DevSecOps: 5 Reasons to Integrate Security Into the Application Development Lifecycle

Software products need to look beyond functional/non-functional requirements and competitive differentiators. Security is now a top priority, and it has to be integrated into the early stages of the application lifecycle to save costs, efforts, and complexities later on. This article discusses five benefits of such an integrated approach and why companies must start today. 

Application-related security risks are on the rise. In October, it was revealed that games streaming application Twitch was hacked, exposing 125GB of sensitive data. The June 2021-released GitHub Copilot AI programming assistant reportedly causes security vulnerabilities in 40% of its produced code. Even industry leaders like Zoom aren’t safe. The video conferencing platform recently had to pay out $85 million in settlements for failing to plug security gaps. 

Security can no longer be an afterthought when it comes to application development and delivery. It is as important as functionality, time-to-market, and ease-of-use, if not more so in today’s complex regulatory climate. Therefore, application developers must adopt methodologies like DevSecOps at the earliest to prioritize security from the get-go. 

Integrating Security into the Application Lifecycle through DevSecOps 

DevOps was designed to improve collaboration between development and operational or delivery teams to minimize product bottlenecks. The two teams work in tandem, minimizing friction and also the time-to-market for product delivery. However, it has traditionally ignored a key element: security. 

Security remained relegated to testing, QA, and primarily post-delivery assessment and patching with little ongoing communication with the development team. This is more problematic than you might imagine. 

Without security integration in the application lifecycle, you have only a 25%Opens a new window chance of remediating critical vulnerabilities quickly. Meanwhile, 45% of those integrating security can remediate in just one day. And, the regulatory environment now calls for tougher penalization of application and software-related security risks. A new report by Venafi found that 94% of executives want legal action on software vendors neglecting data security. That’s why the integration of security into the application lifecycle is so important. You can achieve this via: 

• • DevSecOps – A framework that automates the integration of security at every application lifecycle stage, along with a fundamental change in mindset and collaboration patterns. 
  • Secure software development lifecycle (SSDLC) – A secure SDLC process that can be tailored to your organization’s requirements, typically aligning security design and enforcement stages with functional design and implementation stages. 
  • Secure software development model (SecSDM) – A thorough methodology for building secure applications where there is a rigorous investigation, analysis, and security service design, alongside or prior to application development. 

By adopting these models, you can preempt a lot of the major vulnerabilities before your software reaches the market and can cause any real risk. 

See More: 5 Ways for Businesses to Make a Seamless Transition to Hybrid Cloud

5 Benefits of Early-Stage Security Integration 

‘Stronger security’ is only the broad, long-term reason to embrace early-stage security integration. Developers will find that several low-hanging fruits make DevSecOps and similar approaches highly viable in the short term, with little to no trade-off in terms of delivery speed. 

1. Increase your automation readiness 

It is almost impossible to incorporate automated security scripts after the fact – i.e. after the application delivery lifecycle is complete. By integrating security early on, you can design and execute security test automation scripts at key stages of the SDLC. This reduces testing time as well as the risk of overlooked vulnerabilities.  

2. Speed up the application delivery lifecycle 

Security integration can, in fact, speed up application delivery instead of delaying it. In traditional SDLC, identifying and patching potential vulnerabilities are left for later once all the functional and non-functional requirements are addressed. However, this means that every fix and patch will involve complex regression testing to ensure that other conditions are not disturbed. These necessary but highly iterative and mundane tests can consume a huge portion of the delivery lifecycle for large-scale product implementations, often stretching it well beyond the expected time-to-market. 

However, DevSecOps ensures that vulnerabilities are detected and remediated even as you write code, dramatically reducing your time, cost, and effort investment per fix. 

3. Avoid ransomware and non-compliance costs 

Ransomware attacks are now increasingly common and can involve hefty payouts. In May, insurance company CNA Financial paid $40 million in response to a ransomware attack – the highest payout to date. Application developers that don’t integrate security at early stages risk building products that are open to such risks, fatally damaging customer trust and market reputation. Also, companies building apps for internal use may face non-compliance penalties if there is inadequate protection for customer data. All of this can be avoided, to a large extent, by investing in DevSecOps. 

4. Drive consistency to scale your development team 

DevSecOps, SSDLC, SecSDM, and others are highly structured methodologies that clearly define the culture of your product team, the processes they will follow, the prioritization matrix, and the collaboration patterns in place. This structure can be replicated across different teams and products as you scale, making it easier to go from startup to growth stage to maturity.

5. Enable dev upskilling and cross-skilling 

Finally, DevSecOps frees developers, coders, and software engineers from closely-boxed-in silos. It isn’t enough to only know a language or be familiar with a product or feature’s codebase in an integrated security model. The team involved must grasp a bird’s eye understanding of how the product works in the real world, its security implications, and all the best and worst-case scenarios they could face in the marketplace. Over time, this will lead to an upskilled and cross-skilled development team that your competition envies, and consequently, a strong employer brand that attracts the top coding talent. After all, top companies like MicrosoftOpens a new window and NetflixOpens a new window have assembled crack teams of product experts using this approach. 

See More: Rethinking DevSecOps To Meet Today’s Dynamic Threat Landscape

The State of Security Integration Right Now: There’s Work to be Done 

In a worrying statistic, as per the 2020 State of DevOps Report by Puppet and CircleCI, the number of companies with fully integrated development and security pipelines actually came down by 2% between 2019 and 2020. Just 12% have a fully integrated DevSecOps model, and most are stuck at partial integration. Clearly, there is work to be done in regard, and companies need to revisit their product roadmaps and delivery priorities from a security perspective. The benefits of integrating security into the application lifecycle are overwhelming, but it does involve a retrenching of standard practices if you are new to DevOps. Do your research, identify the quick wins, and start with a single feature or standalone product where DevSecOps makes the most amount of sense. 

Have you integrated security into your application lifecycle in 2021 or do you plan on doing it next year? Tell us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window !