Software applications are complex and can be vulnerable to a wide variety of security issues. Corporate culture often places security at the final stage of the software development lifecycle.
DevSecOps put the accent on move safety to the leftThat is, instead of adopting an incident response system, everyone is responsible for safety from the start, even in the planning stages.
DevSecOps merge security, development and operations to work together and achieve a common goal by improving processes, tools and team collaborations.
What is the SDLC?
The software development lifecycle, known by the acronym SDLC or Systems development lifecycle, is a process of building or maintaining software systems and represents the different phases which generally include from preliminary analysis to testing and post-software development evaluation.
This process integrates the models and methodologies that development teams use to develop software, methodologies that constitute the framework for planning and controlling the entire development process.
SDLC methodologies
Currently, there are two SDLC methodologies used by most software developers, the traditional methodology and agile methodology.
In the traditional development cycle, developers and their teams often schedule meetings with other teams involved in the SDLC process to detail the design and functional requirements before implementation begins.
The design phase is followed by the coding phase. The testing phase takes place when the entire coding process is complete and the final product is only presented to interested parties after no issues have been found in these tests.
One of the disadvantages of this traditional methodology is that teams build the system “only”. In the event that a problem arises during the testing phase, the worst part in this scenario is that the entire mod / development must be reversed to rectify this problem.
Another disadvantage of traditional SDLC is that in most cases the actors do not know a priori what they really want to put in place in the systemTherefore, the requirements model designed in the previous phases may not meet the actual characteristics that need to be implemented.
User or stakeholder change requests can be established after the final product has been presented and released to market and this change can lead to various software compatibility and integrity issues.
With all these drawbacks, the need arises to establish a iterative process where changes can be made in a more agile way.
It is at this stage that the agile methodology for software development processes is created where the customer is present in all phases of development.
This methodology facilitates interaction between all parties involved since the focus is on people and not on processes, allowing projects to be scaled more efficiently while minimizing risk.
DevOps Culture
However, the Agile methodology does not solve the problem of communication between the different elements that make up the development process of a software system: the development team and the operations team.
The term DevOps is made up of the combination of the words “development” and “operations” and it represents a cultural shift that bridges the gap between development and operations teams.
DevOps is not just a different process or approach to development, it is a culture change involving a change of mindset, better collaboration and closer integration.
DevSecOps model
This model integrates security into the DevOps process, helping to prevent and address security risks as they appear in the development cycle.
This type of security built into DevOps aims to include a security culture and practices throughout the DevOps workflow resulting in a faster and safer product launch.
Integrating security measures into the early stages of software development is a global economy for any organization, and security should take a shared responsibility among all members of the IT teams: security, development and operations.
Essentially, DevSecOps has changed the very nature of how application security should be implemented and refers to the integrated security and not your security perimeter.