CloudBees announced the integration of CloudBees’ continuous delivery and release orchestration solution, CloudBees CD/RO, with Argo Rollouts.
Recent events, including Log4Shell and President Biden's cybersecurity executive order, have placed the software supply chain under scrutiny. Gartner named software supply chain attacks the second biggest threat for 2022 and predicted that 45% of organizations will have experienced one or more software supply chain attacks by 2025. However, in the fight to secure the software supply chain one particular non-malicious risk is often overlooked: the developer.
What Threat Do Developers Pose?
Developers power the software supply chain. They work alongside other professionals in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) to bring new applications, services, and products to market. However, security is often surrendered in the quest for productivity, business growth and innovation, and insecure software can be produced inadvertently.
A recent survey found that software engineers only have about 10 hours of "deep work" time a week due to other responsibilities placed on them. What's more, the industry is currently facing a shortage of talent that places added pressure on existing developers. This lack of time and resources means many do not have the capacity to properly vet the open source software they're using. While the practice of open source is extremely valuable for developers, an average application development project contains nearly 50 vulnerabilities spanning 80 direct dependencies. Being aware of this risk and making the time to review potential security issues is an integral part of creating sophisticated applications and services.
Understandably, developers are struggling to keep up. They also do not often have access to the resources they need to tackle the problem of security. Forrester research revealed that none of the top 50 undergraduate computer science programs in the US require a secure coding or secure application design class. Most professionals therefore enter the industry with little to no training on how to prevent vulnerabilities. Once there, they can encounter a culture that fails to place security-first, with 71% of CISOs claiming stakeholders view security as an impediment to fast development. It is therefore hard to blame developers for neither understanding nor prioritizing security.
As a result, a developer may become a non-malicious insider threat, putting the security of applications at risk and exposing the organization to external threats. This type of insider threat does not commit acts of deliberate sabotage, but they may inadvertently cause security issues every bit as impactful as if they did. When producing code faster than ever before, it is easy for vulnerabilities to be missed or ignored. Many vulnerabilities may go undiscovered for a significant period of time, with some existing in open source code for four years before being detected. By the time a critical flaw is detected, a developer may feel far removed from the code they wrote. When developers can't discover their errors, they also can't learn from them. And the follow-on effect is that insecure code creates costly refactoring for the rest of the development team, delaying the highly coveted speed to market.
What Can Be Done?
It is time that application security is viewed as a people-first problem. Developers have the potential to reduce security hazards and prevent data breaches from occurring through insecure code exploits. They also have the opportunity to embrace security best practice early on in the SDLC to support DevOps with pushing more secure code and delivering a safe product to market, fast. However, they need education to support this. This should:
1. Go beyond ‘check-the-box' awareness exercises
One-off awareness programs are no longer enough; training must be an evolving journey to better understanding and decision-making. It should never be a check-the-box, "one and done" exercise, but instead a programmatic and continuous process. In an era of Zero Day attacks and supply chains that incorporate increasingly complex elements, training must evolve alongside security threats to arm teams with the knowledge they need to become a security resource rather than an uninformed risk.
2. Set measurable goals
To ensure a training program is successful, it is important to gather information that can be used to measure progress. This might be the number of vulnerabilities that appear within a developer's code before and after training, or the number of vulnerabilities they can detect and fix. As developers progress through their training, providing feedback helps to incentivize improvement and ensures employees stay engaged with the program. Providing tangible reports also helps to get buy-in and support from stakeholders. And by sharing proven success, security training doesn't have to be constantly defended to a board of directors.
3. Remain relevant
It is important that training aligns with the day-to-day issues of developers, is delivered in their relevant coding language, and specific to the role they have in the organization. No education will resonate if it's far too advanced, too basic or irrelevant to the language they use each day. What's more, its critical developers are provided with context — not just what the solution is, but why it matters.
4. Incentivize security success
Organizations should be offering incentives and rewards to the people that are consistently applying security best practices in their day-to-day work. These don't have to be monetary, but whatever best suits the culture of a business. The most accomplished developers can be considered Security "champions" who then set an example, engage others and organically improve security culture.
Where Next?
Software developers bear a lot of responsibility within the SDLC. As much as it is important to recognize the potential insider threat they pose to organizations, it's also crucial to realize their value. A developer that is educated in secure coding best practice can be an extremely strong defense against cyberattacks. If they understand the key principles of security — the "big ideas" in secure coding — they will become flexible problem solvers able to apply each of these concepts to novel situations, and therefore they are invaluable assets for the rest of the DevOps team looking to deliver secure software. Yet this can only be achieved through continuous application security education.
Industry News
amazee.io, a Mirantis company, announced that its fully-managed application delivery platform is available in AWS Marketplace.
env0 secured an additional $18.1 million of funding to conclude its Series A investment round with a total of $35.1 million.
Planview announced a new strategic collaboration with UiPath. The integration is designed to fuse the UiPath Business Automation Platform with the Planview Value Stream Management (VSM) solution Planview® Tasktop Hub.
Noname Security announced major enhancements to its API security platform to help organizations protect their API ecosystem, secure their applications, and increase cyber resilience.
Mirantis announced the latest version of Mirantis Container Cloud -- MCC 2.23 -- that simplifies operations with the ability to monitor applications performance with a new Grafana dashboard and to make updates to Kubernetes clusters with a one-click “upgrade” button from a web interface.
Pegasystems announced updates to Pega Cloud supported by an enhanced Global Operations Center to deliver a more scalable, reliable, and secure foundation for its suite of AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation solutions.
D2iQ announced the launch of DKP Gov, a new container-management solution optimized for deployment within the government sector.
StackHawk announced the availability of StackHawk Pro and StackHawk Enterprise for trial and purchase through the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace.
Octopus Deploy announced the results KinderSystems has seen working with Octopus. Through the use of Octopus, KinderSystems automates its software deployment processes to meet the complex needs of its customers and reduce the time to deploy software.
Elastic Path announced Integrations Hub, a library of instant-on, no-code integrations that are fully managed and hosted by Elastic Path.
Yugabyte announced key updates to YugabyteDB Managed, including the launch of the YugabyteDB Managed Command Line Interface (CLI).
Ambassador Labs released Telepresence for Docker, designed to make it easy for developer teams to build, test and deliver apps at scale across Kubernetes.
Fermyon Technologies introduced Spin 1.0, a major new release of the serverless functions framework based on WebAssembly.
Torc announced the acquisition of coding performance measurement application Codealike to empower software developers with even more data that increases skills, job opportunities and enterprise value.