<span style="font-weight: 400;">Cloud technology is rapidly becoming a major driving force for all businesses. Unfortunately, application security has been a huge hurdle for companies looking to adopt cloud computing. While many businesses plan to migrate to the cloud, they aren't sure how to secure that process. Thankfully, companies have found success with cloud migration using DevSecOps tools that help in implementing security within the DevOps workflow.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The emergence of DevSecOps helps provide a seamless transition by integrating application security early and continually in the software development life cycle. Typically, DevSecOps requires </span><a href="https://securityintelligence.com/articles/devsecops-importance-integrated-security/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">security integration</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> at every single stage of the software process chain and continues to work throughout to secure it. Using DevSecOps, security becomes an integral component of the development process. It's incorporated in the plan, code, build, and test and not just at later stages in the development process.</span>
<h2><b>Steps for Implementing DevSecOps in the Cloud</b></h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Implementing DevSecOps helps keep cloud environments more secure, ensuring that you always stay ahead of attackers. Today, more and more organizations are accepting DevSecOps as the primary means to assist with the shift to cloud computing. Implementing DevSecOps means you'll deal with a wide range of security and compliance challenges. Here are the basic steps that can help you sustainably implement DevSecOps by baking security into the DNA of your cloud-powered organization.</span>
<h3><b>1. Code Analysis</b></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">For most businesses, market demands can shift rapidly, calling for flexibility to change software multiple times to respond to customer demands. Although agile teams have adapted to this trend, older security models are poorly suited to quick delivery cycles. Consequently, they can derail agile release cycles and negatively impact your company's evolving software products. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Your teams can deliver code in tiny, frequent releases by </span><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/01/02/cybersecurity-in-an-agile-world/#:~:text=Cybersecurity%20in%20an%20agile%20development,at%20every%20step%20of%20development."><span style="font-weight: 400;">taking an agile approach</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to security operations. This ensures you can quickly check for vulnerabilities and embed code analysis into the quality assurance process.</span>
<h3><b>2. Automated Testing</b></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">DevSecOps processes thrive on automation. Primarily, automation simplifies as much of the testing efforts as possible using a minimum set of scripts. Besides, automated testing tools can execute repeatable tests, report outcomes, and compare results with faster feedback to your teams. Therefore, be sure to run automated tests at every stage of the application development pipeline to maximize efficiency and minimize errors with code.</span>
<h3><b>3. Change Management</b></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">The change management process is highly critical when implementing your DecSecOps enterprise cloud strategy. Make change management more efficient by empowering your developers with the right tools and expertise to respond to and thwart threats before they become a significant issue. Also, allow developers to suggest </span><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328939703_Physical_security_for_mission-critical_facilities_and_data_centers"><span style="font-weight: 400;">mission-critical security measures</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> at any time, with approval times within 24 hours.</span>
<h3><b>4. Compliance Monitoring                         </b></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Staying on top of compliance is not an option for any organization, especially considering the heightened regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2. With the enormous amount of data collected and stored by most organizations, staying compliant can be challenging. You need a system that collects evidence of compliance in real-time whenever you create new codes or make changes to existing ones.</span>
<h3><b>5. Vulnerability Management</b></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">With every new delivered code, it's essential to discover, investigate and remediate any threats or vulnerabilities that crop up. Other than releasing and running vulnerability checks, schedule ongoing periodic security scans to help catch any new bugs or vulnerabilities.</span>
<h3><b>6. Security Training </b></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Your teams should always be equipped with the latest security-specific coding training. Invest in industry conferences and security certifications for your engineering team to elevate your team's skills set and confidence. In addition, partnering with industry experts in DevOps and other cloud-based security solutions can provide your teams with expert knowledge of security standards.</span>
<h2><b>The Takeaway</b></h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">DevSecOps is an integral part of any enterprise cloud strategy as it ensures that security is integrated early in the application development pipeline. As a result, you can reduce attack surfaces and scale security to meet the dynamic needs of all cloud-native applications. Overall, cloud-native security tools combined with DevSecOps practices can ensure that DevOps teams and security teams collaborate to achieve the common goal of deploying and running production applications securely.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">If your organization is looking to implement DevSecOps, the experts at Webhead understand how DevSecOps improves communication and collaboration, ensuring alignment across every aspect of the development process with security at the forefront. </span><a href="https://webheadtech.com/connect/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Contact us</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> today to learn more about our services and to start developing your DevSecOps transformation.</span>