In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses need to deliver software applications quickly and efficiently. However, speed shouldn’t come at the expense of security. Too often across my 20+ years in software development, I’ve seen companies push a product to market, only to realize after a breach or attack that the security was cast aside in the development process.
This is where DevSecOps comes in.
What is DevSecOps?
DevSecOps stands for development, security, and operations. It’s the philosophy and practice of integrating security measures within the DevOps process. This involves creating a culture of ongoing, flexible collaboration between release engineers, security teams, and the business.
The DevSecOps movement, like DevOps itself, is all about breaking down silos and encouraging proactive security measures throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC).
The rise of DevSecOps represents a fundamental shift in the way organizations approach security in their development processes. It’s a proactive cultural and technical movement that aims to embed security as a shared responsibility throughout the entire lifecycle—not as a reactive approach once an incident occurs.
Why DevSecOps Matters
Security can no longer be an afterthought in the SDLC. Hundreds of millions of people have been affected by security breaches, and it’s on companies to make sure their customers and business are protected.
Traditional approaches often lead to security being a bottleneck, causing delays in release cycles. That gives all parties involved a headache. DevSecOps solves this by integrating security early and throughout the SLDC, ensuring that it’s not a disruptor but a facilitator of smooth and swift releases.
But the tug-of-war between business goals and IT principles sometimes leads to security being neglected or rushed. Not including security from the onset can lead to repercussions, though, including prolonged development times, regulatory fines, financial losses for the company, and, if a security event happens, a hit to brand reputation.
Too often, addressing security vulnerabilities post-deployment ends up as far more costly and time-consuming than incorporating security measures from the outset. The solution to this is to put the tug-of-war rope down and have the business and all IT teams come together to implement a culture of security.
5 Key Principles of Implementing DevSecOps
Shifting to a security culture starts from the top down, with leadership needing to embed security practices into the company’s culture and operations. Unfortunately, companies usually don’t start to make this shift until a security event happens. But proactive security measures are more cost-effective in the long-run.
Here are some key principles of what DevSecOps looks like in an organization, then we will talk about what implementing it looks like.
- Automation: This is the most technical principle of DevSecOps. Automating security testing and deployment helps keep up with the rapid pace of continuous integration and delivery.
- Continuous Integration (CI): With CI, developers commit their code to a central repository multiple times a day. Automation helps quickly integrate and test that code, removing hours of manual testing time and speeding up delivery timelines.
- Continuous Delivery (CD): CD builds upon continuous integration to automate the process of moving code from the build environment to a staging environment. Once in staging, in addition to unit testing, the software is automatically tested to ensure the user interface is working, the code is successfully integrated, that APIs are reliable, and that the software can handle the expected traffic volumes. The goal of this approach is to consistently deliver production-ready code—quickly.
- Performance: Security measures should be an enabler of performance—not an impediment. When releasing code with security built in from the start, it shouldn’t disrupt any patterns in business, like traffic spikes or prime usage times.
- Collaboration: We talked about the tug-of-war between the business and IT teams. Rather than there be a competition to see who wins out, there should be open communication and shared goals between the business and development, security, and operations teams to build trust. Security is a shared responsibility.
- Early Integration: Good DevSecOps principles are integrated early—both in the planning and development stages.
- Continuous Learning: Bad actors are continuously learning how to breach security defenses. That means those they’re trying to breach need to continuously learn how to combat attacks.

Implementing DevSecOps
We’ve discussed that the implementation of DevSecOps starts with a top-down culture shift that puts the onus of security on the organization. But there are some other key components to consider:
- Balancing speed and security, finding the right organizational mix of protection and rollout time that helps accomplish goals
- Establishing static and dynamic code analysis tools that can seamlessly integrate security into the CI/CD pipeline and are used across IT teams.
- Training and awareness of security best practices and the importance of teams’ roles in maintaining it.
- Continuous monitoring of solutions and providing real-time feedback on security issues.
- Creating feedback mechanisms to ensure that security considerations are communicated back to development teams promptly.
I know implementing DevSecOps across an organization isn’t just waving a magic wand. Teams need to work together to break down silos, cross train on each other’s processes, and fully buy-in to the security culture. There will probably be some resistance to change across teams, too. But the investments pay off in the long run with cost-savings, efficiency, and protection for customers and the company.
While implementing DevSecOps for one of the largest travel portals in North America, it was a constant challenge to ensure the application didn’t have security flaws that could expose sensitive customer information. We were rapidly developing and deploying new features and enhancing current functionality. It required work across dozens of teams.
Being a level 1 PCI merchant that processes over six million credit card transactions every year, the company had strict controls to follow. Static code analysis, a common DevSecOps practice, was not enough to catch zero-day exploits or vulnerabilities in new technologies. Shifting the culture and establishing collaboration between teams took months. But through cross training the concepts of secure coding practices, educating on application development principles, and standardizing the toolsets across teams, we built efficiency, collaboration, and adoption into the DevSecOps practice.
Embracing a DevSecOps Mindset
DevSecOps is not just a set of practices. It’s a mindset that needs to be embraced across the organization. By integrating security into the DevOps pipeline, businesses can ensure that they deliver not only fast but also secure software, thus protecting their customers and their reputation in an increasingly digital world.
About the Author
Adi Anand is a Principal Solutions Architect for Evergreen, a division of Insight Global. He has decades of experience building global platforms leveraging modern, cutting-edge technology to help businesses across diverse industry domains to transform and stay secure. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and daughter. Connect with Anand on LinkedIn.