AppSec USA 2016

Application Security in a DevOps World: Three Methods for Shifting Left 
Operations has always resided clearly outside of development. Release candidates are tossed over the fence by development and operations was expected to “just make it work.” The same can be said about many other activities, including application security. This isn’t intended to be derision aimed at development—it’s just a feature of how processes have historically been demarcated. 
But with the emergence of the DevOps movement, organizations are beginning to apply the “shift-left” principle associated with early testing toward other facets of application development. Security, which has been treated as something you can test into an application, should be built into an application according to DevOps principles. 
In this presentation, we discuss how to get development and operations working together to build security into the application. We’ll outline three methods and discuss their merits and drawbacks:
• Penetration testing: This is the approach most commonly used.
• Hybrid testing: By applying flow (dynamic analysis) early in the process, you can that look for possible paths through the code that lead to security flaws.
• Preventative testing: By taking a standards-based approach and implementing a set of activities that target defects that lead to security vulnerabilities, you are able to get ahead of security issues that diminish the effectiveness of DevOps approaches.