The term “DevOps” has been gaining much traction in the software development world in recent years. DevOps is a methodology that emphasizes the collaboration and communication between Development and Operations teams to improve the quality of products and services.
The goal of DevOps is to deliver value to customers faster and more efficiently. An advanced practice of DevOps is DevSecOps, which adds security into the mix.
In this article, we’ll look into what DevSecOps essentially means and how important DevOps is in a secure development workflow.
DevOps in Software Development
In software development, DevOps is the result of applying a set of practices that aim to shorten the time between committing a change and verifying its impact on production.
The main idea behind DevOps is to automate and monitor as much of the software delivery process as possible, from writing code and deploying it through testing to monitoring applications in production environments.
This enables organizations to detect and fix errors quickly, without the need for human intervention.
DevOps can be used in conjunction with the Agile methodology, but it is not limited to Agile environments. In fact, DevOps is often seen as a natural evolution of the Agile principle of continuous delivery.
Benefits of DevOps
There are many benefits to practicing DevOps in software development. From increased efficiency to reduced costs, here are some of the benefits included in approaching development with DevOps:
- Increased Efficiency
- Faster Time to Market
- Improved Quality
- Increased Customer Satisfaction
- Reduced Costs
These are just some of the benefits that DevOps can bring to your organization. However, it’s important to note that for DevOps to be successful, everyone involved in the software development process must be on board with the methodology.
This means developers, testers, ops teams, and management must be aware of and buy into the DevOps culture and practices.
If everyone isn’t on the same page, it can lead to silos forming and a communication breakdown, ultimately impacting the quality of the software being delivered.
Secure DevOps: DevSecOps
DevSecOps is an extension of the DevOps concept that includes security at every stage of the software development process.
The primary goal of DevSecOps is to integrate security into the software development life cycle (SDLC) from the very beginning to find and fix security vulnerabilities as early as possible.
DevSecOps achieve this by automating security testing and monitoring and integrating security tools and processes into the overall software development workflow.
The end goal is to deliver secure software faster, with fewer errors and little or no need for manual intervention.
Why Is DevOps Important in a Secure Software Development Workflow?
There are several reasons contributing to the importance of DevOps. While DevOps is not a silver bullet that will magically fix all your software development problems, it can definitely help you build better software faster.
In a secure development workflow, DevOps can help you in the following ways:
Automated Security
First, as we mentioned earlier, DevOps automates many of the tasks involved in the software development process. This includes tasks like code testing, deployment, and data pipeline, which are essential for ensuring the quality of the code.
But automating these tasks also makes integrating security into the development process easier. For example, by automating code testing, you can automatically run security tests on your code as well, which can help identify potential security vulnerabilities early on.
Seamless Collaboration for Dev and Ops Team
DevOps emphasizes collaboration and communication between Development and Operations teams. Such emphasis can help to break down silos and improve communication about security risks and issues.
If Development finds a security vulnerability in their code, they can quickly notify Operations so that they can take steps to mitigate the risk.
Delivering Value Faster
Finally, DevOps is designed to deliver customer value faster and more efficiently. In today’s fast-paced business world, organizations need to be able to respond quickly to changes in the market.
By automating the software development process and emphasizing collaboration, DevOps can help organizations deliver new features and updates to their customers faster and with fewer errors.
In addition, DevOps can also help reduce the time it takes to fix security vulnerabilities. It can identify and fix security issues early on, allowing organizations to avoid the costly and time-consuming process of patching production code.
Conclusion
DevOps is a crucial part of any secure software development workflow. By automating tasks, integrating security into the development process, and emphasizing collaboration, DevOps can help organizations deliver software to their customers faster.
If you want to improve your organization’s software development process, consider implementing DevOps. It could be the key to unlocking your organization’s true potential.
