Developer Productivity: Continuous Improvement Through the DevSecOps Mindset

When it comes to DevSecOps, the question is not whether a business should invest – the question is how to optimize DevSecOps investments for maximum benefit. Companies that invest in developing mature DevSecOps practices improve their threat detection and response capabilities by an average of 3.5 times over companies with inadequate DevSecOps, according to industry research by Cisco. DevSecOps – which is short for development, security, and operations – is an approach to developing software that integrates security at every stage of the development lifecycle. With a DevSecOps mindset, all developers and stakeholders – not just a siloed security team – are expected to contribute to consistently developing secure code.

When organizations are successful at implementing DevSecOps, it isn’t just that organizations are effective at protecting the privacy and security of their data and infrastructure. The organization itself is transformed, with every DevSecOps stakeholder embracing the spirit of continuous improvement. That’s because a DevSecOps mindset encourages every party to be proactive about finding ways to work faster, cheaper, and more effectively. Let’s explore five key ways a DevSecOps mindset promotes continuous improvement and ultimately maximizes developer productivity:

1. DevSecOps calls for monitoring to be continuous: During software development, organizations commonly relegate security testing to a specific stage toward the end of the development lifecycle. As a result, this all-important activity is limited, with developers more likely to let potential vulnerabilities go undetected. A DevSecOps mindset ensures that security monitoring stays front and center at every stage of the software development lifecycle. DevSecOps requires teams to continuously test and review monitoring data and then use these insights to proactively address vulnerabilities. In the process, developers are thinking proactively about how to optimally protect the software they’re developing from being compromised.
2. DevSecOps guards against complacency: Security threats don’t disappear as soon as software moves into production. To the contrary, security threats evolve and morph over time, and get increasingly sophisticated and creative. That’s why a DevSecOps mindset insists that developers remain vigilant and hyperaware. DevSecOps encourages developers to question assumptions, look across long timescales to identify emerging threats and respond rapidly with creative, strategic solutions that match the scope and scale of potential threats.
3. DevSecOps prioritizes catching problems early: A hallmark feature of DevSecOps is automated security checks that are running continuously in the background. That means vulnerabilities and mistakes are much more likely to be caught early. Because developers have access to so much data, they learn quickly how to remediate issues while they’re still small problems. Moreover, DevSecOps teaches developers how to come up with new ideas and strategies for continuously refining security testing practices.
4. DevSecOps encourages fast failures: Software development practices like agile sprints teach developers how to fail fast. DevSecOps further reinforces these practices. Developers learn that failure during security testing is a good thing – it’s only by failing that developers can remove vulnerabilities and weaknesses while these issues are still relatively manageable to resolve.
5. DevSecOps relies on data to drive decision-making: DevSecOps requires organizations to collect copious data via continuous security testing, and then use this data to drive decision-making. Along the way, DevSecOps teams learn how to reduce reliance on gut instinct and guesswork. It’s not always easy to break free of these tendencies, but as organizations get results, teams gravitate toward and increasingly rely on data to drive decision-making.

DevSecOps is not a one-and-done change in security testing practices. It’s a permanent, pervasive mindset shift that affects how teams protect software from security vulnerabilities and coding mistakes. DevSecOps is effective at promoting a philosophy of continuous improvement because it calls for continuous security monitoring, guards against complacency, prioritizes catching problems before they become enormously consequential, encourages teams to fail fast, and relies on data instead of gut instinct to drive decisions.

Ippon specializes in helping organizations implement robust DevSecOps practices that ensure security vulnerabilities are consistently identified and rapidly remedied. To learn more about how we support teams in shifting permanently to a DevSecOps mindset, please check out Ippon’s latest eBook, “The Secret to Boosting DevSecOps and Developer Productivity.”