Development, Security, and Operations (DevSecOps) Engineer

In this article, we will discuss DevSecOps Engineer, how to become a DevSecOps engineer and their roles, skills required for DevSecOps engineer and finally benefits of becoming DevSecOps engineer and challenges faced by them. So let’s discuss the topic by explaining it one by one.

Prerequisite – DevOps Engineer

DevSecOps :
DevSecOps brings the security aspect in the development process in the software field, and it aims to incorporate security in all stages of the software development process. It initiates data protection and makes sure that optimal compliance is achieved by coding, modeling threats, essential security training.

DevSecOps Engineers :
These individuals are responsible for the configuration of the IT structure, identifying security threats, and securing software development. Their job is very similar to that of a good deal of IT security professional roles.

Skills required for DevSecOps Engineer :
Here, we will discuss the skills required for DevSecOps Engineer as follows.

• Must have good communication and strong collaborating skills.
• He must have a good understanding of Major DevOps tools.
• The individual should be aware of new security, threat modeling software along with compliance regulations and cybersecurity threats.
• He should also have to be familiar with automated code analysis where he can find and repair vulnerabilities.
• The individual should be acquainted with Ansible, deployment systems like Hibernates, developer tools like GitHub, a programming language such as Java & PHP.

Qualification and Experience required for becoming a DevSecOps Engineer :
Here, we will discuss the Qualification and Experience required for becoming a DevSecOps Engineer as follows.

• The individual should have learned the basics of security principles.
• He must have a vast knowledge of programming languages and automation tools.
• He must have a degree in Technical ground.
• If an individual is without a degree, getting certifications from Cisco, CompTIA and Microsoft will help to get into this job.
• It is also preferred to get DevOps certifications from institutes like DevOps Foundation, DevSecOps Engineering, and many more, as they provide a solid knowledge about DevOps and security methods.

Implementation of DevSecOps :
The following processes are implemented by DevSecOps engineers as follows.

1. The first stage is initiated with Planning, where engineers strategically plan and aim for successful implementation.
2. The next stage is Development, where the engineers in the team gather valuable sources to provide guidance and establishing a code review system to enhance uniformity.
3. Then in the Building stage, through tools, the source code is combined with machine code. These automated tools have multiple UIs and some of them can replace the vulnerable files with new ones.
4. Then in the testing stage, the automated testing framework undergoes some testing practices to the pipeline.
5. In the next stage i.e. Deployment where the engineers automate the process and increase the pace of software delivery through IaC tools.
6. The next stage is Operation which is one of the crucial steps and periodic maintenance is a frequent activity in operation teams.
7. The scaling stage is also one of the important steps where engineers ensure that the organizations do not have to waste their resources to maintain large data centers.

Benefits provide DevSecOps engineers :

• The most crucial benefit that engineers provide is increasing the overall security.
• We can find vulnerabilities in an earlier stage of our pipeline, so we can fix them initially.
• Engineers help the product to be more secure and easier to sell as continuous monitoring helps in enhancing thread-hunting capabilities.
• Multiple teams may collaborate to come up with effective security strategies and robust security design patterns.
• Engineers also don’t need to wait for the finishing of the development cycle before running security checks, as a result, it improves the capability for product delivery.
• DevSecOps engineers in view of regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and ensuring compliance with industry-standard regulation provide a better framework for easier compliance.

Challenges faced by DevSecOps Engineers :

• Not many organizations will allow their engineers to shift to DevSecOps leaving behind their traditional way. Since security came many times later, it may not help the predecessor software models.
• DevSecOps also unites the developers and security individuals who encourage the environment of collaboration. But sometimes conflict arises between the two, where both teams think one team is acting as hurdles for others. This perspective of both teams may overshadow the main principle of DevSecOps.
• Increased security may also slow down the processes and can be a hurdle for innovation. Meanwhile, developers also want to deliver rapidly in order to meet the demands of modern world business. These two contrasting scenarios make it hard for two teams to work as one.
• When DevSecOps engineers find any errors, they don’t go for security breaches immediately, but they look for software misconfigurations or infrastructural problems. Meanwhile, for the same, security teams thought for a potential breach. So, DevSecOps engineers have to reanalyze how they evaluate the environment.