DevSecOps vs DevOps: A Guide to Choosing the Right Approach

DevOps is a cultural and technical shift in mindset about application development and IT operations. As part of that, each term of “dev” and “ops” is reinforced in the term “DevOps,” establishing its overall intent of joining two typically disparate activities.

At its core, DevOps aims to connect these newly integrated activities through continuous integration and continuous delivery (CICD) as well as functionality, collaboration, automation, monitoring, and new development cycles. Organizations seeking to implement these practices often partner with specialized devops development and consulting services to accelerate adoption and ensure best practices. By using as many or all of the components of DevOps continuously, development and operations can more collaboratively execute work, and as much of that work as possible can and should be automated to reduce the manual work. In this manner, organizations can provide quicker software delivery timelines, putting them in a better position to meet the demands of the marketplace and their ever-increasing customer feedback.

DevOps advocates for smaller, frequent changes over infrequent and larger changes. The team continuously keeps an eye on application performance and infrastructure health. Issues are recognized and fixed before they become problematic. This all becomes possible because of an iterative process, which balances stability inside of organizations while enabling rapid movements to innovate.

In addition to DevOps is DevSecOps, or “development, security, and operations”. This is an evolution of DevOps that considers security to be part of the development lifecycle. Security is treated as an aspect that is integrated into the development process, instead of being a product of the end stage, or a consideration to check upon.

The philosophy of DevSecOps is often shared as “shifting left.” This philosophy is to understand security as something to consider along whatever development timeline you are creating instead of waiting until the end. Security is a code-driven process. Security controls are defined, communicated, and enforced through automated, version-controlled processes. The processes can also help to create consistency and reduce risk of human error.

Security becomes everyone’s problem in a DevSecOps space, not just the responsibility of the security team. Developers, individuals managing the operations, and individuals in security should work together continuously, with security being built into everyone’s mindset and culture. To bolster this approach, many organizations now implement managed cloud security services to provide specialized expertise and tools. Automated security testing is sustained throughout the development pipeline, allowing developers and engineers to identify vulnerabilities, risks, and issues before they become far more costly and time-consuming to fix.

DevSecOps tackles the increasing worry that key DevOps methodologies are making security an afterthought, emphasizing speed and vulnerability introduction. By making security a part of every stage, organizations are able to maintain their speed without leaving safety behind.

Security will tend to be a distinct phase in traditional DevOps, generally occurring near the close of the development process. This can lead to security being seen as a bottleneck rather than an integrated area. The security team may be engaged late in the process to check code or systems that are essentially complete. This means making meaningful changes or updates at this point becomes both challenging and costly.

Security is integrated throughout the full development lifecycle in the DevSecOps process. Security is an ongoing point of discussion, from design to deployment and operations, as opposed to an isolated checkpoint. Security requirements are established early on, security testing is automated along with functional testing, and security monitoring continues after deployment in production.

Security in DevOps is usually seen as a responsibility of dedicated security teams who might only be engaged towards the latter stages of software development. This creates a “separation of duties” where developers handle features, operations teams are concerned about stability, and security teams are focused on providing protection. While this distinction is clear, it can often lead to tensions and delays.

DevSecOps encourages security to be a shared responsibility among all teams involved in the software development process. Developers now learn secure coding principles and conduct initial security testing within their code. Operations teams implement secure configurations and monitor for security event detection. Security professionals become “enablers”, meaning they are tasked with building tools and processes that help the development and operations teams build secure systems rather than simply acting as gatekeepers.

In DevOps, particularly from a development perspective, the focus is often on speed and efficiency – sometimes in terms of security testing, it comes to a point where security may be sacrificed in the name of getting or checking a product that is out for a release. It is common to have limited testing due to deadlines being met or to identify vulnerabilities to those meant for production. When speed and security are at odds, speed will consistently win out in organizations that rely on and function to meet deployment.

DevSecOps provides a balance point of security and speed. The concept behind DevSecOps is balance between security and speed because both are important when it comes to deploying software “successfully.” The ideal solution is to build security into the process where it does not unnecessarily impede development velocity. Techniques like security tools to automate, pre-approved third-party components, and issue awareness with guidance work best – teams can stay in a continuous state of delivery while addressing security.

DevOps automation tools primarily fall into a single focus area of efficiency focused on deploying validated end-user functions and the management of underlying infrastructure. Although these automation tools create the process capabilities and foundational elements for DevOps to deliver, they may or may not be suitable for security testing and validation at repeated intervals or cycle deliveries.

DevSecOps enhances the toolchain by integrating dedicated security automation tools that will execute static application security testing to assess the code for vulnerabilities, dynamic testing of running applications, software composition analysis of third-party components, container security scanning, and infrastructure security validation. This means that all of the checking security capabilities are automated, timely, reliable, and consistent.

Compliance is dealt with instead of being embedded into the development process with the DevOps process, which leads to problems occurring later in the development process when regulatory issues surface. Compliance checks can be done quarterly or annually, and therefore the development team needs to react in order to ensure that regulatory requirements are met. 

DevSecOps ”compliance as code” translates compliance requirements as code and encompasses automated checks, which allows for continuous compliance throughout the software development lifecycle. This means systems are always evaluated against regulatory requirements and can be fixed when issues arise instead of relying on periodic audits.

An example of a common approach to DevOps implementation is to embrace an agile approach to software development with smaller, more frequent releases and continuous feedback. Teams build CI/CD pipelines to build, test, and deploy using an automated approach. Infrastructure is coded and controlled via version-controllable configuration files to guarantee consistency. Many organizations leverage infrastructure management services to ensure optimal setup and ongoing support. Robust monitoring and logging capabilities provide real-time observability into the application and system performance, and incident response processes allow detection of operations issues and recovery quickly.

Although the practices of employing CI/CD pipelines significantly improve development velocity, security remains a separate practice unless intentionally adopted in the development process. Security is often only considered after significant development effort; however, security must be addressed to truly develop and fold developers into security.

DevSecOps is built on top of the foundations of DevOps, establishing elements that are specifically focused on security throughout the process. Teams will now perform threat modeling in the design phase of the application lifecycle, identifying potential security issues before coding begins. Security testing is integrated and automated in the CI/CD pipeline, allowing for security tests to run with functional tests to provide earlier visibility into vulnerabilities.

Security policies become code, ensuring a more consistent implementation across environments. Vulnerability management is a continuous process rather than a periodic activity, with scanning and remediation integrated into the daily flow of work. Security monitoring offers an operational view into potential threats and anomalies. Secrets management provides protection to sensitive information such as API keys and credentials during the development cycle.

Because of this integrated strategy, security does not have to be sacrificed for speed, which presents a primary challenge for organizations in their delivery of software platforms in today’s world. DevSecOps ensures that security is built into the development process rather than something the organization considers after the fact, which allows organizations to deliver software rapidly and securely.

The technology employed in DevOps and DevSecOps will often be similar, with DevSecOps extending the toolchain for security. Technologies employed may include a containerization platform, such as Docker or Kubernetes; a configuration management tool, such as Ansible or Puppet; a continuous integration server; version control; and a monitoring tool.

DevSecOps builds specialized security tools on top of this foundation, including static analysis tools for scanning code for vulnerabilities, dynamic testing tools for testing running applications, container security tools for scanning containerized environments, secret management tools for storing sensitive credentials, compliance validation tooling, and cloud security tooling for securing cloud configurations.

Choosing between DevOps and DevSecOps depends on various factors specific to your organization. DevOps might be appropriate when your organization is just beginning its journey toward automated development processes, operates in a lower-risk environment, needs to demonstrate quick value from automation, faces minimal regulatory requirements, or needs to build foundational CI/CD skills before tackling security automation.

Whether DevOps or DevSecOps is the better choice depends on factors unique to your organization. As an example, DevOps may be the right choice if your organization is just starting its journey towards automated development processes, is operating in a relatively low-risk environment, needs to showcase that value can be realized quickly through automation, has little or no regulatory burdens, and needs to build foundational CI/CD skills before starting security automation.

In contrast, DevSecOps is necessary if your applications are processing sensitive data or key infrastructure, if you are operating in an industry that is heavily regulated, such as finance or healthcare, if your organization has had security breaches already, if cloud security is an area of concern, if your development teams are already accustomed to using DevOps practices, and if stakeholders are starting to apply pressure to make security improvements.

This incremental process allows organizations to advance the DevOps success they have achieved while improving their security posture. Instead of attempting to change everything at the same time, teams have the opportunity to add security to their current processes at a rate that allows the organization to more positively adapt to these practices. Organizations that want comprehensive support throughout this journey often turn to providers of managed cloud services to ensure seamless integration and ongoing optimization.

At AppRecode we understand the nuances of both DevOps and DevSecOps methodologies. Our broad-ranging services support organizations by implementing either approach based upon their needs.

Best of all, our assessment of current practices, CI/CD pipeline implementation, Infrastructure as Code automation services, monitoring solutions, and cultural coaching to help “team up” to collaborate with others to implement and refine cultural best practices and expectations embeds the foundational elements for automated and efficient code delivery together, allowing teams to readily incorporate security at any level.

For organizations that are already mature in their DevOps practices and wish to maximize the value of security, our DevSecOps security services complement DevOps by providing security assessments, secure pipeline design recommendations, automated solutions, cloud security enhancements, security awareness and training, penetration tests/mock tests of the environment, etc. Our security services will allow organizations to integrate security into all aspects of their DevOps and software delivery efforts without compromising the speed and efficiency they have achieved with DevOps.

By partnering with organizations at any stage of their DevOps journey and readiness to think about DevSecOps, our engineering consultants have deep experience in both. Together, we can take information needed to ramp up the complexities of software delivery in the modern era.

The difference between DevOps and DevSecOps signals a significant change in how we build software. DevOps connects development and operations to produce faster and more reliable delivery. DevSecOps is the addition of integrating security into that entire process.

With increasing security threats and compliance obligations, the departure from DevOps and change to DevSecOps has changed to a matter of “when” and not “if”. DevSecOps tries to keep the advantage of speed and reliability of DevOps while embedding security in the entire development lifecycle.

If you’re starting your DevOps journey or ready for a change to DevSecOps, the most important thing in looking at moving from DevOps to DevSecOps is consciously and intentionally considering the unique needs, culture, current skills and knowledge, and risk tolerance of the organization before making the move to DevSecOps. A thoughtful approach will enable the organization to have a development process that can produce software that is fast and reliable while keeping security modeled in design.

The difference between DevOps and DevSecOps is how security practices are embedded into the entire delivery process. DevOps is taking the concepts of development and operations and making it usable for faster delivery. DevSecOps leverages security practices on the development and operations teams through the entire discrete development lifecycle, rather than treating security as a time-boxed phase.

DevSecOps provides value by incorporating security earlier in the development lifecycle, both by way of cost savings relative to the potential impact of security defects and through cultivating a culture of security awareness across teams of all disciplines, moving zoning testing to automation/tasking to automation, and guarding against the pace of delivery at the expense of security, which is invaluable in these current conditions of risk.

DevOps methodology combines practices from development and operations to compress the development lifecycle of an application, allowing for faster delivery of features. DevSecOps expands on this methodology, embedding security practitioners as equal partners on a team and ensuring that as the pace of delivery is increased, security is not frequently, if ever, deferred to the end of the lifecycle. This ultimately creates a secure process that is fast and efficient.

The key difference in what DevOps and DevSecOps presume regards their respective scopes of focus. DevOps maintains a focus on bringing the two involved parties (development/design and operations) together to ensure a swift and repeatable delivery of their project, while DevSecOps expands the focus to include security in the process as well. Security becomes not an endpoint where the project is functionally created, but at the very least, thinking to this point would use or extend to.

Organizations must advance from DevOps to DevSecOps, not just because of the increasing security threats against applications being developed today, to meet regulatory requirements, and to address ever-increasing costs associated with late-stage development fixes. AppRecode brings their best services to assist organizations in doing this through security assessments, secure pipeline design, automation, and embedded developer and DevOps training that encourages teams to embrace security as a shared responsibility in a velocity of delivery.