DevOps vs. DevSecOps: Understanding the Difference for Enhanced Security

Our 2024 State of Software Quality research confirms what many organizations already know: software security is paramount. The research shows that 84% of development teams conduct regular security audits, and 88% have a dedicated security team or person. 

While DevOps has revolutionized software delivery speed and efficiency, speed without security is a recipe for disaster. The growing number of cyberattacks has necessitated a refined DevOps approach with a strong focus on security. This shift has given rise to DevSecOps, a framework that integrates security practices into DevOps to ensure that security is a fundamental part of the development process.

Understanding the fundamentals of DevOps vs. DevSecOps will empower you to decide which approach best aligns with your organization's operational goals and security requirements. In this article, we will cover the fundamentals of DevOps vs. DevSecOps, highlight their key differences, and provide the best strategies for integrating security into your development process. 

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a methodology that combines development (Dev) and operations (Ops) to streamline and enhance the software development lifecycle. It unites people, processes, and technology to create a culture of teamwork and continuous improvement, with the goal of delivering high-quality software quickly and efficiently. 

Benefits of DevOps

A DevOps approach can significantly improve the reliability and scalability of your software infrastructure. Here are some specific benefits of adopting a DevOps approach.

1. Faster Time-to-Market: DevOps enables faster and more frequent software releases. By automating processes and fostering collaboration between development and operations teams, organizations can deploy new features and updates rapidly, reducing time to market and staying ahead of competitors.
   
   
2. Improved Software Quality: Continuous integration, automated testing, and continuous deployment practices catch software issues early, leading to higher-quality software and more reliable releases.
   
   
3. Enhanced Collaboration and Communication: DevOps fosters cross-functional collaboration between development and operations teams, leading to better understanding, knowledge sharing, and alignment.
   
   
4. Improved Scalability and Efficiency: Automated processes and infrastructure management enable organizations to scale their applications and infrastructure more efficiently, reducing manual effort and minimizing human errors.

What is DevSecOps?

DevSecOps extends the core principles of DevOps by incorporating security practices throughout the software development and delivery lifecycle. This approach resolves the inherent tension between DevOps teams, which aim to release software rapidly, and security teams, which prioritize minimizing risk. By embedding security into every phase of the DevOps process, DevSecOps ensures that organizations can achieve agile speed in their software releases without compromising security.

Benefits of DevSecOps

While DevOps focuses on streamlining software delivery through automation and collaboration, DevSecOps takes this further by integrating security practices and tools into the entire process. Here are some of the benefits of DevSecOps vs. DevOps.

1. Enhanced Security: DevSecOps emphasizes the need for security earlier in the development cycle. When security is shifted left, vulnerabilities are detected and resolved promptly, minimizing the risk of security breaches in production.
   
   
2. Enhanced Collaboration: DevSecOps fosters a culture of shared responsibility for security. It improves collaboration between development, operations, and security teams, leading to better communication and faster resolution of security issues.
   
   
3. Improved Compliance: DevSecOps ensures that security and compliance checks are embedded in the development process, helping organizations meet regulatory requirements and avoid compliance-related penalties.

DevOps vs. DevSecOps: What Are the Similarities?

DevOps and DevSecOps share several core similarities that aim to enhance how software is developed, deployed, and maintained.

1. People and Culture

Both DevOps and DevSecOps strongly emphasize fostering a collaborative culture. This cultural shift is essential to breaking down team barriers, leading to improved communication, shared goals, and joint accountability for the software delivery process.

2. Processes

DevOps and DevSecOps integrate essential processes into the software delivery pipeline to streamline workflows and enhance the overall efficiency and security of the development lifecycle.

Typical DevOps processes include: 

• Continuous Integration (CI): Developers frequently merge code changes into a central repository, triggering automated builds and tests.
  
  
• Continuous Delivery (CD): Code changes that pass the automated tests are automatically deployed to staging or production environments.
  
  
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Infrastructure such as databases and servers are provisioned and managed using code, enabling consistent and repeatable deployments across different environments.

DevSecOps processes: 

• Shift-Left Security: This approach ensures that vulnerabilities are identified and addressed before they enter production.
  
  
• Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD): Incorporates security checks into CI/CD pipelines to ensure security is continuously assessed with each code change.
  
  
• Automated Security Testing: Automated security testing tools such as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), and Software Composition Analysis (SCA) are used to identify vulnerabilities in code and dependencies early and often.
  
  
• Incident Response and Recovery: Includes well-defined incident response and recovery processes and training teams to quickly detect, respond to, and recover from security incidents, minimizing the impact on the organization.

3. Technology and Automation

DevOps and DevSecOps rely heavily on automation and tools to orchestrate the various processes involved in the software delivery pipeline.

Some commonly used DevOps tools include: 

• Version control systems (GitHub, GitLab)
  
  
• CI/CD tools (Jenkins, Travis CI, CircleCI)
  
  
• Configuration management tools (Ansible, Puppet, Chef)
  
  
• Containerization platforms (Docker, Kubernetes)
  
  
• Monitoring and logging tools (Prometheus, Grafana)

DevSecOps uses additional tools such as:

• Automated security tools (Codacy, OWASP Dependency Check)
  
  
• Container and orchestration security tools (Docker Bench for Security, Kubernetes Security Benchmarks)
  
  
• Security monitoring and logging tools (ELK Stack, Splunk)

Key Differences Between DevOps vs. DevSecOps

The primary difference between DevOps and DevSecOps is their emphasis on application security practices. While DevOps focuses on streamlining software development and delivery processes, DevSecOps prioritizes integrating security measures throughout the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC). Here’s a breakdown of their differences.

5 Strategies for Transitioning From DevOps to DevSecOps

Adopting a DevSecOps approach is crucial for delivering secure software faster. Here’s how you can make the switch from DevOps to DevSecOps.

1. Shift Security Left

Conduct threat modeling workshops early in the design phase to identify potential security risks associated with your application. This process should include identifying your application's critical assets and sensitive data that need protection. You should develop and document strategies and controls to protect this data, such as implementing strong encryption and access control mechanisms.

2. Implement Automated Security Testing

Integrate SAST tools like Codacy into your CI/CD pipeline to automatically scan for vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and hard-coded credentials during each build. Complement this with DAST tools like ZAP to identify runtime vulnerabilities.

3. Make Security Everyone’s Responsibility 

Conduct regular training sessions and security workshops to educate all team members about secure coding practices and common vulnerabilities.

4. Implement Comprehensive Security Monitoring and Incident Response

Implement comprehensive security monitoring and incident response processes to maintain visibility into security events and vulnerabilities in production environments. Use tools like Splunk or ELK Stack for real-time security monitoring and log analysis. 

5. Establish Security Policies and Ensure Compliance

Use policy-as-code tools like Open Policy Agent (OPA) to enforce security policies automatically within your CI/CD pipeline. Regularly audit your development processes and artifacts to ensure compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements. 

Improve Your DevOps and DevSecOps With Codacy

Regardless of the name—DevOps, DevSecOps, or SecDevOps—security cannot be an afterthought. Cyberattacks are occurring at an alarming rate, and protecting against them should start as early as possible in the software development lifecycle.

A tool like Codacy can help your organization shift security left by identifying and mitigating code errors and vulnerabilities early in the development lifecycle. With advanced static code analysis capabilities integrated into your CI/CD pipeline, Codacy can detect and prevent security vulnerabilities, like SQL injection, XSS, hard-coded credentials, and other OWASP Top 10 issues before they make it into production.

See how Codacy can help you prioritize security while maintaining the speed and agility of your DevOps and DevSecOps processes. Sign up for a free 14-day trial today.