What Are The Main Goals & Principles Of DevSecOps?

Over the years, the IT industry has witnessed the rise and fall of countless frameworks, including Agile, Scrum, ITIL, and DevOps. Each promised to revolutionize how we deliver and manage IT services. 

While these frameworks have left a lasting impact, they’ve often failed to address one crucial component: security. Enter DevSecOps, a natural evolution born from the pressing need to integrate security into DevOps’s rapid development cycles seamlessly.

DevSecOps focuses on embedding security into every software lifecycle phase rather than treating it as an afterthought. At its core, it emphasizes two key principles: reducing risk through proactive measures and fostering trust by openly demonstrating a commitment to data protection. 

Building on the lessons learned from past IT methodologies, DevSecOps offers an integrated approach that prioritizes speed and safety. This creates a culture where security is a shared responsibility across the organization.

Let’s explore DevSecOps’ goals and principles and the critical role of DevSecOps in achieving these objectives while addressing modern security challenges.

What is DevSecOps?

DevSecOps stands for Development, Security, and Operations. It is an approach to software development that integrates security practices within the DevOps process. It emphasizes the importance of incorporating security measures at every stage of the software development lifecycle.

Why DevSecOps Matters

Integrating security into DevOps processes is no longer optional. DevSecOps Best Practices ensure organizations proactively address vulnerabilities and safeguard systems and customer data. This approach reduces risks and enhances trust, compliance, and overall business value. Here’s why:

#1. Reducing Risk

Reducing risk comes from closing the security, business, and IT gaps. Instead of focusing on a static set of rules, DevSecOps focuses on risk awareness and creating an action plan for integrating security early and frequently. This approach has often proven effective, and because of its flexibility, it is easier to implement for all businesses.

It also reduces risk through an iterative approach. This means dealing with the high-risk elements right away. The moment we identify something of extreme risk to our organizations, we face it head-on.

#2. Creating Trust

We’re responsible for protecting corporate and personal data. Customers need to trust our processes to protect their data, and one of the ways we can do that is through visibility. 

Your organization can create trust by transparently showing that you’re GDPR secure or have specific ISO certifications and the means in how you’ve done those things.

It’s an oxymoron that security comes with secrecy, but in a DevSecOps world, we can improve security through openness and sharing.

What DevSecOps Is Not

It’s important to know what DevSecOps is not, so let’s bust a few myths.

• DevSecOps is not about adding more layers of security. It must remain lean and not add additional toil or work to the chain.
  
• DevSecOps is not establishing a dedicated security team (that would be creating another silo, see point #1 above). It’s about a collaborative approach of including security in teams to help shift our thinking.
  
• DevSecOps is not a big transformation project. Any transformation should be made based on an iterative, risk-based backlog.
  
• DevSecOps does not compromise ROI. Too often, implementing security is seen as an additional cost. However, it should add value, not remove it.

DevOps vs. DevSecOps

While DevOps focuses on efficiency and collaboration, DevSecOps adds a security layer to the process. By embedding security practices early in the software lifecycle, DevSecOps ensures vulnerabilities are addressed proactively rather than reactively. 

This approach reflects a growing need for organizations to tackle evolving cybersecurity threats while maintaining the speed and agility of DevOps practices.

The Key Goals & Principles Of DevSecOps

The principles and goals of DevSecOps aim to create a seamless integration of security into the software development lifecycle, ensuring that security is proactive, efficient, and effective.

For different organizations, it may look a little different but the key principles are as follows:

• Integration of Security: Security practices are embedded into the DevOps workflow, rather than being an afterthought. This ensures that security is considered at every stage of development.
• Automation: Automated tools and processes are used to enforce security policies, conduct testing, and monitor systems, reducing human error and increasing efficiency.
• Collaboration: Development, security, and operations teams work closely together, fostering a culture of shared responsibility for security.
• Continuous Improvement: Regular feedback loops and iterative processes help teams continuously improve security measures and adapt to new threats.

The CALMS Method

The CALMS framework is an essential basis for DevOps. Jez Humble and his peers originally proposed it, which applies just as much to DevSecOps.

Culture – is what underpins everything around DevOps. It’s about inclusion, having a safe environment, and a collaborative organization without siloed walls. And it’s true still when you include security, having a safe environment where people can question, test, and innovate around security.

Automation – the automation of security in testing and delivering monitoring systems through observability. This is essential and one of the more straightforward elements to implement, but it must be done in tandem with all other elements.

Lean IT – We must consider secure delivery and incorporate built-in security into our value stream, as security is essential to our business value.

Measurement – This involves applying security scorecards and measuring risk. We previously discussed having a backlog and working on the high-risk priority items first, and we determine those by measuring risk.

Sharing – sharing those identified risks across the organization to ensure the safety of our entire enterprise. It’s also about sharing resolutions and ways to prevent those issues. Most importantly, it’s about sharing potential problems and threats.

The CALMS framework can be effectively applied to DevSecOps to support its key principles and goals. Here’s how each component, along with “shift left” and “shift right,” supports DevSecOps:

Proactive, Shift-Left Approach

This means applying proactive service management principles to the software delivery lifecycle – in other words, prevention.

Culture

• Default inclusion of security is part of a requirement
• Product managers and engineers should be constantly challenged
• End-user empathy to services
• Ethical hackers target all elements
• Manual ethical hacking approach to innovation

Automation

• Security should be included in the CI/CD pipeline
• SAST (statistical analysis)
• DAST (dynamic analysis)
• Security code coverage analysis
• Digitally signed secure repositories for built binaries
• Penetration tests
• Smoke tests

Lean

• Security-inclusive definitions, designs, engineering, testing, and security-inclusive deployments

Reactive, Shift-Right Approach

Reactive shift-right is about applying service delivery principles to service management. This is about using agile detection and correction.

Culture

• Consider a mindset of ‘No fortress is impregnable’
• Production smoke testing from “time zero” as part of monitoring/observability
• Chaos engineering approach to prod and non-prod
• Root cause analysis with data captured in real-time

Automation

• Continuous security monitoring of prod and non-prod
• Chaos engineering, including automated security testing of production environments

Lean

• Treating major incident management as a value stream – every second counts!
• Response times to stop an attack
• Response times for return to value
• Feedback to engineering for future prevention and technical debt

Common Overlaps

While culture, automation, and lean IT are applied differently in shift-left or shift-right, measurement and sharing are used similarly.

Measurement

• Security professionals to determine measures, such as from regulatory requirements, e.g., GDPR
• Measurements of both prod and non-prod
• Definition of security as part of business value and success criteria
• Security scorecards, updated in real-time

Sharing & Collaboration

• All parts of the organization should consider themselves responsible for security
• Autonomous ability to identify and implement security
• In the event of an attack, a security-led damage analysis team, supported by IT, must work alongside an IT-led remediation team, supported by security
• Empowerment by leadership with shared accountability in a safe environment, red team vs blue team functions, security drills

Together, these approaches help create a more comprehensive and proactive security posture in DevSecOps.

Transform Your DevSecOps Journey With xMatters

Adopting DevSecOps practices is no longer optional. Organizations must embrace these frameworks to remain agile, secure, and competitive.

DevOps and SREs use xMatters to improve team synchronization, keep services running, and automate incident response with highly configurable, low-code workflows.

Discover how Everbridge xMatters can transform your DevOps journey. Explore our DevSecOps Best Practices Guide. 

Ready to elevate your approach? Request a demo today and see how xMatters can help you achieve your DevOps goals.

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DevSecOps FAQs

What best describes the goal of DevSecOps?

The primary goal of DevSecOps is to integrate security into every phase of the software development lifecycle, ensuring that applications are secure by design while maintaining the speed and agility of DevOps practices.

What is the primary purpose of DevSecOps?

The primary purpose of DevSecOps is to proactively identify and address security vulnerabilities, minimize risks, and enhance trust by embedding security into development and operations processes.

What are the primary goals of DevSecOps?

DevSecOps’ primary goals include reducing security risks, fostering collaboration among security, development, and operations teams, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements, reducing costs, and delivering secure software quickly and efficiently.

What tools and practices are essential for achieving DevSecOps goals?

Essential tools and practices for DevSecOps include automated security testing, static and dynamic application security testing (SAST/DAST), secure coding practices, continuous monitoring, vulnerability management tools, and incorporating security into CI/CD pipelines.