One of the main struggles of organizations is streamlining processes through cost-effective means. This problem is adequately addressed by DevOps, a set of processes that aims to unify development and operations. It allows organizations to deliver applications with less downtime.

More recently, however, DevSecOps is gaining traction among organizations as they deal with the growing threat of cyberattacks. Security professionals are now shifting their daily operational responsibility toward remediating vulnerabilities in the software that development teams produce. A recent survey showed that many respondents include DevOps as one of the three elements that make up DevSecOps.

But how different are these two concepts? How can DevOps and DevSecOps work together for faster development and secure operations? And what kind of threat data and tools could facilitate collaboration and make for better detection and protection against, say, hacked websites or domain spoofing?

DevOps: Enhancing Development and Operations

DevOps brings together two of an organization’s most valuable teams to work together to create a robust and streamlined framework. It is a step away from a segmented approach without coordination. Modern DevOps function through continuous integration (CI)/continuous delivery (CD) pipeline implementation to effectively bridge the gap by automating the application building, testing, and deployment process.

Most forward-thinking organizations are implementing DevOps to deliver highly reliable services and software with less downtime and few calls for revision. Most of these challenges stem from the continuous testing and automation done during DevOps implementation. Testing starts from coding and proceeds until product release, simultaneously with automation.

DevSecOps: Securing Development and Operational Processes

DevSecOps, on the other hand, factors in the concept of infosec into the current DevOps framework. Its core function is to secure each and every part of the process by making security decision making at par in terms of scale and speed with development and operations decision making.

In essence, DevSecOps is viewed as a logical next step for DevOps. It integrates critical security policies that include compliance monitoring, code analysis, and threat investigation seamlessly into the DevOps workflow. Through this, users are assured that native security is integrated into applications rather than added later when threats are detected.

What’s the Difference?

DevOps thrives on speed. The faster DevOps engineers can deliver products and services, the better—the main reason for shifting processes left by focusing on automation, which helps them test products and make revisions quickly.

When it comes to DevSecOps, speed is often synonymous with risks and threats. As such, DevSecOps practitioners thrive on reducing corporate risks. This difference often results in problems, as both teams cannot achieve their goals without compromising the other’s process.

There is also a notable divide in responsibilities, which stems from their differences in skillsets.

How Can DevOps and DevSecOps Teams Work Together?

Software developers do not see the need to address incidents in real-time as infosec professionals do. Often, developers have no idea how threat feeds and APIs are relevant to their company’s operations.

Developers must be made to understand that amid the ever-growing threat landscape, their insufficiently secured operations may suffer when malicious individuals target their organization. In a nutshell, by not building with security in mind, DevOps goals cannot be realized.

DevOps workflows, however, need not suffer a slowdown by working with the DevSecOps team. Instead of working against each other, they can work together by using readily available threat intelligence. Instead of waiting for DevSecOps results gleaned from manual threat detection and attack vector identification, they can integrate reliable and updated threat data feeds, tools, and APIs into the applications that the DevOps team produces, thereby achieving both their goals without much downtime.

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It may not be long before security is merged with DevOps. An opportunity still exists for these concepts to come together seamlessly. Organizations that want to prevent clashes between developers and security experts should consider integrating readily available threat intelligence into their operations programs. Only in this manner can they be assured of faster product delivery, seamless operation, and effective cybersecurity.