your DevOps model with key technologies like containerization, automation becomes even more crucial; it means you can take advantage of all the benefits of DevOps without losing sight of security considerations at any step in your development cycle.
As such, the focus of DevOps is on automating repetitive and tedious tasks. This frees your team to focus on more creative and challenging work, resulting in better software products that reach their intended audiences faster.
The benefits of using container infrastructure with key technologies are significant.
We’ve established that containers are a strong foundation for DevSecOps, but how can you maximize their security capabilities?
One way is to use a container platform that supports DevOps automation. By integrating security tools into your CI/CD pipeline, you can ensure compliance with policies and best practices at every stage of development. With this approach, you don’t have to think about security during development; it’s simply there by default.
As a result, developers can focus on writing code and don’t have to worry about security. Integrating security into the CI/CD pipeline isn’t just a one-time task, either; it should be done continuously as part of an ongoing DevSecOps initiative.
The technology foundation for a DevSecOps model.
So, after we’ve discussed what a DevSecOps model looks like, let’s talk about how you can build the technology foundation for one.
For example, if you want to integrate security tools into your CI/CD pipeline as part of an automated process, then you need to have a way of automating that process. In this case, Jenkins is the best choice because it’s flexible and open source.
Similarly, suppose you want to have a way of monitoring your CI/CD pipeline for security vulnerabilities. You must integrate an open-source tool like GitLab Security Scan into your Jenkins instance.
These are suggestions for building the DevSecOps model at your organization. You’ll need to research your own to determine which technologies are best for you. But once you’ve identified them, it’s time to put them into action by integrating them into your CI/CD pipeline.
Conclusion
Container infrastructure is an excellent place to start if you want to integrate security into your DevOps model. Container infrastructure provides a secure base for applications and services by allowing you to deploy microservices in an isolated environment that can be managed through the same tools used for traditional VM-based deployments. It also gives you more control over the security of your applications because it separates each component from one another. If one fails, it won’t take down all of them at once!
