DevSecOps stands for Development, Security, and Operations. It’s an approach that integrates security practices within the DevOps process, rather than treating security as a separate, final gate. The guiding principle of DevSecOps is to “shift left,” which means moving security checks to the earliest possible stages of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

So, what does this look like in practice? DevSecOps extends DevOps by integrating security tools and processes into the traditional CI/CD pipeline. In this article, we will first define what a DevSecOps pipeline is and how it benefits security. Then, we’ll walk through the different stages of a DevSecOps pipeline and some best practices when implementing them.

What is a DevSecOps Pipeline?

A DevSecOps pipeline enhances the standard CI/CD workflow by embedding security directly into the development lifecycle, rather than relying on a separate process at the end of the lifecycle. Instead of security being a final hurdle before software release, in a DevSecOps pipeline, security tools and processes are integrated at every stage, from planning and coding to deployment and monitoring.

Following a DevSecOps operational model delivers multiple organisational benefits and strengthens their security posture:

• Early Detection and Remediation: By “shifting left”, teams can catch and fix security issues early in the development lifecycle, ensuring fewer vulnerabilities make it to production.
• Rapid and Secure Delivery: Automating and embedding security practices into the SDLC eliminates the traditional security bottleneck at the end of the development cycle, enabling rapid delivery without compromising security.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Making security a shared responsibility breaks silos and enhances collaboration between development, security, and operations teams.
• Reduced Software Supply Chain Risk: A DevSecOps pipeline provides better visibility and control of the software supply chain. For example, teams can scan third-party dependencies for vulnerabilities and establish the integrity and provenance of software artifacts through signatures and attestations.
• Streamlined Compliance and Audit: Automated security checks make it easier to adhere to rigorous compliance requirements mandating secure development practices and generate the required evidence for audits.

The Stages of a DevSecOps Pipeline

Successfully adopting DevSecOps requires a clear understanding of pipeline stages and best practices for implementation.

Plan

Security begins before any code is written. By performing threat modelling, security and development teams collaborate to identify potential threats and security weaknesses in the application’s design before development begins, determine which security controls to implement, and establish the security responsibilities of each stakeholder. This helps engineers bake in security controls from the ground up, rather than patching them in later.

Code

As developers write and commit code, automated security tests scan the source code for vulnerabilities and secrets, detecting security issues as early as possible.

• Static Application Security Testing (SAST): SAST tools automatically scan source code and configuration to identify common vulnerabilities, including SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and misconfigurations. These checks can run directly on the developer’s local development environment, providing immediate feedback, as well as on pull requests before they get merged.
• Secret Scanning: Automated secret scanning tools scan code repositories for hardcoded credentials, API keys, and other sensitive information that could be accidentally committed.

Build

Once code is committed and moves towards building and packaging, the pipeline focuses on the security and integrity of its constituent parts.

• Software Composition Analysis (SCA): Modern applications heavily rely on open source libraries. SCA tools automatically scan these dependencies, identifying known vulnerabilities (CVEs) and license compliance issues.
• Container Image Scanning: For containerised applications, container image scanning tools can identify vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and malware in dependencies, OS packages, and other files by checking each layer of an image.
• Artifact Signing: Once an artifact like an executable, package, or container image is successfully built, it is cryptographically signed to ensure its integrity.
• Build Attestations: Build attestations can be generated at the build stage to establish the contents and provenance of software artifacts such as binaries and container images in order to ensure their security, integrity and authenticity.
  • Software Bill of Materials (SBOM): An SBOM attestation contains a list of all the components inside a software artifact such as open source dependencies.
  • Provenance Attestations: Provenance attestations contain detailed information about how a software artifact was built, such as build timestamps, build parameters and environment, version control metadata, and materials (files, scripts) used during the build process, etc.
  • Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX) Documents: VEX documents provide a standard format for describing the exploitability of vulnerabilities in software packages or products. For example, a VEX document can indicate that a specific CVE is not exploitable in a given software package and explain why.

Test

After the application has been built, a new set of security checks comes into play, probing the application at runtime and simulating attack scenarios.

• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST): DAST tools analyse the application dynamically at runtime by emulating attack scenarios to find vulnerabilities that might be missed by static code analysis.
• Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST): IAST tools combine elements of SAST and DAST, running within the application to monitor its execution, analyse data flow, and identify vulnerabilities with greater accuracy.
• Fuzz Testing: Fuzz testing involves feeding unexpected or malformed inputs to an application to discover crashes, errors, or security vulnerabilities.

Release and Deploy

This stage focuses on the security of the target environment and final security checks, which serve as a deployment gate that prevents deployment if checks aren’t passed.

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security Scanning: IaC scanning tools scan infrastructure configuration files (e.g., Terraform, Kubernetes manifests) for misconfigurations and insecure defaults that could expose the deployed application.
• Policy as Code Enforcement: Security and operational policies can be defined as code and automatically enforced. For example, if an artifact has too many critical CVEs in its SBOM or is unsigned, the deployment can be automatically halted.
  • Kubernetes Admission Webhooks: In Kubernetes environments, admission webhooks act as real-time policy enforcers. Before any resource (such as a Pod) is created, the Kubernetes API server sends the request to an admission controller. This controller can then validate it against security policies, allowing it to reject non-compliant workloads before they ever run, or modify it to inject custom defaults and security configurations. This is used to enforce rules such as disallowing containers that run as root, requiring images to come only from a trusted registry, verifying image signatures, or mandating resource limits.

Operate and Monitor

Security doesn’t end at deployment. Continuous monitoring and rapid response are essential for protecting production systems against real-time attacks.

• Runtime Security Monitoring: Real-time threat detection tools continuously monitor the live application and infrastructure for suspicious activity, intrusions, and anomalous behaviour.
• Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): For cloud native applications, CSPM tools may be used to continuously audit cloud configurations against security best practices and compliance benchmarks.
• Vulnerability Management: Ongoing scanning and assessment of production environments and already deployed software artifacts for new vulnerabilities ensures a proactive approach to potential threats.

While the specific tools used to implement a DevSecOps pipeline will vary significantly between organisations depending on their tech stack, budget, and specific security needs, the underlying principles remain constant. The goal is always to integrate the right type of security control at the right stage, ensuring a continuous, automated, and comprehensive approach to securing the software lifecycle while maintaining rapid delivery.

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