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From DevOps to DevSecOps with Security Automation

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The role of the DevOps engineer is changing, as demand for specialized services is dwindling. DevOps engineers are now being asked to learn all parts of the development pipeline to improve collaboration and accelerate production cycles. 

This can be challenging for DevOps engineers because it requires wearing many different hats and taking on new responsibilities — some of which can be immensely complicated. 

One area that’s problematic for many DevOps teams is security, which is also in a state of transformation. 

Not only are cyberthreats rapidly evolving in sophistication, enterprises are also expanding their attack surface by migrating to the cloud. Making things more complicated, traditional structures of control, like IT teams, are no longer relevant to the cloud. Security falls on the DevOps teams now, who historically have leaned in more to the development side rather than operations. 

This gap has led to a growing interest in “shifting left” and integrating security testing earlier into the software development pipeline so it’s not treated as an afterthought. Developers and operations teams play a big role in this process. Hence, the rise of DevSecOps. As a result, security testing is no longer something teams can dash off during the final stage of production.

We’re here to walk you through how automation can upgrade DevSecOps team.

Meeting DevSecOps with automation

Oftentimes, there is a disconnect between Security, Cloud Ops, and DevOps teams when it comes to tasks like cybersecurity. It’s not quite as simple as up-skilling DevOps engineers with cybersecurity training and asking them to secure applications or cloud deployments. 

Traditionally, meeting cybersecurity best practices is painstaking work, which pulls DevOps engineers away from their core responsibilities. They are often under immense pressure from the business to ship fast, as they are the revenue stream. This creates an environment that does not empower DevOps to spend much time on security, even though most would love to, and instead brings added risks to the business.

If left to their own choice, DevOps engineers are more likely to choose speed and efficiency in producing code over security during development, rushing into production and increasing the likelihood of cloud misconfigurations and the introduction of vulnerabilities.

If we look across the teams, from DevOps, Cloud and Security, we see that these teams are all trying to achieve the same goal, increased velocity and revenue for the business, but due to outdated structures and lack of cohesion, find themselves often at odds. What is needed is something to bring it all together, something that enables security to lay down the guard rails for the ops teams so that they have a secure framework to build in, without having to spend a lot of time implementing it themselves. 

That ‘something’ also needs the capabilities to continuously monitor for risks in the cloud and when one is found, send the issue right to the team that introduced the risk as they have the context and abilities to remediate it. On top of all of that, everything needs to be done at the speed and scale of the cloud. Today, we can use the power of the cloud to provide a level of security that far surpasses anything that could have been done in the traditional data center. You can enable DevOps engineers to spend less time trying to fit security into an already high pressure situation and more time focusing on building industry leading applications for their business.

Using this type of platform can also enable faster development cycles with applications that are far more secure than anything that was conceivable in the past. This, in turn, can lower production costs, speed up delivery in the end, and minimize stress for engineers — reducing employee turnover along the way. 

Sonrai’s approach to liberating DevSecOps with automation

The Sonrai Dig platform uncovers identity and data risks across your cloud. Sonrai Dig takes care of the heavy lifting that’s required for security testing and continuous monitoring, freeing DevOps engineers from having to do it themselves.

With that in mind, here are some of the top ways Sonrai Dig can make life easier for DevOps engineers.

Automate using APIs 

Most engineers don’t have the time to fix security issues using traditional point-and-click methods. This type of approach makes it impossible to scale. 

Sonrai Dig uses intelligent workflow and automation to enable teams to rapidly locate and fix security issues across their cloud, allowing teams to fix issues at scale.

Prevent and remediate risks 

As companies move forward with cloud deployments, they need to be extra careful to avoid identity and data policy misconfigurations. Unfortunately, these types of misconfigurations are very common. Unfortunately, human error is a top reason for security breaches. 

With Sonrai Dig, you can establish firm policies to prevent the creation or manipulation of cloud services and resources. What’s more, Sonrai Dig enables smart workflows and automation to remediate issues whenever they occur. By using these services, teams can increase deployment speed and validate security compliance throughout the CI/CD pipelines, meeting that DevSecOps model.

Automate security workflows 

Simply put, DevOps engineers don’t have the time needed to actively monitor the whole stack for security violations by hand. Good news: With Sonrai Dig, they don’t have to. 

Sonrai Dig and our intelligent workflow automatically sends security alerts directly to responsible parties instead of sending them to the back of your security and cloud team’s queue with no context to fix the issue. As a result, team members can fix issues as they arise and have the visibility to ensure that they are being addressed.

This system prevents security bottlenecks, creating a situation that’s faster and more effective for everyone involved. The end result is comprehensive security management with full autonomy for all DevOps engineers. 

Ready to get started?

Sonrai Dig is an absolute game-changer for DevOps engineers focused on building highly secure modern applications.

Using Sonrai Dig can prevent and eliminate security violations, adding extra value to DevOps teams by allowing them to focus on what they do best — developing software — instead of performing backend security grunt work day in and day out. We aim to help organizations work towards DevSecOps models utilizing security practices like automation.

To learn more about how Sonrai Dig can transform your DevOps team, request a demo today.

The post From DevOps to DevSecOps with Security Automation appeared first on Sonrai Security.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Blog - Sonrai Security authored by Eric Kedrosky. Read the original post at: https://sonraisecurity.com/blog/from-devops-to-devsecops-with-security-automation/