A Guide to DevSecOps Tools and Continuous Security For an Enterprise

A Guide to DevSecOps Tools and Continuous Security For an Enterprise

A Guide to DevSecOps Tools and Continuous Security For an Enterprise

DevSecOps is a practice of integrating security with DevOps at each step of SDLC. The IT industry is growing rapidly, and so is the need to integrate security with project development. DevSecOps tools are gaining importance as agile software delivery is an important aspect of continuous security for an enterprise. Modern applications have assembled codes embedded in them, and developers download them from vulnerable open-source components. With DevSecOps, organizations make every person responsible for implementing security measures before executing a project application for use in an enterprise.

DevSecOps ensures delivering a secure software project using continuous delivery architectures. The strategy is majorly based on learning and experiences and is not just meant to add a security feature to the running applications. DevSecOps tools are designed to build a security and compliance feature into the software so that security is ensured at every stage of software development. DevSecOps integrates security audits and security testing into DevOps workflows so that security becomes a part of the developing project rather than applied to a final product.


To implement continuous security for an enterprise, DevSecOps teams should:


Top DevSecOps tools
Even though transitioning from a traditional DevOps model to DevSecOps is a risk, many enterprises are moving towards it as security has become a prime concern for them and they are following all possible measures to integrate security into the existing DevOps pipeline. It is also important to ensure that automating security with DevSecOps tools and performing critical security checks do not delay business time. DevSecOps build tools to perform automated security analysis against the build output artifact. Some of the best security practices in an enterprise comprise software component analysis, SAST(Static Application Security Testing), and unit tests. These automated tools can be aggregated with the existing CI/CD pipeline to ensure secure deployment to the project. Some of the famous DevSecOps tools that are most commonly used by organizations are


Monitoring Tools
Monitoring tools help organizations keep checking their software applications, deployments, infrastructure, and user data, so that information can be extracted quickly whenever required. These tools comprise an auto-scaling feature that enables organizations to scale up their applications as and when required. Some of the monitoring tools commonly used are ExtraHop, SignalFx, Datadog, Tripwire, Sqreen


Log Management Tools
Log Management tools analyze and manage large volumes of data stored in organizations by manually identifying the vulnerable spots or using automated tools. Some log management tools that manage, monitor, and send alerts are Splunk, Scalyr, SumoLogic, and Nagios Fusion/Nagios Log Server.


Alerting Tools
DevSecOps alerting tools help organizations by sending active and passive alerts to the concerned person if any suspicious activity is observed by monitoring tools. Monitoring tools are of no use if alerts are not generated. It also builds active communication and response internally in a team. Some of the widely used alerting tools are VictorOps, OpsGenie, PagerDuty, Alerta, Contrast Protect, Contrast Assess, ElastAlert, Immuno


Threat Modeling Tools
Threat modeling tools are used to identify threats, vulnerabilities, and attacks that can affect the performance of an application. Some of the important threat modeling tools are IriusRisk which is an open-source model that manages security threats during the entire project development lifecycle by applying security standards like OWASP ASVS. ThreatModeler is another automated tool used to enhance the organization’s security by helping the team to make informed decisions. The last is the OWASP threat Dragon tool which is again an open-source application that records threats, makes threat model diagrams, and provides solutions.

Dashboard Tools
DevSecOps dashboard ensures application monitoring statistics and security data are aggregated and visible to all the members of the team. Grafana and kibana are two of the most popular and widely used DevSecOps Dashboard tools. Both of them are open-source applications. Grafana is an interactive web-based visualization tool, whereas kibana is a data visualization tool. It is a part of the ELK(ElasticSearch, Logstash, Kibana) and EFK(ElasticSearch, Fluentd, and Kibana) stack.

Testing Tools
Security testing tools form an integral part of DevSecOps as these tools help in identifying the threats and vulnerabilities as soon as they enter the application, thus reducing the risks and allowing the team to take remedial measures timely. Some of the well-known testing tools include BDD-Security, which is Behaviour Driven Development that generates self-verified specifications. Checkmarx CxSAST is a static code analysis tool that detects vulnerabilities in custom-generated codes and open-source components. Chef InSpec tests and audits applications and infrastructure by comparing the actual and desired system states. Fortify is an integrated tool that provides security by converting the source code into an optimized security analysis pattern.

Automated Testing Tools
DevSecOps automated testing tools scan and test the applications for vulnerabilities in source code and generate a list of possible solutions to rectify the issues. Major tools used for automated testing are [Code]AI, a coding application that supports 10 programming languages and can easily be integrated with platforms like GitLab, GitHub, etc. Parasoft Tool Suite is a set of automated testing tools that can perform security testing, load testing, and functional and performance testing. Another automated testing tool is Veracode which is a cloud-based testing tool that can perform static and dynamic code analysis, behavioral analysis, and software composition analysis.

Additional DevOps Security Tools
Apart from the above-mentioned DevSecOps tools that are being widely used by organizations to maintain security and integrity in software project development, includes

What is AWS and why is it useful for businesses?

Introduction to AWS

Amazon Web Services is an effective online platform that offers cost-effective & scalable cloud computing solutions. AWS works in many different configurations based on the users’ requirements & offers more than 200 fully featured services from global data centers.
Amazon has a wide range of services for cloud applications. Some of those offerings include Storage, Database, Networking, Compute services, delivery of content, Developer tools, Security tools, & Management tools.

Benefits of Using AWS for Businesses

• AWS is a very cost-effective & scalable service that provides an operating system, a user-friendly programming model, & database architecture that has been already known to most employers.
• Customers can easily secure their backup data & operations in AWS. They don’t need to pay extra money to run data servers by AWS.
• It provides a wide range of customized services such as hybrid computing, billing, and management for the centralized sector, and fast installation or removal of the clients’ applications from any geographical location with a few clicks.

Examples of AWS Use Cases in Business

• Cloud storage and computing
If someone wants to deploy the application workloads globally in a single click & build particular applications closer to the end users with single-digit millisecond latency, then the AWS platform can offer the cloud infrastructure as per the requirements.

• Website hosting and development
AWS offers cloud web hosting solutions that provide all types of SMEs with low-cost ways to successfully deliver their websites as well as web applications. If you’re looking for a marketing, rich-media, or e-commerce website, AWS can offer various website hosting options.

• Data analytics and machine learning
AWS provides supporting cloud infrastructure, & machine learning services, putting machine learning in the hands of every developer, expert practitioner, & data scientist. Besides, it offers analytics services that can fulfill all clients’ data analytics needs & enable companies to reinvent their business with data.

• Disaster recovery and backup solutions
The Clients can easily deploy & build a scalable & cost-effective backup infrastructure with AWS services that can protect all types of data such as files, & objects. Along with it, CloudEndure Disaster Recovery is also available on this AWS Marketplace as a SaaS Subscription & a SaaS Contract.


Conclusion

The value of AWS in business:
In this digital era, global organizations can use AWS to plan for services & solutions that fulfill their needs for years to come. AWS platform offers a broad set of analytics, application, global computing, storage, database, and deployment services which have been designed to lower IT costs, move faster, and scale applications. All these services create greater value for your customers.
Flexibility is considered a core tenet of the AWS platform, & it gives customers the ability to easily adopt cloud technology with limited upfront investment. It also allows all the customers to leapfrog to the latest modern technological solutions without any large capital investments.


Future possibilities for AWS and its role in the business world:
In ten years it can be assumed that AWS will leave Amazon’s e-commerce business far behind and it will be much, much larger. In this digital era, moving to the cloud is not only saving costs on IT but also creating an environment that lets the business thrive. When clients will utilize the AWS cloud, they can easily clear away each obstacle to innovation that is related to high costs & long-term contracts. Besides, the clients can take tremendous benefits from a wide range of unique services, a broad partner ecosystem, and continued innovation to grow their business.