DevSecOps: Principles, Tools, and Best Practices [2025 Guide]

This is part of an extensive series of guides about DevOps.

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The Transition from DevOps to DevSecOps

DevOps, which emphasizes collaboration between development and operations to accelerate software delivery, initially focused on efficiency and reliability. However, as cybersecurity threats became more sophisticated, the need for an integrated security approach became apparent. Security, once treated as a final checkpoint before release, was proving to be insufficient for modern applications where vulnerabilities could quickly lead to serious breaches.

DevSecOps emerged to address these challenges by extending DevOps principles to include security, shifting security from an afterthought to a shared responsibility across all teams. This evolution means security teams work in tandem with development and operations, integrating security measures into continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows.

Core Principles of DevSecOps

Shift Left Security

'Shift left' refers to integrating security measures early in the development process. This involves conducting security checks and vulnerability assessments during build stages rather than after release. By incorporating these practices, developers identify issues sooner, reducing the cost and effort associated with late-stage remediation.

This proactive approach contrasts with traditional methodologies where security is tested towards the end. Early involvement leads to better resource allocation and a stronger security posture, ensuring any defects are addressed promptly.

Continuous Security Monitoring

Continuous security monitoring ensures real-time tracking of threats and vulnerabilities. It involves using automated tools to analyze code changes, monitor system infrastructures, and provide alerts on potential security breaches.

By maintaining constant vigilance, organizations can quickly detect and respond to potential exploits, minimizing their impact. Monitoring applies to application code and extends to infrastructure and network layers. This ensures coverage of security risks, aiding in faster identification and rectification.

Automation in Security Processes

Through automation, repetitive tasks such as vulnerability scanning and patch management are streamlined, allowing security teams to focus on more strategic issues. It provides the capability to test, deploy, and monitor security measures consistently across environments, ensuring rapid response to vulnerabilities.

Automated security testing during the CI/CD process helps ensure the integrity of code changes before they go live. This reduces the manual burden on security teams and enables fast iterations without compromising security.

Related content: Read our guide to security automation

What Are DevSecOps Tools?

DevSecOps tools enable automated security testing, vulnerability management, code analysis, and compliance checks, helping teams address security issues early and continuously throughout development.

Key categories of DevSecOps tools include:

Static application security testing (SAST): SAST tools analyze source code to detect vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS), early in the development process. By scanning code at rest, SAST tools enable developers to fix issues before the code reaches production. Examples include SonarQube, Checkmarx, and Veracode.
Dynamic application security testing (DAST): DAST tools test applications in runtime, simulating attacks to identify vulnerabilities in live environments. This type of testing is crucial for uncovering issues like authentication flaws or insecure APIs. Common DAST tools are OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, and Acunetix.
Container security tools: Container security tools scan container images for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, ensuring that applications running in containerized environments meet security standards. Tools like Aqua Security, Twistlock, and Anchore are widely used for container security management.
Configuration management and infrastructure as code (IaC) security: These tools help secure infrastructure by scanning IaC templates (e.g., Terraform, AWS CloudFormation) for security risks and enforcing compliance. Tools like HashiCorp’s Sentinel, Terraform Cloud, and Snyk IaC detect misconfigurations before infrastructure deployment.
Security information and event management (SIEM): SIEM tools aggregate and analyze security data from multiple sources, helping teams detect, investigate, and respond to threats in real time. SIEM solutions like Splunk, IBM QRadar, and LogRhythm assist in continuous security monitoring.
Secrets management: Managing secrets, such as API keys and passwords, is essential to avoid unauthorized access. Secrets management tools like HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, and CyberArk automate secure storage and retrieval of sensitive information.

‍Related content: Read our guide to API security

Tzvika Shneider

CEO, Pynt

Tzvika Shneider is a 20-year software Security industry leader with a robust background in product and software management.

Tips from the expert

Use pre-commit security checks: Implement security scans at the pre-commit stage in the development workflow, catching potential issues before they reach shared repositories. This early checkpoint minimizes the cost of fixes and reinforces secure coding practices right from the start.
Integrate a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM): Maintaining an SBOM for your applications provides a clear record of all components, dependencies, and libraries. This transparency allows faster response to emerging vulnerabilities, ensuring teams can track and update components effectively.
Implement policy as code for security compliance: Use policy-as-code frameworks to enforce security policies automatically in the CI/CD pipeline. This approach allows development and security teams to set rules that prevent non-compliant code from progressing to production, making compliance seamless and systematic.
Add just-in-time (JIT) access control for CI/CD environments: Use JIT access control to grant temporary permissions only when needed within your CI/CD processes. This approach reduces exposure to sensitive systems and data, minimizing risks from over-permissioned accounts or accidental access leaks.
Leverage chaos engineering for security resilience testing: Apply chaos engineering principles to security by simulating scenarios like compromised credentials or container breaches in controlled settings. These exercises help teams better understand and improve system resilience in response to real-world threats.

Challenges in Adopting DevSecOps

There are several issues that can make it challenging to implement DevSecOps in an organization:

Cultural resistance to change: Employees may view the integration of security as an additional burden rather than a necessity. Overcoming this resistance involves demonstrating the value of secure development practices and fostering an environment that encourages change.
Complexity of tool integration: Tool integration in a DevSecOps environment can be complex, often requiring significant changes to workflows and systems. Choosing the right set of tools that complement existing processes without causing disruptions is critical. Organizations must consider interoperability, scalability, and user-friendliness when selecting tools.
Balancing speed and security: Organizations must identify critical security checkpoints that do not impede time-to-market while ensuring key risks are mitigated. This involves prioritization of security tasks and continuous engagement between security teams and developers.

DevSecOps Best Practices

Here are some of the measures that organizations can take to ensure a successful transition to DevSecOps.

Adopt Secure Coding Standards

Secure coding standards are guidelines that help developers create secure code from inception. These standards provide a framework to prevent common vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS). By adhering to these guidelines, development teams can ensure consistency in code security across projects.

Implementation of secure coding practices requires regular training and updates to coding guidelines, ensuring they evolve alongside emerging threats. Code reviews and inspections provide additional layers of scrutiny, reinforcing secure coding norms.

Automate Security Testing

SAST and DAST tools enable early detection of vulnerabilities in both code and runtime environments. Interactive application security testing (IAST) further analyzes the interaction of applications in real-time, ensuring comprehensive security coverage.

Automation ensures continuous assessment and rapid feedback loops, supporting developers in maintaining secure codebases more easily. These tools enable the early detection of issues, expediting their resolution and minimizing disruptions.

Conduct Threat Modeling and Risk Assessments

Threat modeling is a proactive approach to identifying and mitigating design-level security risks before they are built into a system. It involves mapping out potential security threats and devising strategies to manage them. When coupled with regular risk assessments, organizations can prioritize security efforts based on the potential impact and likelihood of each threat.

Risk assessments should be routine, adjusting to new threats and environmental changes. By focusing on high-risk areas, teams can apply targeted mitigation strategies, optimizing resource allocation.

Ensure Compliance with Regulatory Requirements

Compliance ensures that the organization meets industry standards and legal obligations, safeguarding against potential legal repercussions and enhancing reputation. Maintaining compliance involves making sure processes are aligned with regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA as part of the development lifecycle.

Adopting tools and practices that automatically check compliance helps in staying updated with changing regulations. Regular audits and reviews of processes and policies ensure continuous alignment.

Promote Continuous Learning and Improvement

DevSecOps thrives on the principles of continuous learning and improvement. Staying up to date with the latest trends, tools, and best practices in security helps teams remain responsive to evolving threats.

Investing in training and development programs upskills staff and instills a security-aware mindset across the organization. This commitment to ongoing education and refinement helps teams anticipate and mitigate risks, supporting a resilient security posture.

Implementing DevSecOps with Pynt Security Testing

Pynt is an innovative API Security Testing platform exposing verified API threats through simulated attacks. We help hundreds of companies such as Telefonica, Sage, Halodoc, and more, to continuously monitor, classify, and attack poorly secured APIs, before hackers do.

Pynt's leverages an integrated shift-left approach, and unique hack technology using home-grown attack scenarios, to detect real threats, discover APIs, and suggest fixes to verified vulnerabilities, thereby eliminating the API attack surface risk.

Thousands of companies rely on Pynt to secure the no. 1 attack surface - APIs, as part of their AppSec strategy.

Learn more about Pynt

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