With the rapid spread of COVID-19, many organizations were forced to transition their employees to remote work. This shines a bright light on the rise in internet usage from home and concerns around the security, or lack thereof, of many apps that are used for remote working. Organizations with remote workers are putting additional pressure on these apps to improve their security so that their applications can be used with peace of mind that their company's security isn't at risk.
Many organizations have previously implemented Devops to foster better collaboration, faster development, and increased productivity. In turn, the ability to offer faster delivery to market enhanced client satisfaction. However, with the increase of cybersecurity threats, organizations are becoming increasingly diligent in prioritizing security by implementing Devsecops, which stands for development, security, and operations.
"Last crisis spawned DevOps - to increase efficiency, automation, and agility. During COVID-19 there's an acceleration towards the adoption of Devsecops for security automation and compliance in new products, tech gadgets, and applications - to bridge cybersecurity gaps" explains Sonia Randhawa, San Francisco based senior technology executive who has introduced Devsecops into her engineering organization's product development strategy.
What's wrong with DevOps?
The traditional approach to security among organizations that develop products or apps is to perform security checks at the end of product development. However, this approach does not prioritize security, and wrongly suggests that security is less important than the other stages. In addition, by the time engineers performed their security checks the products would have been almost fully developed which means if there was a security threat, there is a lot of work to fix it. This traditional method using Devops without prioritizing security not only puts the product at risk but also lacks efficiency. In many cases, organizations resort to patching in order to attempt to fix any security risks rather than taking the time and money to go back in and strengthen security in the original coding.
The perfect time to implement Devsecops
In order to prioritize security and compliance during this time when security risks are higher, more organizations are moving toward Devsecops to cover all of their bases in a way that puts security into the development and automation of applications. However, this isn't an easy task and has to be carefully integrated to avoid gaps in security and delaying operations.
While some organizations are being forced into focusing on security due to the many risk factors of having people work from home, many companies are also currently restructuring their processes and operations due to the recent change in their working situations. This presents a unique opportunity to incorporate Devsecops when creating a new pipeline. Since many companies are already having to come up with new solutions to get their work done, it's an ideal time to focus on the incorporation of security automation. Adding security automation to the mix will allow companies to more efficiently be compliant with privacy and security and improve overall cybersecurity by baking it directly into tech development.
The pandemic has forced much of the world into going even more digital than we ever have in the past. Because of this, it's time to put the focus on incorporating security into the new changes that are being made within companies, existing products, and new products that are currently being developed.
