Currently, the way DevSecOps is typically implemented is incompatible with the rapid and agile DevOps CI/CD pipeline. It's like trying to put out a modern forest fire using 19th-century firefighting techniques.

To put out a fire, firefighters used a "bucket brigade," in which they formed a line and passed buckets from one hand to another. It is, without a doubt, a lot of work, but much of it is in vain. Water spills out of the buckets as they are passed from one person to the next, and half of the water is gone by the time the bucket is emptied into the fire. Not only is so much effort wasted, but it is also far too slow and ineffective to combat the types of wildfires we face today.

Similarly, current DevSecOps initiatives' largely manual methods are ineffective in putting out the fires of digital threats and cyberattacks that modern mobile apps face. These threats and attacks, like a modern megafire, are growing and changing by the second, looking for new vectors to spark new attacks elsewhere. Traditional DevSecOps tools such as code scanning and penetration testing identify vulnerabilities, and security teams then begin the manual "bucket brigade" to add as much protection against them as possible before the app is released. However, neither the threats nor the CI/CD process have stopped. New features have been added, resulting in new vulnerabilities, and the threat landscape has changed. Pentesting is inefficient because it cannot provide the kind of real-time data about attacks and threats that developers require to protect against current threats. As a result, vulnerable mobile apps have been released.

The Importance of Automation

However, having data isn't enough. Manual implementation methods are too slow and cumbersome to keep up with the rapidly changing threat landscape for mobile apps, and development teams require the ability to act quickly on the insights provided. Once the decision has been made, a system must be in place to automate the incorporation of mobile app security, anti-fraud, and anti-cheat safeguards from within the CI/CD pipeline, ensuring that security implementation runs as smoothly as feature creation.

The benefits of data-driven DevSecOps as a Service are numerous. For starters, publishers, developers, and security teams will be able to see exactly what cybercriminals are doing to their own apps with real users. With this data and the wealth of other data that organizations can collect from their apps, they can determine which threats are the most pressing, which are emerging quickly, and even how they are distributed across different geographic regions—all of which is extremely valuable information when deciding which protections to build into the next release.

Finally, once the app is released, teams can use the data they collect about threats and attacks to demonstrate the effectiveness and value of each security feature. It's critical information not only for continuous improvement, but also for convincing management and the C-suite of the value of data-driven DevSecOps.

With data-driven DevSecOps, organizations can provide security data, transparency, and visibility to all stakeholders in the CI/CD process—all while making security incorporation far more efficient and effective, with real-time data to prove it.

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