It is important to have a DevSecOps Security Checklist. DevSecOps integrates development, security, and operations to enhance software delivery and security. This article offers a concise checklist to help prioritize and implement key security controls in your DevOps pipelines. Look at the essential measures from code review to incident response to fortify your software practices effectively.

What is the main Goal of the DevSecOps and Security Checklist?

Enterprises have established DevSecOps teams to address security challenges while accelerating software releases. DevSecOps expands upon the traditional DevOps approach by integrating security into application delivery and the CI/CD process.

Now let us look at the essential checklists that DevSecOps teams should master to succeed in their roles. Below is a ten-step DevSecOps security checklist designed to align teams and enhance security practices.

Development Security Challenges and DevSecOps Security Checklist

Understanding the challenges security presents in the development process is key for DevSecOps success. Sometimes, security measures can slow things down or make tasks more complicated for developers. Issues like missed threats, different security rules between teams, or poor communication between developers and security experts can arise.

By recognizing these challenges, teams can focus on making improvements. This helps streamline the process, encourages teamwork, and ensures that security is built into every step of creating and delivering software.

Conduct an Audit to pinpoint where teams are spending unnecessary time

In the absence of DevSecOps, security teams typically use their own tools to detect vulnerabilities towards the end of the development cycle.

After that, they send these issues back to the development team for fixing. This iterative process often leads to ongoing friction between the two teams and inefficient communication, resulting in wasted time.

By examining the time spent on addressing vulnerabilities post-code integration, you can potentially identify recurring issues and areas for enhancement. For instance, if security teams struggle to monitor the progress of critical vulnerability fixes and frequently need updates from the development team, it may indicate a need for a unified dashboard.

Such a dashboard could allow both developers and security experts to track the remediation status of critical vulnerabilities more effectively.

Addressing Challenges and Streamlining Processes

Security often acts as a barrier to rapid software deployment, yet its importance cannot be understated. While DevSecOps aims to integrate security early in the software development lifecycle, achieving this requires concerted effort.

A vital initial step involves convening development, security, and operations teams for an open discussion about existing challenges and bottlenecks in security practices.

By openly discussing these issues, teams can collaboratively devise and implement actionable plans to address them. This dialogue ensures inclusivity, allowing for the identification of concerns that may not be evident solely through data analysis.

Implementing Incremental Code Changes

At GitLab, we prioritize iteration, emphasizing small, manageable code modifications followed by continuous improvement. Adopting a similar approach when transitioning from DevOps to DevSecOps is beneficial. Making small, incremental code changes facilitates easier review, enhances security, and enables quicker deployment compared to large-scale project overhauls.

Breaking down coding tasks into smaller units and conducting automated tests upon each commit empowers developers to promptly address vulnerabilities. This proactive testing approach not only accelerates the development process but also minimizes delays by identifying issues early, ultimately saving time during the final testing phase before production deployment.

Embrace Automation and Integration

Automation and integration play pivotal roles in DevOps and amplify the effectiveness of security scans. By integrating scans seamlessly into developers’ workflows, every code modification undergoes immediate review, leading to early detection of vulnerabilities.

This proactive approach empowers developers to rectify issues before code submission, reducing the volume of vulnerabilities forwarded to the security team and optimizing their review process.

Share Security Report Insights with Developers

Instead of isolating results from Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) within security teams, disseminate this valuable information across the entire development team.

Providing developers with access to these reports not only aids in prompt remediation but also equips them with insights to embed essential security controls throughout the software development lifecycle.

Audit and Revamp Waterfall-Style Security Processes

In conventional waterfall-style security methodologies, vulnerabilities often surface late in the development cycle. Conduct a thorough audit of your existing security workflows to identify and possibly eliminate or minimize reliance on waterfall approaches. Maintaining agility and flexibility in adapting to changing requirements is crucial for organizational resilience.

Enhance security Visibility for the Team

According to the Global DevSecOps Survey, security professionals face challenges in prioritizing vulnerability remediation, managing false positives, and tracking vulnerability status. To address these issues, security teams require improved visibility into both resolved and pending vulnerabilities, their origins, and remediation progress. This transparency ensures better alignment and coordination across teams, fostering a proactive security posture.

Consolidate Tools into a Unified DevOps Platform

Effective security requires the right tools and a cohesive approach. Transitioning to a comprehensive DevOps platform facilitates the shift from traditional waterfall practices, enhances communication, integrates automation and continuous integration, and serves as a centralized repository for security scan results and critical vulnerability statuses.

This unified platform empowers teams to proactively address security concerns while streamlining operations and fostering collaboration.

DevSecOps Checklist for Enhanced Security

• Prioritize Dependency Visibility: Ensure all developers are aware of and understand software dependencies.
• Integrate Automated Security Measures in CI/CD Pipelines: Incorporate SAST, DAST, and secrets detection for seamless security testing, scanning, and remediation.
• Adopt Shift-Left Practices: Encourage developers to perform vulnerability and dependency scans prior to code commit or push.
• Enhance Policy Compliance and Auditability: Maintain continuous documentation and transparency by tracking threats and vulnerabilities.
• Optimize Cloud-Native Application Protection: Utilize a CI/CD platform compliant with IT security standards for robust cloud-native application security.
• Invest in Secrets Management and Training: Enhance security in multi-cloud environments through advanced secrets management solutions and training initiatives.
• Foster a Security-Conscious Culture: Promote a collective responsibility for security by integrating security experts and equipping developers with the knowledge to design and implement secure software.

Actionable Tips for Securing CI/CD Pipelines

CI/CD pipelines are integral to cloud-native software development, yet their security often remains neglected. Malicious actors frequently exploit vulnerabilities in CI/CD pipelines to compromise both the pipeline and software supply chain.

By proactively implementing best practices, you can mitigate CI/CD security risks and fortify your pipelines. This checklist offers practical guidance to safeguard your CI/CD pipeline against threats such as pipeline poisoning, secrets exposure, and dependency chain exploitation.

Download the checklist to discover how to:

• Adopt a Policy-as-Code Approach: Integrate policy-as-code in your CI/CD pipeline configuration files.
• Implement Effective Secrets Scanning: Minimize false alerts and promptly remove exposed credentials from your pipeline.
• Enforce Least-Privileged Access: Implement governance controls and audit procedures to restrict access.
• Establish Comprehensive Logging and Monitoring: Enhance visibility into your CI/CD pipeline through robust logging and monitoring practices.

Top 7 DevSecOps Checklists for CI/CD Security

The contemporary software delivery process, encompassing various tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms, often prioritizes speed over security. This focus, coupled with traditional slow and manual security checks, leaves organizations vulnerable to external and internal cyber threats. To address this, DevSecOps teams must adopt comprehensive checklists to ensure end-to-end security.

Essential checklists include:

• Vulnerability Report
• Dependency-Based Operational Model (DBOM)
• Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)
• Deployment Risk Report
• Policy Violation Report
• Audit Report
• DevOps Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

1. Vulnerability Report

The initial item on the checklist is the vulnerability report, essential in both pre and post-build stages of development (refer to the accompanying image). With the proliferation of open-source tools, libraries, and containers, applications are increasingly susceptible to vulnerabilities. Automated security testing to scrutinize source code and identify potential security flaws is crucial.

Without adequate checks, vulnerabilities may slip into production, rendering applications vulnerable to attacks. Notable security testing methods include Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), designed to pinpoint vulnerabilities in source code and binaries.

DevSecOps should strive for complete automation of security scans by seamlessly integrating them into CI/CD pipelines. For instance, incorporating a stage in a Spinnaker pipeline to automate static analysis using third-party tools like SonarQube.

However, implementation is just one aspect; gaining a comprehensive understanding of vulnerabilities and code risk across various projects and applications within an organization is equally vital for the DevSecOps team.

The post-build stage is a critical and vulnerable phase in software delivery. This stage is where software artifacts materialize and often serve as a fertile ground for security risks.

Vulnerabilities, insecure dependencies, and unauthorized access can infiltrate during this phase, jeopardizing the integrity and security of your applications. Addressing security concerns at this juncture is essential to safeguard the applications’ integrity and ensure they are secure before being deployed live.

2. Delivery Bill of Materials (DBOM)

The second item on the DevSecOps Security Checklist is the Delivery Bill of Materials (DBOM), gaining prominence due to the accelerated pace of software delivery. DBOM serves as a comprehensive report detailing the software supply chain and security management throughout the software delivery lifecycle. This report encompasses various data points, including security risk assessments, quality and performance evaluations, testing results, and the developmental and deployment history of the application. Additionally, it captures information about the tools employed during the application delivery process.

Maintaining a DBOM within the CI/CD pipeline is crucial for enhancing transparency regarding an application’s risk profile at each delivery phase. Stakeholders who can benefit from accessing the DBOM include DevOps teams, security professionals, Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) personnel, application engineers, delivery teams, and operations teams.

By systematically sharing risk analysis through metadata tracking, such as software components, and correlating it with other relevant information, a DBOM facilitates informed decision-making when transitioning an application to production. Furthermore, a DBOM enables organizations to efficiently interpret the application’s status within the software supply chain.

The DevSecOps team should be well-versed in the components that constitute a DBOM. At its core, a DBOM encompasses the foundational code components upon which an application is constructed, along with their associated risk statuses.

It offers comprehensive insights into an application component’s potential risks across various software delivery stages, including code development, building, testing, deployment, and production. While the depth of information contained within a DBOM may vary depending on organizational requirements, the following outlines a general overview of what a DBOM report should include.

3. Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)

Ranked third on the DevSecOps checklist is the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM). An SBOM offers insights into the software supply chain, equipping producers, purchasers, and operators with valuable license information. This enhanced visibility into the supply chain brings several benefits, primarily enabling the tracking of both known and emerging vulnerabilities and risks.

According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an SBOM is a structured record that delineates the details and relationships of various components utilized in software development. SBOMs empower software suppliers by facilitating:

• Continuous monitoring of components for vulnerabilities
• Minimization of unplanned and unscheduled work through improved visibility into vulnerable code
• Reduction of code redundancy in open-source software
• Comprehensive understanding of dependencies within intricate projects, enhancing quality management
• Ensuring compliance with license obligations
• Timely identification and tracking of software component end-of-life (EOL)
• Blacklisting of prohibited components
• Provision of SBOMs to customers or downstream partners

Many organizations leverage SBOMs within their DevOps practices to augment software transparency. Leading-edge companies like Google, Apple, Cisco, and others incorporate SBOMs as integral components of their Delivery Bill of Materials (DBOM), underscoring its significance in modern software development and supply chain management.

4. Deployment Risk Report

This is the next big thing in the DevSecOps Security Checklist. While a risk report or code-vulnerability report focuses on software-specific vulnerabilities, understanding the risk associated with the deployment environment is equally crucial. The introduction of a new microservice deployment can significantly alter the performance and behavior of an entire system.

The DevSecOps team must possess a comprehensive understanding of and communicate the risks associated with new deployments across various dimensions, including performance, quality, reliability, and security of the production system. It is essential to establish robust mechanisms or systems to assess the risk of deploying changes to cloud environments, containers, or legacy infrastructures.

Given that numerous modifications will be deployed to testing and staging environments, the risk assessment process should be agile and efficient. Post-deployment risk assessment is often referred to as verification.

In production deployments, DevOps teams may employ various deployment strategies such as canary and blue-green deployments. These strategies allow for the gradual introduction of real-time traffic to the new system, minimizing potential impacts on end-users.

However, these strategies typically require verification processes to make informed decisions regarding traffic distribution to the new systems.

An effective approach to verification involves analyzing access logs, API logs, and performance metrics of the newly deployed software and its dependencies to identify any issues, exceptions, or unexpected behaviors.

DevOps teams should develop and share deployment risk reports with Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) and developers. These reports offer holistic insights into the software’s impact on existing systems, facilitating informed decision-making and proactive risk mitigation.

5. Policy Violation Report

The SDLC processes are governed by multiple rules regulations and policies. While setting up these policies is a one-time task, monitoring and enforcing these constantly poses a huge challenge for the DevOps team.

Non-compliance with the established standards or policies can expose organizations to security breaches, attacks, and potential fines from regulatory bodies.

Various software tools like GitLab, Spinnaker, Jenkins, Argo, and Flux facilitate the automation of the software delivery process. Despite the automation, tracking policy compliance and identifying violations remain critical daily tasks for DevOps or DevSecOps teams.

For instance, a common policy might be a Black-out-window policy for developers, specifying times or date ranges during which deployments to production are prohibited, such as peak business hours. The initial step for DevOps is to integrate these policies into Continuous Delivery (CD) pipelines or delivery automation workflows.

After that, real-time monitoring should be implemented to promptly identify and rectify any inadvertent policy violations.

DevOps teams should receive consolidated weekly and monthly reports on policy violations. These reports offer insights into areas where processes can be enhanced or refined, enabling continuous improvement and ensuring ongoing compliance with organizational policies and regulatory requirements.

6. Audit

As the pace of software releases accelerates, tracking various deployments and events within the software delivery lifecycle becomes increasingly challenging. Additionally, security and compliance events necessitate not only auditing Continuous Delivery (CD) events but also ensuring traceability of the artifacts and data that facilitated the promotion of releases to production. This makes auditing an integral part of DevSecOps Security Checklist.

Regular auditing is a vital checklist item for the DevSecOps team to ensure applications align with SDLC standards and regulatory requirements. To optimize efficiency, DevSecOps teams should leverage automated systems equipped with Audit and Attestation dashboards.

These dashboards should provide detailed insights into pipeline execution, highlighting the who, what, and when of each event.

Furthermore, mechanisms should be in place to facilitate easy sharing of audit reports with both internal and external auditors, encompassing deployment, environment, and event data sourced from workflow tasks or pipeline activities.

Automating the auditing process enables organizations to respond promptly to compliance requests, thereby maintaining a secure and compliant software delivery pipeline. Below are some types of audit records and compliance checks, along with their respective benefits for the DevSecOps team and the organization.

7. DevOps KPIs

With the integration of security, the DevSecOps team naturally extends the DevOps framework. Consequently, core DevOps Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) cannot be overlooked. Quantifying this new transformation is crucial for stakeholders to assess any potential trade-offs in SDLC process effectiveness post-security integration.

Therefore, the DevSecOps team should monitor the following KPIs, also known as DORA metrics, to evaluate the impact of security implementation on the software delivery process:

• Deployment frequency
• Lead time
• Change failure rate
• Time to restore service

If security significantly impacts these KPIs to an unacceptable extent, organizations must promptly reassess and refine their processes to restore the speed and efficiency of bringing products to market.

DevSecOps Security Checklist Best Practices Checklist

 

To successfully implement DevSecOps within your organization, consider adopting the following security best practices:

1. Culture and Collaboration

• Promote a Security Mindset: Cultivate security awareness among all team members, from developers to operations.
• Break Silos: Encourage collaboration between development, security, and operations teams.
• Continuous Learning: Foster an environment where teams stay informed about the latest security threats and solutions.

2. Early and Continuous Security Integration

• Shift Left: Incorporate security early in the development process to produce higher quality software, reduce costs, and expedite delivery.
• Automate Security Scans: Utilize tools for automatic code vulnerability scanning immediately after commits. Implement both Static and Dynamic scanning for comprehensive assessment.
• Threat Modeling: Identify potential threats and devise countermeasures during the design phase.

3. Secure Code Practices

• Code Reviews: Conduct regular code reviews to identify and rectify security flaws.
• Use Trusted Libraries: Verify third-party libraries and components for known vulnerabilities. Implement Software Composition Analysis for open-source library scanning and tracking.
• Static Application Security Testing (SAST): Employ SAST tools for source code, bytecode, or binary code analysis.
• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST): Implement DAST tools to analyze your applications’ business logic during runtime.

4. Secure Infrastructure

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Utilize IaC tools for consistent and secure infrastructure deployment.
• Patch Management: Regularly update and patch systems to safeguard against known vulnerabilities.
• Harden Systems: Reduce attack surfaces by eliminating unnecessary services, users, and network protocols.

5. Continuous Monitoring and Response

• Risk Assessment: Utilize Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) with automated penetration testing for comprehensive system vulnerability insights.
• Incident Response Plan: Develop and maintain a robust plan to manage security breaches effectively.
• Feedback Loop: Incorporate lessons learned from security incidents into the development process.

6. Identity and Access Management

• Principle of Least Privilege: Assign only essential access rights to users and services.
• Multi-factor Authentication (MFA): Implement MFA wherever feasible.
• Regular Audits: Conduct periodic reviews and audits of user access rights and privileges.

7. Secure Deployment Practices

• Automated Deployment: Use automated deployment tools for consistent and reproducible deployments.
• Environment Isolation: Segregate development, testing, and production environments.
• Rollback Strategy: Establish a mechanism to revert deployments promptly in the event of security incidents.

8. Training and Awareness

• Regular Training: Provide ongoing security training for all team members.
• Stay Updated: Stay informed about the latest security threats, trends, and solutions.
• Simulated Attacks: Conduct simulated attacks, such as red teaming, to evaluate the organization’s defense mechanisms.

9. Vendor Management

• Vet Vendors: Ensure third-party vendors adhere to security best practices.
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Include security considerations and requirements in SLAs.
• Continuous Monitoring: Monitor third-party services for potential security vulnerabilities.

10. Feedback and Iteration

• Feedback Channels: Establish avenues for team members to provide feedback on security processes and tools.
• Iterate: Continually refine and enhance the DevSecOps process based on feedback and evolving requirements.

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Conclusion

To sum up, we have some of the essential DevSecOps Security Checklist. successfully implementing DevSecOps is more than just using tools or following a checklist. It’s about making security a part of your company’s culture and daily operations. This means everyone should care about security, and processes should include security from the start.

While the DevSecOps best practices checklist is a good starting point, it’s important to adjust it to fit your company’s unique needs. Getting help from an outsourced DevSecOps team like Bobcares can provide top-notch security expertise.

This collaboration can help make your software stronger, reduce vulnerabilities, and improve the overall development process, benefiting both your company and its users.