DevSecOps
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Security & Compliance

What is DevSecOps?

DevSecOps integrates security practices into every phase of the software development lifecycle, making security a shared responsibility rather than an afterthought.

Shifting Security Left

DevSecOps embeds security into the earliest stages of software development rather than treating it as a gate at the end. This "shift left" approach catches security issues when they're cheapest to fix—during development rather than in production.

Practices

  • Static analysis (SAST) — scan source code for vulnerabilities during CI
  • Dependency scanning — detect known vulnerabilities in third-party packages
  • Container image scanning — check base images for CVEs before deployment
  • Infrastructure as Code scanning — validate Terraform configurations against security policies
  • Secret detection — prevent credentials from being committed to repositories

Policy as Code

Tools like Open Policy Agent (OPA) and Sentinel allow security policies to be expressed as code. These policies are version controlled, testable, and automatically enforced in CI/CD pipelines—replacing manual checklists with automated guardrails.

Cultural Shift

DevSecOps requires security teams to work collaboratively with developers rather than acting as gatekeepers. Security engineers contribute to shared tooling, write policy-as-code, and provide self-service security capabilities that development teams can adopt without friction.

Related Terms

DevOpsSOC 2 ComplianceCI/CD

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