Blog Summary:

DevOps and DevSecOps streamline software development by enhancing collaboration, automation, and security. While DevOps accelerates delivery through CI/CD and automation, DevSecOps integrates security from the start. Businesses should adopt these practices for speed, security, and compliance. This blog explores their benefits, implementation strategies, and key tools, helping organizations choose the right approach for scalability and efficiency.

For software development teams, every day is a race against tight deadlines. As the release date approaches, the team discovers a critical vulnerability. The entire lifecycle suddenly comes to a halt, and the app launch is postponed, requiring extensive rework.

Are the features working fine? Are all security concerns addressed? Have we left any bugs unfixed? Finding out such concerns just before deployment can be a real stressor.

This scenario is all too common in traditional DevOps practices, where security is often an afterthought. Especially when:

  • The average cost of a data breach in 2024 was USD 4.88 million
  • Fixing a single vulnerability can cost over USD 50,000 when identified late
  • A month’s delay can extend the launch window by 3250 additional days

Integrating security from the outset is not just a best practice; it’s a financial imperative. Transitioning from DevOps to DevSecOps embeds security into every phase of development. It focuses on the idea that security is the responsibility of everyone involved, and not only the specific team.

In this blog, we’ll explore the comparative dynamics of DevOps vs DevSecOps and also elaborate on how your organization can smoothly transition from the former to the latter.

What is DevOps?

The world of software development is ruled by two superpowers: Development and Operations.

The development team is known for its speed and innovation in building new applications and releasing them in the market. The operations team is responsible for bringing stability and reliability to the production environment and is not disrupted by any new change in the app’s code.

Before DevOps, these two superpowers struggled to work together. When developers completed their work and forwarded it to the Operations team, the latter used to find the software difficult to deploy, often buggy, or with incompatible code.

In 2007, the industry shifted towards users demanding faster updates and businesses needing agility, making the competition fierce. Patrick Debois introduced the solution where Dev and Ops could work together by focusing on breaking down silos amongst the companies.

Central to the DevOps vs DevSecOps dynamic, the former practices focus on merging code to catch errors, automatically testing and deploying updates, managing infrastructure through code, and tracking real-time performance for quick fixes.

How Does DevOps Work?

As elaborated above, DevOps is the merging of two essential teams in software development: development and operations. Working as one unified team, DevOps highlights the major aspect of the DevOps and DevSecOps comparison by transforming software delivery into a smooth and continuous cycle.

Here’s how it works:

  • Developers and operations teams work together from the start to define requirements, infrastructure, and security practices.
  • When developers write code, all the changes are pushed into a shared repository. The operations team uses automation tools to trigger Continuous Integration (CI) to test the code for errors automatically.
  • Before deploying the code, automated and manual tests ensure that the software runs smoothly, catching bugs early instead of after releasing it to the market.
  • The next step is deploying the successfully tested software to the production environment automatically or without any manual approval.
  • Once the Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) ensures that servers and databases are correctly configured, the applications go live. They are also continuously monitored for performance issues, security threats, and feedback to make sure teams quickly fix any problems that arise by receiving real-time alerts.
  • The entire DevOps lifecycle repeats with constant updates, improvements, and faster deployments, ensuring that software becomes more stable and secure.

Core Benefits of DevOps

Benefits of DevOps

Capital One is a leading financial institution that understands how to reduce the time required to develop and deploy new applications. Earlier, it took them weeks to provision infrastructure for new projects; using DevOps practices by Amazon Web Services (AWS), they adopted an on-demand infrastructure.

Its chief architect, John Andrukonis, emphasizes the importance of DevOps, “We’ve cut the time needed to build new app infrastructure by 99%”.

Let’s understand some of its core benefits:

Faster and Efficient Software Delivery

This benefit of DevOps is best understood in the case of streaming giant Netflix. By embracing continuous delivery and automation, Netflix has increased its deployment speeds and recovery times. With the DevOps tool Chaos Monkey, Netflix can roll out a thousand deployments daily and even bounce back at record speed.

Companies that follow DevOps processes are at least 200 times more prolific than companies with traditional software. They can also bounce back quicker from a failure and recover with an astounding 24 times faster.

Improved Team Collaboration

Teams that generally operate in silos lead to communication gaps and delays in deployment. A similar case happened with New York’s luxury fashion retailer Tapestry, which is the parent company of brands like Stuart Weitzman, Kate Spade New York, and Coach.

When their frontline retail associates faced challenges in capturing and utilizing feedback, Tapestry adopted AWS to develop a generative AI engine named “Ask Rexy.” By facilitating communication between store associates and top decision-makers, this engine helped Tapestry collect almost 30,000 pieces of feedback in a year and increased deployment 10x faster

Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD)

DevOps has another great advantage of driving operational efficiency and business scalability through CI/CD pipelines. EquipmentShare, a specialist company in equipment rental and technology solutions for construction, utilized AWS to transform its deployment processes.

When they needed to scale their infrastructure and grow, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) helped them decrease their manual deployment times by 75%. Using its automation, it accelerated software release cycles with a 120% YoY growth and reduced downtime by 70 hours.

Better Monitoring and Feedback

Successful DevOps security practices enable organizations to build effective monitoring and feedback mechanisms to boost operational performance. A software company, Slice, implemented DevOps Guru to gain in-depth insights into their system health.

When Slice needed a critical database upgrade, the DevOps Guru tool helped them detect inefficient queries after the restart and promptly optimize them. DevOps database tools also helped them update proactively to prevent production issues, resolving seven issues in less than nine months while increasing uptime.

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What is DevSecOps?

With technology, DevOps also evolved with cloud computing and AI-driven automation. Cloud computing has made infrastructure more scalable, and AI-driven automation has improved testing and monitoring.

However, it also led to growing security challenges, which ultimately gave rise to another modern concept, DevSecOps. DevSecOps is an extension of DevOps principles that integrates security right from the beginning of the development process.

Prioritizing the security aspect of the DevSecOps vs DevOps comparison, DevSecOps works through the “shift-left” principle. Under this principle, development and operations teams perform security checks earlier in development rather than just before deployment.

Here’s how DevSecOps enhances DevOps security:

  • It embeds automated security testing like SAST, DAST, and IAST into CI/CD principles.
  • It implements security policies like access controls and encryption right from the start.
  • It focuses on adding vulnerability scanning and threat modeling during development cycles.
  • It ensures that the production environments are secure with container security and IaC.
  • It detects security threats in real-time with continuous monitoring and compliance checks.

How Does DevSecOps Work?

DevSecOps is a tale of secure innovation in software development, where development and operations teams streamline the delivery by automating each stage of the software lifecycle.

However, with the speed and efficiency at the center, security threats often loom over. Data breaches and hacking often creep into software apps, which can exploit the vulnerabilities before teams can react.

Earlier, such security checks were performed either just before releasing the software or even after deploying it. They often led to last-minute delays, emergency fixes, and compromised user trust.

With DevSecOps, DevOps security is never an afterthought because it is integrated from the beginning rather than bolting with it in the end. Here, security teams are not outsiders but are internal team members. Here’s how they ensure every step is secured:

  • All three teams, development, operations, and security, collaborate to assess risks, set security standards, and define compliance needs.
  • While developers write code, automated security scanners analyze it in real-time. The analysis helps them catch issues like weak authentication and SQL injections before they become bigger problems.
  • Next, they run penetration and dynamic DevOps security tests to mimic hacker attacks and ensure all security flaws are fixed before deployment.
  • The teams then use IaC to embed security settings into the infrastructure and enforce encryption, compliance, and privileged access.
  • Once the app is deployed and live, teams monitor it for suspicious activities, breaches, and anomalies.
  • With automated alerts, they identify threats, mitigate them before they cause damage, and update security based on new threats, best practices, and regulations.

Core Benefits of DevSecOps

Benefits of DevSecOps

Shifting to DevOps security with DevSecOps requires you to include security checks at every step. Implementing this approach, in addition to DevOps, allows you to secure your software development cycles from several things.

You can validate real-time transactions, detect threats and fraud immediately, reduce compliance risks, and keep confidential information safe. Additionally, teams can catch suspicious behavior, keep protective checks on customer interactions, and even roll out incremental updates on data exchange frameworks.

Reduced Development Times

By integrating security early in the development cycle through DevOps, organizations can significantly reduce their software development times. They can identify and address vulnerabilities promptly and minimize the delays associated with post-deployment security fixes.

Fidelity Investments implemented such a DevOps security model, which helped them reduce up to 20% of the development time required to deliver new applications. They also saw at least a 30% improvement in security compliance rates and expedited delivery times.

Compliance with Privacy Regulations

DevSecOps enhances compliance with privacy regulations early in software development cycles. It allows developers to be proactive in addressing regulatory issues while also reducing the risks associated with penalties for non-compliance.

One of the most notable examples is when Veritis collaborated with an energy service provider to enhance their compliance with privacy regulations. Another example is HashiCorp implementing a unified monitoring platform, DataDog, to gain a comprehensive view of internal and external teams and resolve security issues.

Built-in Security

With the DevOps security model, organizations can automate their software security by continuously monitoring the threats throughout the development and deployment processes. They can maintain app security risks, standardize data privacy standards like PCI-DSS, and avoid dangerous loopholes.

A noteworthy example is Infogain’s partnership with a medical device company to automate its API development process. Implementing a fully automated DevSecOps process allowed them to escalate API updates while simultaneously ensuring compliance with HIPAA.

Scalability and Adaptability

By integrating security automation through the DevOps security model at every step, organizations can seamlessly scale and swiftly adapt to the changing market for software development. They can ensure that security becomes a growth facilitator instead of a bottleneck.

Global communications leader Comcast recognized such needs and started a small pilot program. In this program, Comcast implemented DevSecOps across all teams, which reduced its security incidents by up to 85% in the production environments.

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Difference Between DevOps and DevSecOps

Both DevOps and DevSecOps approaches focus on how organizations can address security, although the latter aims to integrate it at every step. This similarity makes the transition from the former even smoother.

Gil Zellner, the Infrastructure Lead at HourOne.ai, an early-stage startup, also highlights this in his podcast, “From DevOps to DevSecOps.”

Developers’ responsibilities are directly proportional to their adaptability to security demands when implementing such measures in fast-paced environments. Hence, the strategies for startups and large-scale companies to implement DevOps will also differ.

For a rundown, here’s a comparison between both:

Particulars DevOps DevSecOps
Focus Methodology It prioritizes speed and efficiency by collaborating between development and operations. It integrates security from the start, where security practices are embedded throughout the lifecycle.
Goal and Purpose The goal of DevOps is centered on ownership and continuous improvement. DevOps security emphasizes achieving accountability while also creating security awareness.
Coding Tools and Skills  The teams require maintenance and development skills, such as CI/CD, configuration management, and continuous monitoring, as well as skills in Ansible, Puppet, and Jenkins. DevSecOps teams focus primarily on technical aspects and need a comprehensive understanding of security and cybersecurity, such as SAST, IAST, DAST, SCA, Veracode, and OWASP.
Security Implementation While DevOps follows an integrated approach, security generally comes at the last stage of the development process before apps are released. DevOps security model makes security a responsibility across teams because it puts security at the forefront rather than at the end.
Development Cycles DevOps relies on continuous monitoring across cycles, but the durations of cycles are shorter. DevSecOps allows focusing on efficiency by adding a security layer to ensure compliance, making lifecycles comparatively longer.
Testing Process DevOps has a testing process that primarily focuses on functionality, performance, and reliability. This ensures apps are deployed by continuous testing. DevSecOps approaches testing by integrating static and dynamic code analysis, vulnerability scanning, and compliance tests at every stage of the pipeline.
Automation  DevOps automates development, testing, and deployment, making it highly scalable. It also has straightforward implementation and a reactive approach to addressing security issues. Extending DevOps automation, DevSecOps also includes automating security processes, making implementation more complex. However, it is more proactive in addressing security threats.

DevOps vs DevSecOps: What are the Similarities?

Since DevSecOps is more of an extension to DevOps, primarily focusing on the principle that security shouldn’t be an afterthought but an integral part of the development process, they are both quite similar approaches.

Let’s understand how:

Particulars How are DevOps and DevSecOps Similar?
Similar Mindset Both approaches focus on breaking down silos – whether it’s code testing or identity management. Both teams support frequent deployments and continuous testing to respond swiftly to changes.
Process Improvement  Both have similar views on improving processes by accelerating delivery, efficiency, and reducing time to market. However, DevOps adds a security layer to all these processes.
Quality Checks Both focus on enhancing the quality of software apps by automating code reviews, monitoring, and maintenance. DevSecOps adds security-focused quality checks, such as detecting threats, validating compliance, and assessing vulnerabilities.
Automated Development Both concepts prioritize automated development and deployment to ensure quicker release cycles and more reliable code deployments. DevSecOps implements security measures to protect sensitive data from breaches.
Performance Monitoring  They both include active performance monitoring throughout the development process in terms of error monitoring and potential breaches. While they both have constant vigilance, DevSecOps emphasizes preventing and detecting malicious attacks.

DevOps and DevSecOps – Tools and Platforms Used

From the above discussion on the difference between DevOps and DevSecOps, it is clear that transitioning from the former to the latter is more worthwhile than choosing one.

Complex infrastructures and security integration increase the need to know how a specific tool can be effectively used. Let’s understand some common tools and platforms for both:

Platform and Tools Function DevOps DevSecOps
CI/CD Pipeline Create loops for continuous integration and continuous deployments Jenkins, CircleCI, TeamCity, TravisCI, Spinnaker, ArgoCD, AWS Code Pipeline Snyk, Checkmarx, Veracode, SonarQube.
Version Control Manage changes in software apps or any program. Mercurial, Apache Subversion, AWS CodeCommit, BitBucket GitLab, Azure Repos, Perforce Helix Core, Plastic SCM
Containerization Manage containerized apps in the cloud. Kubernetes, Docker, OpenShift, Amazon Elastic Compute Aqua Security, Anchore Engine, Clair, Trivy
Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) Manage and compute infrastructure through coding instead of manually. Terraform, Chef, Ansible, Pulumi AWS Cloud Formation, Checkov, Terrascan, Spectral
Cloud  Offer cloud computing services and related services. AWS CodeDeploy, Azure Kubernetes Service, Google Cloud Run, AWS OpsWorks Amazon Inspector, Amazon Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Binary Authorization
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Track cloud app performance and rectify issues. New Relic, Datadog, Splunk, Dynatrace Prometheus with Falco, Instana, SignalFx, Grafana Loki
Security Scanning Examine a network or app to identify potential vulnerabilities. Prowler, AppKnox, Qualys, Nessus OWASP DefectDojo, Falco, TheHive, Legitify
Threat Modeling Identify and address potential threats in systems and data. IriusRisk, Threagile, CAIRIS, Stride OWASP Threat Dragon, PyTM, SD Elements, Tutamen
Compliance Automate the checking process to adhere to regulatory standards. AWS Config, Chef Inspec, JFrog Xray, Sonatype Nexus HashiCorp Sentinel, AWS Audit Manager, Prisma Cloud, Cloud Custodian

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DevOps or DevSecOps: Which One to Choose?

Even in today’s AI-driven world, Uniphore, a leader in building conversational AI, encountered a dilemma when it launched its Q for sales software. However, they chose to solve these obstacles by combining both DevOps and DevSecOps using the AWS DuploCloud DevSecOps automation platform.

DevOps helped them reduce operational complexities by 70% and spin up new app environments 10 times faster. DevSecOps also allowed them to onboard new customers within just 3 minutes.

The above case exemplifies how your organization can expedite product launch while also fortifying its security. Hence, you can’t choose between DevSecOps and DevOps; DevOps is the foundation on which DevSecOps builds. If there is no app security, DevOps can’t be successful.

Choose DevOps if your top priorities are collaboration, speed, and automation. It will allow their teams to deploy software faster with more reliability by integrating IaC, CI/CD pipelines, and automated testing.

Choose DevSecOps if your key concern is security. It will allow developers to build and integrate security into each stage instead of adding it in the later stages. This will allow developers to keep their apps safe while maintaining speed from the start of the development process.

How Can Moon Technolabs Help?

Today, it doesn’t matter if your business is establishing itself or already a known name. Both have to face a crucial decision: Do they want to scale their development processes and release software faster in the market?

However, operating at such speed has its risks related to security threats and compliance issues. If they don’t know how to balance both of these aspects, all these vulnerabilities are waiting to be exploited.

At Moon Technolabs, we offer them complete consultation on which one to implement. We are a renowned DevOps development company, and our expert developers, security engineers, and consultants take a proactive approach to ensure that your organization embraces DevOps practices and integrates security from the beginning.

This approach allows you to achieve faster development cycles, remain robust, and protect the organization and its customers without compromising on security. Contact us to understand which approach works best for you.

Conclusion

The world of software development is extremely dynamic. Hence, it poses a huge challenge to deliver innovative solutions rapidly while ensuring robust security. Accelerating time-to-market while handling operational complexities and security hinders swift deployments.

The importance of embracing both DevOps and DevSecOps cannot be overstated. DevOps practices can significantly enhance the software development and deployment processes. Coupled with DevSecOps, the software development pipeline integrates security right from the start, leading to rapid, secure, and efficient software deliveries.

FAQs

01

Is DevSecOps part of SDLC?

Yes, DevSecOps is a huge part of SDLC since it is an application security (AppSec) practice that integrates security early into each stage of the lifecycle. It focuses on identifying and solving vulnerabilities early in the development process instead of waiting until later stages.

02

Does DevSecOps replace DevOps?

No, DevSecOps doesn’t replace DevOps; it only adds a security layer to the DevOps process. Hence, DevSecOps aims to expand the scope of DevOps to deliver high-quality and secured software by prioritizing its security, functionality, and user interface requirements.

03

What are the different stages of DevSecOps?

The five stages of DevSecOps include software composition analysis (SCA), static app security testing (SAST), container scanning, dynamic app security testing (DAST), and interactive app security testing (IAST).

04

What are the different tools of DevSecOps?

Various tools of DevSecOps range from CI/CD, version control, containerization, cloud, security scanning, and many others. Some of the top tools include SonarQube, ThreatModeler, Fortify, Checkmarx, Veracode, Codacy, OWASP, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

05

How does DevOps enhance software development?

DevOps accelerates software development by creating a strong collaboration between development and operations teams. It focuses on automating the entire development process using CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Together, they ensure faster releases, early bug detection, and improved software performance with real-time monitoring and feedback loops.
About Author

Jayanti Katariya is the CEO of Moon Technolabs, a fast-growing IT solutions provider, with 18+ years of experience in the industry. Passionate about developing creative apps from a young age, he pursued an engineering degree to further this interest. Under his leadership, Moon Technolabs has helped numerous brands establish their online presence and he has also launched an invoicing software that assists businesses to streamline their financial operations.