DevSecRegOps: What Does It All Mean?

I’m sure we’ve all been there, feeling the frustration of hitting the ‘wall’ of compliance checks. Traditional compliance, characterized by checklists, and, out-of-step audits, causes bottlenecks in processes, agility, and feature delivery. Jan Varga, calls out some of the hidden costs to navigating compliance in a traditional and likely a manual way.

• Diminished Agility: The infrequent, yet cumbersome audits in our early days mirrored the diminished agility that plagues many development cycles. It was a lesson in the importance of streamlining compliance.
• Reactive Posture: Much like the reactive posture of manual compliance, we often found ourselves addressing issues post-development, leading to costly rework.
• Scalability Issues: As our project grew, so did the complexities of our manual compliance processes. It became increasingly apparent that scalability was a significant challenge.
• Inconsistent Governance: Our initial lack of a unified compliance framework led to inconsistencies, much like the fragmented governance landscape seen in many organizations.

In today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape, organizations are under intense pressure to deliver products faster, more securely, and in compliance with a growing number of regulations. Enter DevSecRegOps, it’s a collaborative approach that integrates development, security, and, regulatory compliance into the software development lifecycle (SDLC). By embedding security and compliance checks early in the process, organizations can significantly reduce risks, improve efficiency, and accelerate time-to-market.

What is DevSecRegOps?

DevSecRegOps is a strategic approach that integrates development (Dev), security (Sec), regulatory compliance (Reg), and operations (Ops) into a unified process. With the aim to streamline, and preferably automate, software development while ensuring adherence to regulatory requirements and maintaining robust security practices. In essence, DevRegSecOps is about building security and compliance into the DNA of software development from the very beginning, rather than as an afterthought. It’s a cultural shift towards a shared responsibility model where all teams work together to achieve common goals.

Why is DevSecRegOps Important?

Leveraging Policy as Code is a cornerstone, of DevSecRegOps and cannot be overstated. It requires careful planning in order to translate complex regulations into actionable policy code that can be integrated into you CI/CD pipelines. It offers a multitude of benefits, including:

• Enhanced Security: By shifting security left, vulnerabilities are identified and addressed earlier in the development process, reducing the risk of costly data breaches and reputational damage.
• Accelerated Time-to-Market: Streamlined processes and automated checks enable faster development and deployment of software products without compromising security or compliance.
• Improved Compliance: DevSecRegOps helps organizations meet regulatory requirements efficiently, avoiding costly penalties and legal issues.
• Cost Reduction: By preventing security incidents and compliance failures, organizations can save significant amounts of money.
• Risk Mitigation: Proactive identification and management of risks throughout the SDLC help organizations build resilient and secure systems.
• Enhanced Customer Trust: Demonstrating a commitment to security and compliance builds trust with customers and partners.

Key Components of DevSecRegOps

As we continue to shift left as a necessity to drive automation deeper into the organization we encounter a similar set of hurdles to what we’ve seen with past process and automation improvements. To successfully implement this it will likely have to focus on the following key components:

• Culture: Fostering a security-first, and, regulatory-first culture where everyone takes responsibility for security and compliance is essential.
• Automation: Automating security and compliance checks throughout the SDLC improves efficiency and reduces human error. It also increases feature delivery time.
• Collaboration: Effective collaboration between development, security, and compliance teams is crucial for shared ownership and accountability. Culture and collaboration are two of the bigger hurdles, as we’re forging new working models.
• Continuous Improvement: This will be an ongoing process that requires continuous evaluation and adaptation to emerging threats and regulatory changes.

By adopting DevSecRegOps, organizations can create a more secure, efficient, and compliant software development process. This ultimately leads to better business outcomes and increased customer satisfaction.

A few References:

• I would like to thank Kyle Sheldon for helping me understand why the Reg part is so crucial in today’s world. Maybe we should be thinking about DevRegSecOps v DevSecRegOps, ordering compliance before security? We’ll save this for another day.
• Thank you Jan Varga for his series around Compliance as Code and DevSecRegOps.
• Claire McDyre for ‘What is Compliance as Code? The Best Way to Automate Compliance Testing + Enforcement’
• For those Top Gear fans out there: “Some say that he has no understanding of clouds, and that his ear wax tastes like Turkish Delight. All we know is he’s called the STIG.” (Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG)) If you’re looking for a practical example of Compliance as Code in the security space, check this out from RedHat.