AppSec Decoded: How to Implement Security in DevOps

In the realm of software development, the requirement for speedy delivery often conflicts with software security. The technology of DevSecOps bridges this gap by using security practices in DevOps techniques.

With the majority of data being made and processed over the internet, it's important to safeguard your digital infrastructure from dangerous cyber attacks. For that, modern Application Security (AppSec) is used. In this guide, we will learn comprehensively about AppSec with DevOps and more.

So, let’s dive in and get more details about it!

Why is AppSec important?

AppSec or application security is an important aspect of framing your project with digital security. It includes implementing techniques to secure your software apps from internal and external vulnerabilities.

Hackers often target apps that provide opportunities for exploiting vulnerabilities in the code. Accessing important data by carrying out disruptive attacks can break the entire system.

To avoid such consequences, there are different measures that organizations can take to ensure their apps' security. One of the critical aspects of conducting regular security audits is to look for weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the codebase.

It can be done using automated code reviews or manual code reviews. Moreover, it is also necessary to keep your software updated with the latest version to stay away from security patches.

Now, let’s understand AppSec used with DevOps to improve the security of your business software.

DevSecOps (DevOps + AppSec)

With the constantly evolving industry, DevOps technology is now integrated with AppSec, and combining them gives DevSecOps. This technology helps developers ensure that the software produced is of the highest quality and has robust security.

With DevOps, the efficiency of the entire system increases. However, security being a concern, adding privacy checks in the development pipeline was quintessential. Here enter AppSec.

With AppSec the process of DevOps is broken into smaller and faster pieces. As the requirement for faster feedback is increasing, the security team has to be present in every phase right from the start to the end of SDLC. So, DevSecOps is a new way to maintain this process.

Finally, DevOps and relevant technologies need a culture of quick learning, risk-taking, and experimenting, so the security team will have to keep on learning new things every moment.

Now, let’s have a look at AppSec Decoded- How to implement security in DevOps.

DevSecOps- How to implement it?

Here are the five ways to implement the DevSecOps pipeline for making qualitative and secure software:

#1 Regularize performing Unit tests

In the first practice, you can weaponize your unit tests, and reuse them regularly. Often unit tests generally help in verifying that your code is doing its task. For example, if you are looking at the records in the database, and want to search for records then unit tests will ensure that the task is done perfectly. It is a positive use case.

Let’s see what is a negative use case then. What attacks are possible while looking for records in the database, will your app be able to handle failures gracefully? Some standard payloads, a double quote, etc. If an app throws an unhandled error or reacts unexpectedly, it will fail the unit test and collapse the build.

For instance, if using a single quote makes a difference in your app than using two single quotes, it means that you are in direct communication with the DB and this can be dangerous because hackers get a patch from where they can directly access the data.

#2 Make sure that third-party integrations are secure

In the 2nd phase, it is essential to verify the security of your third-party integrations like libraries, app dependencies, tools, or any other platforms that are a part of your app that were made by someone not belonging to your development team.

Such outer components generally make up approximately 50% of the codebase in all projects, and 26% of them contain visible vulnerabilities. When you add dependencies to your project, you are accepting the risk of every vulnerability they may include.

The issue of using third-party components with visible errors has been on the OWASP’s top ten for years. However, MITRE made a CVE (Common Vulnerability Enumerator), and the USA created the NVD- National Vulnerability Database, which contains a whole list of publicly disclosed bugs and vulnerabilities. You can get help from these directories and search quickly if there’s any vulnerability in your project development pipeline.

By using various paid & free integrations available that perform the function of differentiated usability and quality, you can keep your app secure.

If needed, use two tools simultaneously in case any error or something unexpected occurs, as each tool will use varied tactics to ensure the components are secure to use and integrate into your project.

Despite the different types of apps you create, you should check your third-party integrations for security vulnerabilities; this check is critical and shouldn’t be missed; it will be a huge win for your team.

#3 Auditing the state of your system/s and their settings

In the 3rd practice, you have to verify your server’s state or container’s config and patches, encryption status such as algorithms, key length, expiration, health, and other settings and security headers like browser/client-side hardening.

Even though your system admins believe that they have integrated security or other settings, this tactic is to verify that the security policy is similar to your app’s reality.

Certain tools can do all three steps in one go, and certain tools are made to work on only one or two of these steps. No app with security misconfiguration, poor encryption, or missing patches should be published. Nor should any user be diverted to a site that doesn't have security features to keep their data safe and does not allow unauthorized access.

#4 Adding DAST - Dynamic App Security Testing in your pipeline

In this step, you have to add dynamic application security testing into the pipeline by publishing scripted attacks and searching for bugs with automated fashioned-malformed data injection on your app while it's running on a server in your development pipeline.

Unlike the previous steps, DAST isn’t a speedy process. Hence, either one or both options given below should be used:

Execution on a single baseline scan

[and/or]

Execution in a parallel security pipeline. It doesn’t publish the final product and has a huge amount of finish time.

In the first option, the scanning could be limited, i.e., only doing passive analysis and missing headers & different visible issues along with a small group of dynamic test cases, only looking for offenders.

In the second option, the parallel security pipeline has an end or it circles back, but it never destroys the build and runs only to perform in-depth and long security verifications. It delivers the outcomes to the app security team for future testing.

Programmers might miss the results of the parallel security pipeline. So, both of the points mentioned above are critical to implementing to make your app secure and minimize the chances of false positives.

#5 Adding SAST- Static App Security Testing in your Pipeline

In this final methodology, you need to use static application security testing of your codebase in the pipeline. It is also called static code analysis.

Most often the SAST tools aren’t just slow, and running for hours or even days, but they are also expensive. Moreover, they also give over 90% of a false positive rate. It might force you to think then why use SAST?

If you only look for a vulnerability like XSS or injection in every code sprint and then tune the whole tool, it helps you to wipe out a whole bug from your app(s).

Making your team understand SAST before applying it in the project can lead to speedier solving and fewer errors. Also, performing this activity earlier in the development pipeline will ensure good results in the end. It could also be used to run to complete the 2nd option- the parallel security pipeline.

Final Verdict

We hope that the above steps on how to implement AppSec in DevOps are clear to understand and useful. In case of relevant doubts or questions, drop a comment below. Our team will connect with you soon. For more updates, bookmark us. Happy learning and happy reading!