DevOps Security – Definition and guide
DevOps security interweaves security practices into the automated software development lifecycle, securing the entire delivery pipeline from code creation to production deployment. Unlike traditional security practices, which focus on protecting production environments, DevOps solutions shields the tools, processes, and automation employed to build and deploy software, addressing the development pipeline as mission-critical infrastructure requiring protection.
The Threat Landscape
Next-gen attackers have focused their attention away from traditional perimeter breaks and toward targeting the software delivery pipeline. This approach allows attackers to introduce threats earlier in the pipeline, bypassing conventional security controls. The 2020 SolarWinds attack is a prime example of this approach, where build environment modifications affected over 18,000 organizations through trusted software updates. Similarly, the 2021 CodeCov attack hijacked a build script to steal sensitive customer credentials from CI/CD environments.
The DevOps Security Paradox
The tension between development velocity and security creates a fundamental challenge. DevOps has revolutionized software delivery, emphasizing automation and efficiency, often accelerating deployment cycles from months to minutes. Traditional security models are ineffective in such environments because they were designed for sequential, waterfall processes with known timelines and human review points. Used in automated CI/CD pipelines, these approaches become organizational bottlenecks.
Critical Vulnerability Points in DevOps
Privileged Access Exploitation
DevOps environments operate under service accounts with extensive privileges that are sometimes more comprehensive than human administrators. This Machine identity has access rights across source code repositories, build systems, artifact storage, and production environments. A 2022 security survey indicated that 87% of organizations lack an inventory of pipeline service accounts, and 92% lack suitable credential rotation policies.
CI/CD Pipeline Integrity
Build servers are high-value assets for sophisticated attackers. Targeting Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions may allow attackers to inject malicious code directly into the software supply chain. One major bank discovered unauthorized access into their build environment that lasted six months before detection, revealing the pipeline security monitoring gaps.
Application Secret Proliferation
Authentication tokens, API keys, database credentials, and encryption certificates usually reside in configuration files, environment variables, and application code. A recent public GitHub repository scan found over 6 million leaked secrets, thousands directly linked to active DevOps pipelines. Such credentials usually persist with too many privileges that never expire.
Infrastructure Configuration Security
Infrastructure-as-code enables rapid provisioning but introduces new security threats. A survey of publicly available Terraform templates revealed that 43% contain one or more severe security misconfigurations, and the most common one is unnecessary permissions. Without validation, these flaws are propagated across environments by automation.
Strategic Security Controls
Identity and Access Governance
Enforce pipeline segmentation with different service accounts per phase (build, test, deploy) and respective access controls. One healthcare organization decreased its attack surface by 76% when it deployed this segmentation model.
Use short-lived credentials that rotate automatically through services such as HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager to minimize the impact window if credentials are exposed.
Enforce continuous specific monitoring to detect suspicious pipeline credential use patterns and provide early warning of compromise.
Pipeline Security
Hardening CI/CD servers by adopting vendor-specific security guidelines from vendors like Jenkins, CircleCI, and GitHub.
Enforcing build tool and plugin integrity checks to prevent supply chain attacks via contaminated dependencies.
Enforcing strict change control for pipeline configuration files, especially those defining security-critical steps.
A technology firm caught and defended against a supply chain attack when their pipeline monitoring detected unauthorized modification of their build configuration during a routine update.
Evolution of Secrets Management
Remove hardcoded credentials from infrastructure templates, config files, and application code.
Grant just-in-time access provisioning by integrating with existing authentication systems.
Enforce credential lifecycle policies like automatic rotation, scoping appropriately, and periodic access review.
Supply Chain Validation
Deep dependency scanning is integral to building pipelines so known vulnerable components never reach the environment.
Software bills of materials (SBOMs) are produced and kept for each application.
Artifact signing and checking were implemented as part of the deployment process.
Implementation Roadmap: Step by Step
- Discover and Inventory: Map your environment’s pipeline items, service accounts, and secrets. Transparency enables targeted remediation.
- Secure Credentials: Utilize centralized secrets management for pipeline credentials, starting with the highest privilege account.
- Harden Build Systems: Implement security controls on CI/CD servers while rolling out minimum change detection on pipeline configurations.
- Extend Protection: Implement infrastructure validation, complete monitoring, supply chain security controls, and your program development.
Measuring Success
Time to remediate vulnerabilities in pipeline components (target: <7 days for critical issues) Percentage of secrets stored securely in vaults versus baked into code (>95%)
Percentage of builds with security scanning enabled (100% for production releases)
Mean time to detect security issues in the pipeline (ongoing improvement)
These metrics help to promote security improvements while emphasizing the areas where more work remains.
Security as a Business Enabler
Adequate DevOps security makes security an enabler of business instead of an inhibitor. Organizations embracing these practices see:
76% fewer security incidents in production
54% reduced delay due to security in deployments
68% more effective compliance verification
42% faster mean-time-to-remediate issues discovered
By using security controls as a built-in component of the development pipeline, automated, repeatable, and developer-friendly security organizations maintain the speed benefit of DevOps while significantly improving their security posture.
Related content
Related resources
