Is your DevOps security ready for cyber threats? Embrace these best practices and make security your competitive advantage.
DevOps, a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops), has revolutionized the way organizations build, deploy, and maintain software. With the rise of cloud computing, there was a need for faster and more reliable software delivery than traditional software development methodologies allowed. DevOps was the natural evolution.
However, as development cycles accelerate, maintaining robust security without impeding the development process has become a significant challenge. DevOps teams often grapple with ensuring compliance, managing complex infrastructure, and mitigating new cybersecurity threats. Automation of security and compliance processes is essential for maintaining continuous security in DevOps. According to the State of Production Readiness 2024 report, 28% of survey respondents identified security, compliance, risk, or vulnerability assessments as areas ripe for automation. In this guide, we'll explore DevOps security definitions, common challenges, and best practices to shore up your DevOps security.
What is DevOps security?
DevOps security is the practice of integrating security measures into every phase of the DevOps lifecycle. It covers everything from code development to deployment and maintenance, addressing security considerations at every stage. This includes implementing automated security testing as part of the CI/CD pipeline, conducting regular vulnerability assessments, and employing proactive threat management strategies.
A key concept in DevOps security is the idea of "shifting left"—moving testing and security earlier in the development process to identify and address issues sooner. Shifting left helps to reduce vulnerabilities and minimize risks, and it ultimately leads to more secure and robust software products.
Prioritizing DevOps security can result in many benefits for your organization, including:
- Enhanced security posture: DevOps security best practices significantly strengthen an organization's overall security stance, reducing vulnerabilities and risks for the organization.
- Early detection and mitigation of security issues: Shifting security left in the development process results in potential issues being identified and addressed much earlier, preventing security problems from escalating and growing later.
- Cost savings: Proactive security management leads to significant long-term cost savings in incident response, reputation management, and regulatory fines.
- Improved production readiness: Solid security practices reduce the likelihood of last-minute security issues delaying releases or causing production incidents.
- Better developer experience: An astounding 54% of engineering leaders reported a decrease in developer productivity due to failing to meet production readiness. When security tools and practices are integrated into the development process and security checks are automated, developers can focus on creating innovative features. Read more about how to improve developer experience.
For more insights on general trends in security and automation in DevOps, read our article on DevOps trends.
12 DevOps Security Best Practices
With so many potential security concerns, it can be hard to know where to start. Based on our first-hand experience and expert recommendations, we’ve compiled some DevOps security best practices. By implementing these practices, DevOps teams can significantly reduce their attack surface and mitigate common security vulnerabilities.
- Implement Automated Security Testing
Integrating automated security testing into your CI/CD pipeline is an effective way to identify vulnerabilities early in the development process. Tools like SAST (Static Application Security Testing), DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing), and IAST (Interactive Application Security Testing) can scan your code, detect vulnerabilities, and ensure compliance with security standards, saving time and reducing human error.
- Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security Tools
As Infrastructure as Code (IaC) as a practice becomes more popular, it’s crucial to make sure this architecture is secure. Always use version control systems like Git for your IaC templates, so you can rollback or make changes quickly to respond to security issues. Specialized IaC security tools like Checkov, Terrascan, and Snyk IaC can be integrated into your DevOps workflow to scan these infrastructure templates before deployment, identifying potential security issues.
- Secure containerized environments
The adoption of containerization technologies like Docker and orchestration platforms like Kubernetes has numerous benefits for application deployment and management, but comes with its own set of security considerations. Best practices include using minimal base images from trusted sources, regularly updating and patching containers, implementing strong access controls, and using container-specific security tools. Avoid running containers as root and apply the principle of least privilege to the containers. There are also tools you can use to secure and manage your containers, such as Aqua Security, Sysdig, and Twistlock.
- Manage secrets and credentials securely
Secrets, which include passwords, API keys, encryption keys, and other sensitive information, are important components of security. However, they can represent a significant security risk themselves if not handled correctly. For example, hardcoding secrets in your codebase or configuration files is almost always a bad idea. Use dedicated secrets management tools like HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, or Azure Key Vault, which provide secure storage, access control, and rotation of secrets. Secrets should always be encrypted, both when they're stored (at rest) and when they're being transmitted between services (in transit).
In the context of containers, many organizations choose to use external secrets management tools in conjunction with Kubernetes. Kubernetes has a built-in object called "Secrets," which is designed to store small amounts of sensitive data. While better than hard coding sensitive data, Kubernetes Secrets are not encrypted by default (only base64 encoded), so additional measures are often needed for production-grade security.
- Conduct regular security audits and penetration testing
Security audits are comprehensive evaluations that go beyond automated scans, providing in-depth assessments of an organization's security posture, practices, and compliance with various standards and regulations. Security audits can be performed internally or externally by independent third-party auditors or specialized security firms, like SOC 2 or ISO 27001. Internal audits should be run regularly, and while external audits tend to take longer, both are important.
A comprehensive security audit in a DevOps context typically includes a number of steps:
- an infrastructure assessment to evaluate the security of servers, networks, and cloud environments;
- a process evaluation to assess the effectiveness of security processes and protocols; compliance checking to ensure adherence to relevant industry standards and regulations;
- penetration testing to simulate real-world attacks to identify vulnerabilities; and
- social engineering tests to evaluate human factors in security, such as susceptibility to phishing.
Penetration testing is another way to evaluate the state of your organization’s security. Red team simulations, where internal teams attempt to breach systems, simulating real-world attack, is an effective way to identify weakness and areas for improvement.
- Implement continuous monitoring and logging
If you don’t have insight into your systems, you’ll be in the dark when security breaches happen. You can maintain visibility into your systems and detect security incidents quickly with continuous monitoring and comprehensive logging. It’s important to implement robust logging mechanisms across your infrastructure and applications, ensuring that you capture relevant security events, and use centralized log management solutions to aggregate and analyze logs from various sources. Real-time alerting incorporated into on-call helps you stay on top of suspicious activities or potential security breaches.
- Make it clear that security is a team sport
Security should not be the sole responsibility of a dedicated security team; it should be embraced by everyone. Create a security-first culture with channels for reporting potential vulnerabilities and host regular security training and workshops to keep everyone updated on the latest security threats and best practices. After all, it’s not possible for a small security team to find and address every vulnerability on their own; all teams need to build with security in mind.
- Adopt Zero Trust architecture
Zero Trust is a security model that assumes no trust by default, even within the organization's network. It operates on the principle of "never trust, always verify," shifting away from traditional perimeter-based security. In this model, every user, device, and network request must be authenticated and authorized, regardless of location or ownership. Implementing Zero Trust involves strict access controls, continuous authentication, and micro-segmentation of resources. Every access request, regardless of where it originates from, must be verified. Strong authentication mechanisms like multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users and services prevent unauthorized access. Network segmentation, breaking a larger network into smaller isolated subnetworks, limits the potential impact of a breach. Tools like HashiCorp Boundary, Google BeyondCorp, and Zscaler Private Access can help implement Zero Trust principles in your DevOps environment.
- Keep up with changing compliance standards
Staying compliant with industry regulations and standards is a top priority in DevOps security. Ensure your CI/CD pipelines can handle varied compliance needs based on code development locations, data storage, and user geography. Compliance-as-code tools also ensure that your infrastructure and applications adhere to required standards. DevOps teams must implement robust automation and real-time monitoring tools to adapt quickly to changing security policies.
- Use secure coding practices
Secure coding practices are fundamental to DevOps security. Engineers should be familiar with common vulnerabilities like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and buffer overflows– the OWASP 10 outlines these well. It can help to implement coding standards for these issues across the entire engineering organization. The CI/CD pipeline should incorporate steps that check security coding standards by default, such as running a static code analysis tool to automatically check for common security issues. Where automated tools fall short, regular code reviews with a focus on security can help catch additional issues. Encourage the use of secure libraries and frameworks, and keep all dependencies up-to-date so that security vulnerabilities aren’t introduced by third parties.
- Use Internal Developer Portals (IDPs)
Internal developer portals (IDPs) can significantly enhance DevOps security by providing a centralized platform for managing and securing development resources. IDPs can integrate with vulnerability monitoring tools and automated compliance checks. They can help enforce consistent security standards across all projects and environments, with visibility into key security metrics like test coverage. They can give an overview of all services and their owners, ensuring assets are kept up to date with security updates. They can also facilitate better collaboration between development, operations, DevOps, and security teams so that security considerations are integrated throughout the development lifecycle.
- Implement Robust Access Control and Identity Management
Strong access control and identity management are always important in software engineering, and even more so in the DevOps context. Role-based access control (RBAC) ensures that users and services have only the permissions they need to perform their tasks. Implement the principle of least privilege, so that users and processes have the least privilege necessary to complete their tasks, across the entire infrastructure. Many security issues are the result of human error, so putting guardrails in place in the form of access control is a simple way to make sure people don’t make changes that they didn't intend to make. Identity and access management (IAM) tools can help you manage user identities, permissions, and access to resources effectively. Regularly audit and review access permissions, with prompt removal of unnecessary access rights. Just-in-time access for sensitive resources can further reduce the risk of unauthorized access.
DevOps Security Challenges
DevOps Security is an ongoing process, and it’s never quite done. Security is a moving target. Despite best efforts, there are some challenges that need to be continually addressed.
Cultural and Organizational Challenges
One of the primary challenges of implementing DevOps security is overcoming cultural resistance. Traditional silos between development, operations, and security teams can hinder collaboration and the adoption of integrated security practices. Many teams will treat security as a problem for the security team. Creating a security-first culture requires a shift in mindset and sometimes requires changes in organizational structure and processes.
Technical Challenges
Technology and security threats change quickly, creating additional technical challenges for DevOps teams. Integrating security tools and processes without slowing down the development pipeline is a significant technical challenge. The complexity of modern application architectures, including microservices and cloud computing, introduces new attack surfaces that need to be secured. Technology that generally improves security, like configuration management and IaC practices can backfire and lead to misconfigurations if not properly secured.
Compliance and Regulatory Challenges
Even with the best efforts, maintaining continuous compliance amidst evolving regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA is challenging. Conflicting requirements across jurisdictions, such as different data laws, can make it difficult to be compliant. Some regulations don't provide clear guidelines on how exactly to comply in modern, cloud-based environments, leaving teams to make their best guess.
Continual Alignment
Organizational alignment is necessary for prioritizing security efforts. An organization's security is only as strong as its weakest link, and an inconsistent security plan or lack of continuous assessment can lead to security gaps and compliance issues. Unfortunately, according to the State of Production Readiness 2024 report, 32% of engineering leaders report having no process for continually assessing software for alignment to standards. To learn more about aligning DevOps teams, check out Best Practices for DevOps teams.
How Can Cortex Help?
Tracking and aligning security efforts across your organization doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Using an internal developer portal like Cortex helps you stay on top of metrics, software versions, and compliance for services and teams.
Cortex's Developer Homepage provides centralized access to all the tools and resources developers need, promoting better visibility and control over security-related tasks and information. With a wide range of easy-to-setup and maintain integrations, Cortex allows you to connect your existing security tools and processes, creating a unified view of your security posture across the entire DevOps pipeline.
Cortex's Scorecard feature helps enforce consistent security standards across all projects and environments. You can create your own Scorecard template to provide visibility into the key security metrics for your teams, allowing you to track and improve your security posture over time. Finally, Eng Intelligence focuses on closing the gap between measurement
and impact and highlights features that promote collaboration.
Cortex is trusted by world-leading teams to support and enable DevOps security. Book a demo today to find out if Cortex can help your team too.
