DevSecOps, CI/CD Security and Integrated NOC SOC: A Modern Software Delivery Essential

DevSecOps, CI/CD security and integrated NOC SOC are not mere buzzterms anymore. They are basic elements of modern software delivery and security. If you are working toward creating a strong, safe, and effective development pipeline – including in your DevOps practices the Network Operations Center (NOC) and Security Operations Center (SOC) can be a game-changer. Today, I’m going to show you how you can to bake monitoring and security checks directly into your CI/CD pipeline and to bring together the best parts of the DevOps world and the SecOps world to work in harmony.

Toolchain Integration

When we refer to integration of your toolchain, we’re referring to hooking all your apps, monitors, and security tools together to operate more effectively as an integrated portion of your development and deployment pipeline. That is the fundamentals of any effective DevSecOps plan.

Here is how you can begin effectively integrating your NOC and SOC tools:

• Select the tools that are API-friendly and support automation. Find monitoring and security tooling that can be scriptable or invoked automatically as code gets handed from one part of the pipeline to another.
• Integrate your logs with your alerting systems. Ensure your NOC and SOC tools can ingest logs and alerts from your CI/CD systems as they occur.
• Leverage your collaboration platforms as the bridge. Develop the habit of integrating reports and alerts in messaging tools such as Slack or Microsoft Teams, where your teams are already exchanging messages.
• Automate replies whenever you can. For instance, if any vulnerabilities are detected during a scan, automatically alert or even suspend the pipeline until it’s addressed.

This integration enables teams to respond quickly and provides a safeguard against a security vulnerability getting overlooked. Keep in mind the sooner you identify problems, the cheaper and simpler they are to solve.

Shift-Left Security

You may have also heard the term move security left. This involves shifting security verification forward in our development process—ideally, as soon as we can get there, and as far downstream of development as product and security practices allow.

Why?

Since late is expensive and risky to fix security bugs. Moving left can catch problems in coding and testing stages.

This is how shift-left security can be actually implemented:

• Use static code analysis tool that are integrated with your IDEs. Developers receive instant feedback about unsafe coding practices.
• Execute security scan as part of the build. Run a tool that finds bugs whenever written as soon as code is committed.
• Write security unit tests, and add fuzz tests as part of your testing suite. It exposes areas of weakness before the product is actually produced.
• Frequent security best practice training of developers. The whole organization is now responsible for security, not that many know it.

By catching problems early in the development process, you reduce risks and create a culture in which security is built into the DNA of your software.

Automated Gates

Ground your automated gates as gates through which your code must travel on the path to flowing through your pipeline. These gates enforce quality and security rules in an automatic manner.

How does this help you?

With manual checks, delivery is slowed, and the signing can be inconsistent. Automated gates apply standards across the board each and every time.

A few examples of the automated gates you can include:

• Vulnerability scanning: Automatically scan your container images, their dependencies, and application code for known vulnerabilities.
• Configuration checks: Verify that infrastructure-as-code templates or deployment scripts comply with your security requirements.
• Compliance checks: Check that regulations or company policies are followed through automated tests.
• Performance gates: Deploy Gates if performance is below a threshold.

The likes of Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, and others provide a way to introduce these gates as stages in their pipeline. When your NOC and SOC assets are built into this process, they contribute valuable data to inform whether a gate passes or fails.

PJ Networks’ DevSecOps Programs

So now, let us introduce PJ Networks into this picture. If you are in need of professional assistance with the NOC and SOC monitoring of DevOps and SecOps in order to integrate it into your pipepline, we offer custom DevSecOps support for business at PJ Networks.

What can PJ Networks do for you?

• Custom toolchain integration: Fully integrated monitoring (NOC) and security (SOC) tools in your CI/CD workflows.
• Security automation: Assist in implementing automated gates and shifting left security checks based on your tech stack.
• Real-time monitoring and incident response: NOC and SOC dashboards combined to give your teams 360-degree visibility and faster time to response.
• Training and consulting: Enable your team to adopt DevSecOps best practices and a culture of continuous improvement.

With PJ Networks there to support you, you don’t have to solve everything by yourself. They offer extensive expertise in cybersecurity, DevOps, and managed services that enable your CI/CD security to be well-aligned with the rest of your running network and security operations.

Conclusion

It is now required to integrate NOC and SOC monitoring into your DevOps CI/CD pipelines. For companies who want to keep their operations safe and move fast, it’s essential. With it, you have real time visibility, automated security checks and faster incident responses built in at each stage of your software delivery.

Remember these key ideas:

• Connect your toolchain for better data flow and faster action.
• Left shift security to find problems early, cheaper and easier.
• Maintain security and quality without the delay with automatic gates.
• Get specialist advice from PJ Networks to accelerate the journey to DevSecOps.

So, if you want to secure your DevOps pipeline and make it more robust, make NOC and SOC as part of the CI/CD pipeline using DevSecOps. You and your customers will be glad you did.

DevSecOps, CI/CD security and converged NOC SOC — these should be the three core components of your next software delivery strategy.