Building the Blueprint for a DevSecOps Future

In the battle for innovation supremacy, businesses across industries are increasingly engaged in a high-stakes digital arms race – with developer operations (DevOps) on the front line. Just consider a recent report by McKinsey, which found that nearly 70% of the top-performing companies are using their software to differentiate themselves from their competitors, with one-third of those top performers monetizing their software directly.

Amid this relentless pursuit for the next competitive advantage, security operations (SecOps) teams are struggling to keep up. With DevOps teams pushing out an average of three new software updates every hour, SecOps teams are increasingly finding themselves going up the river without a paddle when it comes to data protection and compliance, lacking adequate resources needed to manage the ever-growing volume, variety, and velocity of data available. As the rate of data breaches continues to rise, this certainly doesn’t set up companies to successfully deploy zero-trust security strategies, which are viewed across industries as the standard for digital transformation.

Now more than ever, we’re witnessing an ever-widening gap between DevOps and their SecOps counterparts, whereby developers push for agile applications while SecOps scramble to serve as a necessary stopgap to compliance. While AI and ML hold great promise for both DevOps and SecOps, they still have a long way to go to keep innovative software and a company’s most prized possession - its data - completely safe. The time is now to create a "DevSecOps" culture that unifies and simplifies DevOps and SecOps collaboration to deliver high-quality products and services, with data security at its bedrock.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Integrate

Companies looking to build a strong DevSecOps culture must take a collaborative, solutions-based approach to departmental integration, starting by setting clear guidance for how both groups will interact with one another. For DevOps, this might mean establishing junctures where developers are prompted to loop in their SecOps counterparts for compliance clearance, or (better yet) creating an agile development process where these secure data flows are inherently woven in. For security teams, this might mean regularly engaging with DevOps to build stronger connections at every stage of the app development lifecycle. By reimagining existing processes with collaboration and automation in mind, business leaders can drive innovation without sacrificing scalability and security in the process.

Step 2: Incentivize

To successfully embrace a DevSecOps culture, business leaders must then consider ways to incentivize both organizations throughout the development lifecycle. At the outset, companies will need developer champions, who are incentivized to promote and drive participation in the DevSecOps community. These developer champions can pay dividends in onboarding and retaining otherwise reticent participants to new ways of working, highlighting the benefits of these new programs from those with first-hand experience.

While these incentives can take on new forms and don’t need to reinvent the wheel either. For example, companies can consider implementing rewards programs that recognize individuals who are embracing and demonstrating DevSecOps culture. Alternatively, business leaders can embed DevSecOps objectives into existing incentive plans, making cross-collaboration a foundational pillar of performance. By incentivizing cooperation, companies can ensure that both developers and SecOps professionals feel encouraged to upskill themselves in data protection and compliance – all while ensuring security KPIs and quality metrics drive toward the same goals.

Step 3: Inspire

Of course, putting the operational shifts into practice is only one-half the battle. Business leaders looking to build successful DevSecOps cultures need to inspire security and development teams to embrace these new ways of working together. This may require implementing creative, community-driven programs that bring these two groups together and facilitate collaboration, such as online community forums that remove the organizational borders and make it easy to share tools and best practices, host company-all hands, regular networking events or open office hours. What’s more, on an annual or semi-annual basis, companies should institute regular audits to get a sense of what’s working, and what isn’t – making any adjustments necessary to ensure that disconnects are addressed swiftly. Truthfully, trust is the only foundation upon which agility can thrive. By taking the time to build strong relationships between DevOps and SecOps departments, companies can promote cross-collaboration and make both parties feel comfortable coming to one another before, not after, a problem occurs.

Final thoughts

As companies continue accelerating their digital transformations at a breakneck pace, the gaps between SecOps and DevOps will only become more apparent. Now is the time to break down institutional barriers between these two historically disconnected organizations – and make it easy for them to do so. Like any new way of working, adopting DevSecOps requires a new mindset that can only be embraced when people believe they can operate and contribute value ─ with the least amount of friction getting in their path to success. By following the three steps I’ve outlined above, business leaders can build an easy path to their DevSecOps future.