What is the Difference Between DevOps and DevSecOps?

The competition in the business world is at an all-time high, necessitating rapid and secure software development and delivery processes. In response to this, two prominent concepts have emerged: DevOps and DevSecOps. It’s important to grasp the distinctions between these terms and comprehend their respective roles in software development to know when to use them.

This article is your complete guide on DevOps vs DevSecOps, their working, and key differences. Continue reading.

How does DevOps Work?

DevOps combines software or application development (Dev) and operations (Ops), allowing businesses to quickly commit a code change and deploy it to production within a minimum time.

It involves using different DevOps tools to streamline communication and collaboration between the software development and operations teams. The purpose is to optimize the application delivery and integration process to ensure high customer satisfaction. Here are the various steps involved in DevOps:

• Build
• Test
• Release
• Monitor
• Operate
• Continuous Feedback

DevOps Philosophy

At its core, DevOp’s philosophy is to break away from the silos of traditional software development approaches. It focuses on creating an agile and scalable system by involving both development and operational teams throughout the software lifecycle, from planning to build and release.

DevOps Key Practices

DevOps revolves around a set of core practices designed to enhance and streamline the software development process. Below is a detailed explanation of each point.

1. Fostering a Culture of Collaboration

Firstly, to make this journey successful, you should create a collaborative environment where your development and operations teams can communicate and engage freely. This is really important as smooth communication between teams breaks down silos and urges them to work together for quick problem-solving.

2. Adoption of CI/CD

Another excellent DevOps practice is the adoption of continuous integration and continuous delivery. CI helps determine how many developed codes are ready for production and also enables early code error detection. The CD focuses on automating the delivery of code changes to a pre-production stage, streamlining the whole software development process.

3. Setting Up Automated Testing

You should also set up automated testing to check your code for every change introduced. This is one of the most important aspects of DevOps, which eliminates the unreliability associated with manual testing, increases testing frequency, and minimizes the chance of errors in the production stage.

4. Focusing on DevOps Observability

DevOps observability is another important part of DevOps that ensures the success of all development initiatives. To achieve high observability, you can use various observability tools that provide insights into system health and help you pinpoint and resolve any issues that may arise during operations.

DevOps Goals

DevOps goal is to allow DevOps teams to release and deploy high-quality software at a fast rate. However, it also has some other goals, such as:

• Stabilizing the Workplace: Error codes and software issues cause a lot of stress in the workplace. DevOps aims to eliminate this stress by creating a conducive work environment, providing continuous feedback, and promoting transparency.
• Achieving Quick Deployments: One of the key objectives of DevOps is to enable organizations to achieve rapid and frequent software deployments. It makes this possible by automating most aspects of the software test, build, and deployment process.
• Producing High-Quality Products: DevOps practices like Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and automated testing allow you to detect issues early in the development cycle. This allows you to introduce software that meets high standards of quality, reliability, and performance.
• Smooth Issue Resolution: Another key goal of DevOps is to minimize downtime via quick and smooth issue resolution. This can be done by using various DevOps monitoring tools, automated alerts, and proactive monitoring for prompt accident response.

How DevSecOps Works?

The workings of DevSecOps are simple: software developers perform strict security testing at each stage of the life cycle. It involves collaboration between system development and operations teams as well as security specialists that make your software solutions secure for end users.

Once a product is complete, it’s sent to security teams, which test the pre-release application for security loopholes and vulnerabilities.

Here’s what DevSecOps stands for:

• Development (Dev): It’s the planning, building, coding, and testing of an application.
• Security (Sec): It involves introducing security early in the product life cycle by handing it to programmers and other security specialists.
• Operations (Ops): Lastly, the operator’s team releases, monitors, and resolves any issue that may arise in the application.

Role of Security in DevSecOps

In DevSecOps, security’s role is to seamlessly integrate protective measures into every phase of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design to deployment and beyond.

Shift Left

The first and most important DevSecOps security practice is shift left. This means you should move security checks as early as possible in the software development process. As a result, issues are identified beforehand, resulting in minimum downtime and higher customer satisfaction.

Implementing CI and CD

Implementing CI and CD is also an essential DevSecOps security best practice. These elements ensure that DevSecOps teams can quickly test, build, and deploy code changes without delay or human error.

Threat Modeling

Threat modeling identifies, assesses, and mitigates potential threats to software systems in the early life cycle. It involves creating a visual representation of systems and assets to pinpoint vulnerabilities. Threat modeling works best in the following situations:

• Spoofing: Imitating or disguising to be someone else
• Tampering: Modification in system data
• Repudiation: Denial from performing a security attack
• Information Disclosure: Unauthorized access to crucial data
• Denial of Service: Preventing legitimate users from accessing a system or server
• Elevation of Privilege: Exploiting a bug or design flaw in an application to access hidden data

Encrypt Moving Data

In an organization, data is swiftly moved from one system to another. So, another DevSecOps security practice is the encryption of this moving data. SSL and TLS are prominent names that encrypt your organizational data and protect it from unauthorized access.

Adopt a Microservice Architecture

Last but definitely not least, one of the DevSecOps best practices is to adopt a microservice architecture. In this, monolithic applications are divided into smaller, manageable parts to implement security controls easily. Besides, it offers other benefits, such as the services being scaled independently. In case of a security issue, the individual service can be updated without having to reset the whole application.

DevOps vs DevSecOps: Key Differences

Both DevOps and DevSecOps share many similarities; however, some key differences, like the latter’s emphasis on security, distinguish these approaches. Let’s discuss this in detail.

Emphasis on Security

While both DevOps and DevSecOps focus on streamlining the software development process, the key difference lies in their approach to security. DevOps is all about accelerating software delivery but with top quality and reliability.

On the other hand, DevSecOps integrates security throughout the development life cycle, from planning and coding to testing and deployment. For example, in a DevSecOps environment, security checks are implemented alongside development tasks to produce a secure software solution.

Team Involvement

DevOps typically involves the development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams. Conversely, DevSecOps has development (Dev), security (Sec), and operations (Ops) teams. In this, you work with security specialists throughout the product life cycle and get guidance and expertise on best security practices, threat modeling, and vulnerability management.

What are the Similarities Between DevOps and DevSecOps?

While DevSecOps places a stronger emphasis on security throughout the development lifecycle, both DevOps and DevSecOps share a foundation built on the following similarities:

• Automation: Both DevOps and DevSecOps rely heavily on automation. The former utilizes it for software deployment, while the latter leverages it for security checks.
• Collaboration: DevOps and DevSecOps are based on the concept of efficient collaboration. Team members, such as developers, administrators, and security specialists, all need to work together to achieve desired goals.
• Active Monitoring: The importance of active monitoring for both approaches is undeniable. It allows teams to track the performance, health, and security of applications and infrastructure in real time, enabling quick responses to security and technical issues.

DevSecOps vs DevOps Comparison Table

Here’s an overview of the DevSecOps vs DevOps comparison:

Conclusion

In DevOps vs DevSecOps, both approaches promote team collaboration and rely heavily on automation for various tasks. If you are wondering where to get highly skilled DevOps engineers to streamline your application or software development and deployment, Hicron Software House has you covered. Security is the primary focus of our DevOps professionals, and we ensure your systems are free of bugs and issues.