Role of increased speed in developing software
The Development and Operations (DevOps) is a framework that bridges the gaps between development and operation teams. However, these teams are under pressure to develop and deploy applications at the earliest possible time. They are racing against time and competition. The root causes for security breaches might vary, but following are some of the activities that hint at the risks of security breaches:
- Absence of a strict security review process.
Although organizations are focusing on speeding up the development process by using automation and other effective practices, it must also equally focus on building, continuously reviewing, and monitoring its security processes and practices. - Absence of reviewing frequent changes made to applications.
The SANS Institute had conducted a survey on the state of application security, which indicates that increasing the speed in software development presents new risks. Changes to applications are made at a rapid rate and so understanding the change and reviewing them effectively becomes cumbersome and poses a security risk. Due to time constraints, the testing team might not be able to perform elaborate testing and this eventually poses a risk. - Absence of integrated code review into builds
When security and the software development time are equally important, it becomes necessary to introduce new methodologies such as integrating security with code review tools so that security breaches are caught in the code level. - Usage of open source software without analyzing vulnerabilities
Organizations use open source software to double-up speed in development and also to cut costs. However, they do not spend time in understanding the components and analyzing the associated vulnerabilities. So, as a best practice, organizations must analyze the software components and its security risks thoroughly. Integrating automated software component analysis (SCA) into automated builds might be an effective option.
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