Top 5 Challenges of DevSecOps and How to Overcome Them

DevSecOps emphasizes the need for better collaboration between development, operations, and security. It is the constant integration of efforts of all teams at every step of the process. The ultimate goal is to move into a world that is automated and synced, making most of the manual tasks obsolete.

But to get there, there are changes to be made not just to the process but to the behavior as well. However, according to a survey by Threat Stack, 68% of companies state that their CEO demands security and DevOps teams not do anything that slows down the business. This is one of the biggest challenges of DevSecOps and why many quit the transition halfway.

Let’s take a look at the top challenges faced while implementing DevSecOps and how we can overcome them.

Top 5 Challenges of DevSecOps

1) Reluctance to Integrate

The core of DevSecOps lies in the integration of teams — enabling teams to work in tandem with each other rather than independent of each other. But not everybody is ready to jump on board and change overnight.

The process happens gradually and one of the biggest challenges faced is the people itself. As people have already become deeply accustomed to current development processes, it can be hard to break the system and adopt new methods of working. Comfort tends to triumph over exploring the unfamiliar. For this, the right processes and tools are required and time needs to be permitted for people to make the transition.

2) Clash of the Tools

Considering the three teams have been working apart for a long time now, it’s understandable that they have different metrics and tools they use. Unifying the three, coming to a mutual agreement of where it makes sense to integrate and where it doesn’t, and keeping in mind the goals of the company can be an uphill battle.

There are plenty of tools available in the market now to implement DevSecOps. The first challenge lies in choosing ones that fit well. The second challenge is to properly integrate them in order to build, deploy, and test in a continuous manner. It’s not an easy task to bring together tools from various departments and sync them on one platform.

3) Implementing Security in CI/CD

Security has always been seen as something that comes at the end of development. But with DevSecOps, security becomes a part of continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD). Getting security to adapt to the DevOps process and not the other way around can be challenging. But in order for DevSecOps to be successful, one cannot expect new DevOps processes and tools to adapt to old methods of security.

4) Chasing Perfection

It is impossible to have a completely smooth process right off the bat. Many organizations give up because time is wasted in trying to make things work perfectly. Adopting DevSecOps is a long-drawn process, but once done, it can significantly improve the entire operation. Trying to get perfect security at every stage of development will only hamper the work of the developers.

5) Understanding Each Other

There is a general rift between security and development.

57% percent of companies say their operations team pushes back on security best practices.

Developers need to be trained on basic security in order to collaborate more efficiently. Without DevSecOps, both teams work independently of each other, which results in an expensive and time-consuming handover between the teams.

Franklin Mosley of PagerDuty says, “To make security a priority, both security and development teams must learn from each other. The security professional needs to walk in the developer’s shoes and learn how software is made and the issues that are faced. It’s best to work with developers to come up with solutions that allow them to do the right thing when it comes to security.”

While there are challenges in DevSecOps, they are not unconquerable. Implementing DevSecOps can be done right if we recognize that it is not just a new process but a new culture that requires organizations to become better each day. With that in mind, it becomes much easier to embrace.