The Department of Defense (DoD) and other security minded industries have come to embrace DevSecOps. DevSecOps, is one of many variants of DevOps that focuses on security as a key player in the process.

In addition to having automated security scans and processes as part of the CI/CD pipeline, that DevSecOps actually brings in the security office into the process which often includes the Information System Security Manager (ISSM), Information System Security Officer (ISSO) and Information Systems Security Engineer (ISSE) roles.

By having security included in the process, DevSecOps is often able to achieve a Continuous Authority to Operate (ATO) or Certificate to Field (CTF) approvals for any software that successfully passes its automated CI/CD pipeline. This allows Development, Security, and Operations to collaboratively work together to securely deploy software at the SPEED OF MISSION!

With any new implementation, culture tends to be overlooked.  This was the case for Agile and is still the case for DevOps. Tools and processes can only get you so far.  Failure is inevitable if you don't focus on cultural components as much as you focus on tools and processes.

A successful DevOps culture is not too far from an Agile culture. You want to enable the team, prioritize automation and security, and get as close to continuous delivery as possible. It's important to remember that culture change is a journey. With that, you must set your goal then work a plan to incentivize the DevOps activities and behaviors you want to see through slow implementation.

The only thing worse than pushing software slowly is pushing software with security vulnerabilities quickly. This is why, when it comes to DevOps, security is not an option, it is a necessity.

• Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
• Vulnerability Scanning
• Dependency Scanning
• Penetration Testing

While not an exhaustive list, above are a few of the security practices that should be implemented as part of a DevOps solution. Don't get caught with a security incident; let TechRev help you securely implement DevOps.

Continuous integration is a development practice of frequently merging code changes back into the main or an integration branch. This allows automated testing to occur and helps to prevent a developer from accidentally breaking or getting out of sync with the main codebase.

Automated testing and processes are vital to continuous integration. This includes unit testing, integration testing, user simulation testing, and possibly even load or performance testing.

Continuous delivery is the next step after continuous integration; it includes automatically building and packaging the software into a deliverable form. Depending on the software, this can take different shapes —whether it is code packages/modules or fully configured containers.

The key output of a successful continuous delivery pipeline is the ability to deploy the software at any time and any frequency (monthly, weekly, daily, or even multiple times an hour).

Continuous deployment is the last step to a fully automated DevOps pipeline. Continuous deployment fully automates the deployment of the output from the continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines.

Meaning, a successful continuous deployment pipeline could, in theory, occur from the time a developer checks-in and merges code changes; the entire process of building, testing, packaging, securing, and finally deploying to production is fully automated with no human interactions required.

In reality, we often view and implement a manual process to conduct a final review/approval before the actual deployment to production.