Securosis

Menu

Research

Enterprise DevSecOps: New Series

Adrian Lane October 3, 2019 No Comments

DevOps is an operational framework which promotes software consistency and standardization through automation. It helps address many nightmare development issues around integration, testing, patching, and deployment – both by breaking down barriers between different development teams, and also by prioritizing things which make software development faster and easier. DevSecOps is the integration of security teams and security tools directly into the software development lifecycle, leveraging the automation and efficiencies of DevOps to ensure application security testing occurs in every build cycle. This promotes security and consistency, and helps to ensure that security is prioritized no lower that other quality metrics or features. Automated security testing, just like automated application build and deployment, must be assembled with the rest of the infrastructure. And there lies the problem. Software developers have traditionally not embraced security. It’s not because they do not care about security, but they were incentivized to to focus on delivery of new features and functions. DevOps is raising the priority of automating build processes – making them faster, easier, and more consistent. But that does not mean developers are going out of their way to include security or security tooling. That’s often because security tools don’t easily integrate well with development tools and processes, tend to flood queues with unintelligible findings, and lack development-centric filters to help prioritize. Worse, security platforms – and the security professionals who recommend them – were difficult to work with, or even failed to offer API support for integration. On the other side of equation are security teams, who fear automated software processes and commonly ask, “How can we get control over development?” This question misses the point of DevSecOps, and risks placing security in opposition to all other developer priorities: to improve velocity, efficiency, and consistency with each software release. The only way for security teams to cope with the changes within software development, and to scale their relatively small organizations, is to become just as agile as development teams by embracing automation. Why Did We Write This Paper? We discuss the motivation behind our research to help readers understand our goals and what we wish to convey. This is doubly relevant when we update a research paper, as it helps us spotlight recent changes in the industry which have made older papers inaccurate or inadequate to describe recent trends. DevOps has matured considerably in four years, so we have a lot to talk about. This will be a major rewrite of our 2015 research on Building Security into DevOps, with significant additions around common questions security teams ask about DevSecOps and a thorough update on tooling and integration approaches. Much of this paper will reflect 400+ conversations since 2017 across 200+ security teams at Fortune 2000 firms. So we will include considerably more discussion derived from those conversations. But DevOps has now been around for years, so discussion of its nature and value is less necessary, and we can focus on the practicalities of how to put together a DevSecOps program. Now let’s shake things up a bit. Different Focus, Different Value A plethora of new surveys and research papers are available, and some of them a very good. And there are more conferences and online resources popping up than I can count. For example Veracode recently released the latest iteration of its State of Software Security (SoSS) report and it’s a monster, with loads of data and observations. Their key takeaways are that the agility and automation employed by DevSecOps teams provide demonstrable security benefits, including faster patching cycles, shorter flaw persistence, faster reduction of technical debt, and ‘easier’ scanning – which leads to faster problem identification. Sonatype’s recently released 2019 State of the Software Supply Chain shows that “Exemplary Project Teams” who leverage DevOps principles drastically reduce code deployment failure rates, and remediate vulnerabilities in half the time of average groups. And we have events like All Day DevOps, where hundreds of DevOps practitioners share stories on cultural transformations, Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) techniques, site reliability engineering, and DevSecOps. All of which is great, and offers qualitative and quantitative data showing why DevOps works and how practitioners are evolving programs. So that’s not what this paper is about. Those resources do not address the questions I am asked each and every week. This paper is about putting together a comprehensive DevSecOps program. Overwhelmingly my questioners ask, “How do I put a DevSecOps program together?” and “How does security fit into DevOps?” They are not looking for justification or individual stories on nuances to address specific impediments. They want a security program in line with peer organizations, which embraces “security best practices”. These audiences are overwhelmingly comprised of security and IT practitioners, largely left behind by development teams who have at least embraced Agile concepts, if not DevOps outright. Their challenge is to understand what development is trying to accomplish, integrate with them in some fashion, and figure out how to leverage automated security testing to be at least as agile as development. DevOps vs. DevSecOps Which leads us to another controversial topic, and why this research is different: the name DevSecOps. We contend that calling out security – the ‘Sec’ in ‘DevSecOps’ – is needed in light of maturity and understanding of this topic. Stated another way, practitioners of DevOps who have fully embraced the movement will say there is no reason to add ‘Sec’ into DevOps, as security is just another ingredient. The DevOps ideal is to break down silos between individual teams (e.g., architecture, development, IT, security, and QA) to better promote teamwork and better incentivize each team member toward the same goals. If security is just another set of skills blended into the overall effort of building and delivering software, there is no reason to call it out any more than quality assurance. Philosophically they’re right. But in practice we are not there yet. Developers may embrace the idea, but they generally suck at facilitating team integration. Sure, security is welcome to participate, but it’s

Share:
Read Post
dinosaur-sidebar

Research

view all

Sign Up for Our Newsletter

Totally Transparent Research is the embodiment of how we work at Securosis. It’s our core operating philosophy, our research policy, and a specific process. We initially developed it to help maintain objectivity while producing licensed research, but its benefits extend to all aspects of our business.

Going beyond Open Source Research, and a far cry from the traditional syndicated research model, we think it’s the best way to produce independent, objective, quality research.

Here’s how it works:

  • Content is developed ‘live’ on the blog. Primary research is generally released in pieces, as a series of posts, so we can digest and integrate feedback, making the end results much stronger than traditional “ivory tower” research.
  • Comments are enabled for posts. All comments are kept except for spam, personal insults of a clearly inflammatory nature, and completely off-topic content that distracts from the discussion. We welcome comments critical of the work, even if somewhat insulting to the authors. Really.
  • Anyone can comment, and no registration is required. Vendors or consultants with a relevant product or offering must properly identify themselves. While their comments won’t be deleted, the writer/moderator will “call out”, identify, and possibly ridicule vendors who fail to do so.
  • Vendors considering licensing the content are welcome to provide feedback, but it must be posted in the comments - just like everyone else. There is no back channel influence on the research findings or posts.
    Analysts must reply to comments and defend the research position, or agree to modify the content.
  • At the end of the post series, the analyst compiles the posts into a paper, presentation, or other delivery vehicle. Public comments/input factors into the research, where appropriate.
  • If the research is distributed as a paper, significant commenters/contributors are acknowledged in the opening of the report. If they did not post their real names, handles used for comments are listed. Commenters do not retain any rights to the report, but their contributions will be recognized.
  • All primary research will be released under a Creative Commons license. The current license is Non-Commercial, Attribution. The analyst, at their discretion, may add a Derivative Works or Share Alike condition.
  • Securosis primary research does not discuss specific vendors or specific products/offerings, unless used to provide context, contrast or to make a point (which is very very rare).
    Although quotes from published primary research (and published primary research only) may be used in press releases, said quotes may never mention a specific vendor, even if the vendor is mentioned in the source report. Securosis must approve any quote to appear in any vendor marketing collateral.
  • Final primary research will be posted on the blog with open comments.
  • Research will be updated periodically to reflect market realities, based on the discretion of the primary analyst. Updated research will be dated and given a version number.
    For research that cannot be developed using this model, such as complex principles or models that are unsuited for a series of blog posts, the content will be chunked up and posted at or before release of the paper to solicit public feedback, and provide an open venue for comments and criticisms.
  • In rare cases Securosis may write papers outside of the primary research agenda, but only if the end result can be non-biased and valuable to the user community to supplement industry-wide efforts or advances. A “Radically Transparent Research” process will be followed in developing these papers, where absolutely all materials are public at all stages of development, including communications (email, call notes).
    Only the free primary research released on our site can be licensed. We will not accept licensing fees on research we charge users to access.
  • All licensed research will be clearly labeled with the licensees. No licensed research will be released without indicating the sources of licensing fees. Again, there will be no back channel influence. We’re open and transparent about our revenue sources.

In essence, we develop all of our research out in the open, and not only seek public comments, but keep those comments indefinitely as a record of the research creation process. If you believe we are biased or not doing our homework, you can call us out on it and it will be there in the record. Our philosophy involves cracking open the research process, and using our readers to eliminate bias and enhance the quality of the work.

On the back end, here’s how we handle this approach with licensees:

  • Licensees may propose paper topics. The topic may be accepted if it is consistent with the Securosis research agenda and goals, but only if it can be covered without bias and will be valuable to the end user community.
  • Analysts produce research according to their own research agendas, and may offer licensing under the same objectivity requirements.
  • The potential licensee will be provided an outline of our research positions and the potential research product so they can determine if it is likely to meet their objectives.
  • Once the licensee agrees, development of the primary research content begins, following the Totally Transparent Research process as outlined above. At this point, there is no money exchanged.
  • Upon completion of the paper, the licensee will receive a release candidate to determine whether the final result still meets their needs.
  • If the content does not meet their needs, the licensee is not required to pay, and the research will be released without licensing or with alternate licensees.
  • Licensees may host and reuse the content for the length of the license (typically one year). This includes placing the content behind a registration process, posting on white paper networks, or translation into other languages. The research will always be hosted at Securosis for free without registration.

Here is the language we currently place in our research project agreements:

“Content will be created independently of LICENSEE with no obligations for payment. Once content is complete, LICENSEE will have a 3 day review period to determine if the content meets corporate objectives. If the content is unsuitable, LICENSEE will not be obligated for any payment and Securosis is free to distribute the whitepaper without branding or with alternate licensees, and will not complete any associated webcasts for the declining LICENSEE. Content licensing, webcasts and payment are contingent on the content being acceptable to LICENSEE. This maintains objectivity while limiting the risk to LICENSEE. Securosis maintains all rights to the content and to include Securosis branding in addition to any licensee branding.”

Even this process itself is open to criticism. If you have questions or comments, you can email us or comment on the blog.