DevOps vs DevSecOps: What Are the Unique Benefits of Each Approach? Find Out How to Optimize Your Development

In the debate of DevOps vs. DevSecOps, which emerges as the preferred software development process for modern organizations? Is it even a debate? DevOps marries development and operations to streamline and speed up the development process; DevSecOps introduces security as a significant consideration, which causes contradictions in more ways than one. We’ll talk about those contradictions and more. First, we’ll start by defining DevOps and DevSecOps. Then, discuss their similarities, differences, and best practices for implementing them.

Understanding DevOps and Its Benefits

To understand anything novel in software development, we must first understand why it emerged. Why was DevOps created? What problems was DevOps supposed to solve? Development and operations (DevOps) came together to create a faster and more agile software development process. This transition had many benefits. Previously, development teams worked in a silent, fractured assembly line, not talking, sharing, communicating, or working together.

This stultifying process led to inefficiencies that were costly and laborious to remedy. However, to overcome these hindrances, all stakeholders realized monumental and cultural shifts needed to occur. This motivation led to the creation of the four pillars that hold up DevOps, which are:

• Culture
• Automation
• Measurement
• Sharing

From these four principles, DevOps revolutionized software development. The benefits of DevOps and DevOps practices, such as continuous practices (integration, delivery, and deployment), are evident and substantial. Companies can deploy software updates quicker and more frequently than before. Because of these successes, DevOps rippled through the development community to become the industry standard.

However, after implementing DevOps, stakeholders realized it had a crucial vulnerability: security. Software built, tested, and released according to DevOps practices was vulnerable to attacks, mainly when users interacted with and used the software or application. At this juncture, security concerns were introduced into the DevOps cycle, creating DevSecOps.

Exploring DevSecOps and Its Advantages

Now, we can define DevSecOps and how it differs from DevOps. We already mentioned that DevSecOps is a spin-off of DevOps, but it is only more security-focused—the “sec” in DevSecOps. But what does it mean precisely? How does DevSecOps manifest in the development process? Security has become a significant concern in software development, especially in SaaS. According to findings published in GitHub’s Global DevSecOps Report, security ranked as the #1 investment priority for over 5,000 industry professionals in 2024.

This prioritizing of security comes as no surprise. Accessing software through a cloud makes it more vulnerable than traditional SaaC models. As such, developers realized that security concerns should be addressed during development rather than when products and software were released. Reconfiguring the CI/CD pipeline meant that developers could add more tests at the testing stage to be able to find security vulnerabilities and fix them before delivery or deployment. This approach also led to other improvements, such as:

• Adding a layer of security before delivery without affecting speed or code quality
• Creating new defenses and shoring up existing protections against new types of malware and viruses
• Creating new testing regimens and processes to keep up with the changing nature of cyber threats
• Bringing together disparate elements of the SDLC, such as engineers, system admins, security professionals, and developers, to reduce miscommunication and coalesce around a shared goal

However, despite all these benefits, many organizations have had difficulty adopting DevSecOps. Some of those implementation difficulties relate to the abovementioned principles - culture, automation, measurement, and sharing - and how companies fail to follow them. If they adopt automation, they fail to keep and analyze metrics. If they meet their KPIs, the culture stays the same, and so on. Understanding these challenges is crucial to empathizing with the difficulties of implementing DevSecOps.

In the upcoming section, we’ll detail specific cases where even the most adept organizations have either struggled to implement DevSecOps or do not see the need to take the security of the software development cycle seriously, leading to breaches and other security issues at the other end of the pipeline. Afterward, we’ll also explore the matrices where DevOps and DevSecOps intersect and how, as we’ve mentioned, the differences between DevOps and DevSecOps are few, even though some differences between DevOps and DevSecOps exist.

Optimizing Your Development with DevOps and DevSecOps

The choice between DevSecOps vs. DevOps comes down to the organization and vertical involved. While many businesses and organizations understand the benefits of following a DevSecOps model, adopting it is another matter. In a telling example of how even the largest, most technically adept organizations struggle to implement DevSecOps, the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) released a report on the struggles the US federal government was having in implementing DevSecOps.

The study found that, despite all the government’s resources, technology, and expertise, DevSecOps practices were difficult to implement because “each agency has different and unique challenges even while sharing similar components.” This finding only shows that DevSecOps sounds excellent on paper, but many organizations, for various reasons, including the “different and unique challenges” mentioned in the ACT-IAC report, are unsuccessful in their attempts to integrate it. Ultimately, the ACT-IAC report found that a successful transition to DevSecOps from DevOps “relies on a holistic approach that addresses both technical and cultural aspects of the organization.”

In the private sector, businesses have also run into problems incorporating DevSecOps. A comprehensive study of Chinese companies trying to implement DevSecOpos reveals how they experienced the same problems as the American government in trying to make their software development processes more secure without sacrificing performance. The study found that the issues plaguing companies trying to implement DevSecOps were classifiable into internal and external categories.

However, beyond the challenges, the study also found that 40% of the companies surveyed had successfully adopted DevSecOps into their processes despite the obstacles, internally and externally. This percentage also reveals that close to 60% of the companies involved in the survey have not adopted security into their processes for reasons we’ll explore in the section about the commonalities and differences between DevOps and DevSecOps.

Best Practices for Implementing DevOps

Since DevOps’ inception, several studies and SLRs have tried to discover the best practices for implementing it. A critical source of information is “gray literature,” which consists of informal thoughts and observations written and distributed by practitioners, such as front-line engineers and developers. A thorough examination of this gray literature has helped researchers and industry professionals discover the main challenges to DevOps implementation and the best practices for successful integration.

Culture Change

Circling back to the four main pillars of DevOps, study after study has found that the most significant challenge to DevOps is the human element. This finding means that professionals accustomed to manual testing and integration or whatever practice they use to refrain from adopting DevOps practices such as continuous integration or delivery, basically not wanting to cede control to automation or working with other stakeholders. But, one of the core tenets of successful DevOps implementation is collaboration and continuous improvement. When teams work together harmoniously and are encouraged to share knowledge and feedback, they can quickly identify and resolve issues, leading to more efficient workflows and higher-quality software delivery, which are ultimately the aims of DevOps. However, it is important to remember that despite a shift in thinking from practitioners and developers, several challenges can still exist to successful implementation, so it is not all about winning hearts and minds; technical challenges might also pop up.

Embrace Automation to Enhance Efficiency

Automation is a cornerstone of DevOps, streamlining repetitive tasks and reducing the potential for human error. According to a case study published in the Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering, implementing automation pipelines enabled organizations to achieve substantial benefits, such as increasing deployment frequencies from 30 to 120 monthly releases. Automating continuous integration, testing, and deployment can speed up delivery times and ensure more consistent and reliable outcomes. Adopting tools supporting automated workflows can free your team to focus on more strategic tasks.

Implement Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) Pipelines

CI/CD pipelines are critical for maintaining a continuous flow of code changes from development to production. As noted in the studies cited above and countless others, having a robust CI/CD pipeline allows for quick detection and resolution of issues, enabling rapid and reliable software releases. By continuously integrating code changes and automatically deploying them to production, you can minimize the risks associated with manual deployments and ensure that new features and bug fixes reach users faster and more reliably. This practice not only improves the overall quality of the software but also increases the agility of your development process.

Best Practices for Implementing DevSecOps

The similarities between the best practices for DevOps and DevSecOps may provoke some to ask, “What is the difference between DevOps and DevSecOps?” - it is a legitimate question. The similarities are in the emphasis on culture change, leadership, and getting teams to develop skills such as:

• Communication
• Collaboration
• User-centered mindset
• Being open to the ideas and opinions of others

However, there are differences. Companies must address many areas, such as whether their teams have sufficient knowledge and training on DevSecOps or the right tools and processes to make a seamless transition. Below, we’ll detail what practitioners and researchers have discovered to be the most beneficial best practices when applying DevSecOps.

Educate and Train Your Team

Ongoing education and training for your development, security, and operations teams are vital to stay ahead of evolving security threats. Aside from that, you also have to recognize potential leaders in your ranks and delegate tasks to people with the requisite talent and determination of expertise. The ACT-IAC study also advocated developing a new generation of managers to better disseminate the DevSecOps philosophy. Regular training sessions, workshops, and certifications help team members understand the latest security practices and tools. A study from the Information and Software Technology journal indicates that organizations investing in regular security training see a 60% improvement in managing security risks effectively. For instance, incorporating security training into your onboarding process ensures that all new team members are well-versed in your organization’s security protocols from day one.

Automate Security Testing

Automation is crucial in DevOps, as it is DevSecOps, to maintain the balance between speed and security. Automating security tests, such as static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), and software composition analysis (SCA), allows you to identify vulnerabilities quickly and efficiently. These tests have become the de-facto processes by which teams add a security component to the SDLC. The IEEE Software Journal highlights that automation can reduce manual errors and speed up the deployment process by 30%. For example, integrating automated security tools into your CI/CD pipeline ensures that security checks are consistently applied without slowing down development.

Integrate Security Early and Continuously

Implementing security measures early and throughout the development lifecycle is crucial to DevSecOps. Some might say it is the quintessential step to convert your DevOps operation into a DevSecOps project. By integrating security from the start, you can identify and address vulnerabilities before they escalate into more significant issues, which is the whole basis for DevSecOps and is something that DevOps ignores, at least unwittingly. This approach of security first, known as "shift-left" security, ensures that security is a shared responsibility among all team members, not just the security team. According to a study by Sonatype, organizations that integrate security early in the development process experience 48% fewer security incidents.

Comparing DevOps and DevSecOps

DevOps and DevSecOps share many similarities, but the one difference between them is critical. DevOps is all about speed, but DevSecOps focuses more on security, and these two motivations compete. Having top-notch security on all your software releases is the goal. Still, it is difficult to achieve when you are hard-pressed for time and pressured by managers and administrators to deploy continuously, which is the main thrust of DevOps. How companies manage these two competing forces is the basis for successfully implementing both. Below, we’ve outlined the main similarities and differences between DevOps and DevSecOps, highlighting their similarities and differences pertaining to several categories, such as tools, cultural shifts, and automation.

Vodworks’ Approach to DevOps and DevSecOps

Hopefully, we’ve illustrated how tough it can be for even the most well-funded and largest organizations to balance speed (DevOps) and security (DevSecOps). Fortunately, Vodworks has expertise in helping all types of organizations, from small start-ups to multinationals, transition from traditional, non-agile methodologies to DevOps or DevOps to DevSecOps. But Vodworks doesn’t make your business fit the solution; we work with you to find a more bespoke solution that speaks to your business goals and strategies. If you want to instigate a complete overhaul to your processes or just need quality advice from professionals, contact Vodworks.