The DevOps methodology allows for highly focused sprints to create new components and advance the capabilities of an application. To accelerate the speed with which developers can make progress on an application, teams are increasingly using CI/CD (Continuous Integration/ Continuous Deployment) processes.
However, to ensure the utmost level of security for an application, businesses should endeavor to use application security tools throughout the CI/CD pipeline. By integrating security into this developer strategy, companies can deploy applications with a higher degree of confidence, as there are several tools that actively search for and eliminate vulnerabilities throughout the development cycle.
In this article, we’ll explore the security risks in CI/CD environments and detail how businesses should integrate automated security tools to significantly reduce these risks.
What Are the Security Risks in a CI/CD Environments?
CI/CD pipelines are a phenomenal method of saving time, resources, and costs during a development project. With this strategy, developers can rapidly create code and push it into production.
Yet, with this enhanced speed comes a range of potential security risks if businesses do not prepare for and mitigate them.
Here are some of the potential security risks in CI/CD pipelines:
- Component Attacks:Hackers may focus on individual components that a company is likely to use in a development cycle, introducing malware into a library or other common component to gain access to an application. Developers need to be vigilant to request SBOMBs from all component suppliers and trace potential vulnerabilities.
- CI/CD Misconfiguration:If a developer accidentally introduces a misconfiguration into the code they use and then pushes it to the application, hackers will be able to exploit this mistake.
- Inadequate Access Control:Developers’ accounts have direct access to the CI/CD pipeline, giving a hacker with access to their accounts the ability to introduce code directly into the application and push it. Businesses must ensure they have effective access controls to restrict this possibility.
- Data Exposed in Commits: One of the most common CI/CD risks is when a developer accidentally commits code that includes something essential to the backend and secure data in an application. For example, if they publish access to a GitHub repository where private credentials or account details are stored.
CI/CD pipelines are fantastic for development speed and cost, but only when businesses understand the importance of AppSec in these environments.
The Importance of Automated AppSec in DevOps
By incorporating automated AppSec steps and tools into DevOps environments, businesses are able to reduce the likelihood of one of the errors above making its way into a live product. Automatic security tools work throughout the CI/CD pipeline to act as a final method of catching any of these errors before they are committed by developers.
While the majority of developers will have a comprehensive understanding of the steps they should follow to ensure full application security, mistakes can always happen. Automated security doesn’t mean your developers will stop focusing on security. On the contrary, it provides an additional level of support that ensures that even if they do make errors, they do not convert into major security issues.
Automated AppSec in DevOps environments provides the following benefits to businesses:
- Early Detection: When a security incident occurs, the first response is typically the security engineer who identifies the repercussions of the exploit. With automated AppSec, tools will constantly scan for potential malicious threats, helping to reduce the time taken to pinpoint an attack and respond to it.
- Continuous Monitoring and Protection: Automated security tools provide a method of continuously monitoring application security and identifying any potential vulnerabilities before they are found by hackers. Continuous monitoring tools will help to monitor the application throughout the developer cycle, keeping the entire lifecycle as safe as possible.
- Enhanced Developer Productivity:When developers know that there are protocols in place to enhance the security of an application, they’re able to focus more directly on coding and creating new components. While they will pay attention to security, they won’t have as much panic about creating vulnerabilities.
Businesses can integrate numerous security tools directly into the CI/CD pipeline to enhance its overall security. For example, Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools will help to detect code vulnerabilities, while Software Composition Analysis (SCA) will help generate a list of active components, helping to ensure that a component is secure before incorporating it into the application.
When working with numerous security tools, businesses are able to better monitor the CI/CD developer pipeline and rapidly identify any vulnerabilities when they occur.
Protecting Applications in Production
Integrating application security tools into the CI/CD pipeline is an effective way of enhancing overall application security, as there is a lower chance of introducing a compromised component to the project. Businesses can extend this level of defense by incorporating Runtime Application Self Protection (RASP) into their live applications.
RASP provides a final level of protection to deployed apps, monitoring the runtime environment to detect any unusual behavior or inconsistencies from the application itself. By understanding typical application behavior, RASP will help to protect the application from any vulnerabilities or exploits from the moment they occur, creating a high level of security.
With RASP protecting your live applications and a host of security tools throughout the CI/CD pipeline, your applications can count on a comprehensive level of protection, minimizing vulnerabilities and reducing security incidents for your business.