Security and DevOps: Keep it Tight

The emergence of new application architectures (such as containers and service mesh architectures), serverless architectures, cloud-native workloads, and the increasing reliance on APIs means organization now require web application and API protection that can secure at the speed development – without compromising agility, time-to-market or overall productivity.

These solutions must be able to “flex” with development environments and adapt to the needs of the business. Before considering any solution, make sure it meets the requirements of both DevOps and security teams.

Here are some key characteristics to consider when evaluating WAAP that integrates well into your CI/CD pipeline.

Consistency Across Hybrid Computing Environments

Data centers, private clouds and public clouds all require fine tuning and adjustments that result in gaps in your application security posture. Look for security solutions that provide unified, robust and consistent security agnostic where your applications run.

Gaining Visibility into Attention-Worthy Security Events (APIs especially) & Performance Metrics

Adopting an integrated approach to security results in an integrated, 360-degree view of security and performance issues via a single pane of glass.

[You may also like: How to Keep APIs Secure in an Interconnected World]

Scalability

This means security solutions that have “elasticity.” They can grow and scale application
security alongside development orchestration tools– protecting all instances and workloads, including auto learning policies and configuration settings.

Effective Security (Zero-Day Protection)

Negative and positive security models are necessary to protect against known and unknown threats, thus maximizing security and minimizing false positives for best user experience.

Adaptive Security

Immediate detection of new and modified applications in the CI/CD pipeline isn’t enough and must be followed by automatic generation and optimization of security policies.

[You may also like: Application Security in 2021]

Risk Free Integration

Risk free integration with the various tools and systems compromising application development and orchestration solutions to ensure minimal or no delay application development and release cycles.

The key to application security moving forward will rest on the ability of application development and product teams balancing the need to secure infrastructures while migrating applications to public clouds via automation and governance. Organizations need to change the way they manage security for applications and APIs, both in terms of its role in application development and the security solutions they implement to safeguard them.