DevOps Security Challenges and Best Practices

Some of the challenges when adopting DevOps security, also known as DevSecOps, are placing too much focus on tools rather than processes, cultural resistance, weak access controls and poor secrets management. While implementing DevOps security comes with its challenges, there are several best practices organizations can follow to make its implementation as effective and seamless as possible, including proper change management, combating secrets sprawl and following the principle of least privilege.

Continue reading to learn the seven best practices organizations should follow when implementing DevOps security. 

What is DevOps security?

DevOps security, also known as DevSecOps, refers to a philosophy that security should be integrated into the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) as early as possible. Preferably, before a single line of code is written for the software. Traditionally, DevOps teams would code first, then discover security flaws and patch them later in the SDLC. While this may seem productive for developers, finding and fixing security flaws early on is a lot less time-consuming and costly than refactoring code later in the SDLC.  

Challenges of DevSecOps implementation

Here are some of the challenges faced when it comes to the implementation of DevOps security.

Too much focus on tools

While tools can be beneficial, DevSecOps tools shouldn’t be the first thing organizations look for when implementing DevOps security. Instead, organizations should look into their current processes, see what needs to be fixed, and then determine what tools they need to make those processes more secure and efficient. 

Cultural resistance

When attempting to implement DevSecOps, there is often pushback from developers because they may be accustomed to doing things a certain way. Developers code for workability so having to take security into account throughout the production process makes developers worry that it’ll slow down their process. 

Developers aren’t the only team where pushback may be felt. Security teams often do a lot of their work manually, whereas developers try to automate their processes as much as possible. Because developers work at a fast pace and use automation, security teams may be skeptical about the implementation of DevSecOps and the idea of cross-collaborating. 

Weak access controls

Many DevOps teams give their developers unlimited access to privileged accounts like root and admin accounts. While this helps DevOps teams speed up production, it also poses a major security risk and causes significant issues with compliance audits. Additionally, many DevOps tools are given high access levels, far more than they need to operate, and often, that access is forgotten about. This expands an organization’s attack surface and puts it at higher risk of a breach.

Poor secrets management

Secrets management refers to the process of managing and securing IT infrastructure secrets such as non-human login credentials, Secure Shell (SSH) keys and Application Programming Interface (API) keys. As IT and DevOps teams grow, it’s common for them to encounter a problem known as secrets sprawl in which infrastructure secrets are hardcoded in source code and scattered throughout the organization across different teams, departments and team members. This makes it extremely difficult for IT to have visibility and control over these secrets, which introduces a major security risk. 

7 best practices when implementing DevOps security

Here are seven best practices organizations should follow when implementing DevSecOps.

1. Adopt a DevSecOps model

To make the implementation of DevSecOps as seamless as possible, organizations must fully adopt a DevSecOps model. This means that every member of the DevOps team needs to embrace security during the software development lifecycle. Cross-functional collaboration between DevOps and security teams is going to become a very important aspect of the initiative, so both teams are going to have to work closely together in the adoption of DevSecOps. 

2. Use proper change management

Using proper change management methods when implementing DevSecOps can help overcome cultural resistance from both DevOps and security teams. Both teams must understand that implementing DevSecOps will not slow down production– if anything it’ll make the organization more productive and save time. Proper change management should also establish clear coding standards for developers and implement tools and processes to automate security. 

3. Automate everything

As mentioned earlier, developers work at a very fast pace which can make it difficult for security teams to keep up with DevOps processes. To make the implementation of DevSecOps as seamless as possible for both developers and security teams, security processes will need to be automated. This enables developers to continue working at their current pace while also accelerating security operations. Some examples of security processes that can be automated during the SDLC include code reviews, access management, vulnerability management, secrets management and configuration management. 

4. Combat secrets sprawl with secrets management

The best way to combat secrets sprawl and securely manage infrastructure secrets is with secrets management. Secrets management ensures that only authenticated and authorized entities have access to secrets. When implementing DevSecOps, the collaboration between DevOps and security teams is going to be very important and requires that these teams share privileged credentials. Secrets management helps IT administrators securely share and manage these secrets so they’re not mismanaged or misused. 

5. Implement privileged access management

Privileged Access Management (PAM) enables IT administrators to enforce the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) which is a cybersecurity concept where users are only given access to the data and systems they need to do their jobs, not more and not less. PAM is important when securing the DevOps stack because oftentimes developers are given excessive privileges, increasing the risk of external and internal threat actors exploiting their access rights. Implementing PAM can help organizations audit privileged access so employees are only given access to systems and resources they need to do their jobs, reducing the risk of suffering a successful insider attack.  

6. Regularly perform penetration testing

Penetration testing, or pen testing, is a form of simulation testing performed against your organization’s network. The purpose of pen tests is to determine the strength of your organization’s network and identify vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can exploit. During the implementation of DevSecOps into your organization’s development environment, automated pen tests should be performed regularly to test its strength and find security vulnerabilities that need to be patched. The sooner these vulnerabilities are found, the more efficient DevSecOps implementation will be.

7. Build awareness around security best practices

When implementing any cybersecurity philosophy, concept or tool into your organization, you must build awareness around security best practices with your employees. Your employees can be your weakest link when it comes to cybersecurity. Regular training can help them better understand security and be able to spot cyber threats that attempt to target them. The more awareness employees have of security best practices, the more secure your organization will be. 

How KeeperPAM™ helps organizations implement DevSecOps

KeeperPAM is a zero-trust, zero-knowledge privileged access management solution that combines three of Keeper’s core products into one unified platform: Keeper Enterprise Password Manager (EPM), Keeper Secrets Manager (KSM) and Keeper Connection Manager (KCM). With KeeperPAM the implementation of DevSecOps becomes a more seamless experience since it helps organizations securely store credentials, manage access rights and permissions, consolidate and manage secrets, and automatically rotate credentials.

To learn more about how KeeperPAM can help your organization with the implementation of DevSecOps, request a demo today.