JFrog announced a new machine learning (ML) lifecycle integration between JFrog Artifactory and MLflow, an open source software platform originally developed by Databricks.
The previous blog in this WhiteHat Security series highlighted the individual build, release and run stages within the app-building process, and the appropriate security posture to incorporate within each of these phases.
Start with Security and the Twelve-Factor App - Step 1
Start with Security and the Twelve-Factor App - Step 2
Start with Security and the Twelve-Factor App - Step 3
Start with Security and the Twelve-Factor App - Step 4
Start with Security and the Twelve-Factor App - Step 5
Step 6 of the Twelve-Factor App methodology encourages executing the app as one or more stateless processes. Here is some actionable security-focused advice which developers and ops engineers can follow during the SaaS build and operations stages.
Defining Processes in the Twelve-Factor App
In this sixth step, the Twelve-Factor methodology encourages executing the app as one or more stateless processes by using small programs that communicate over the network. In other words Twelve-factor processes are stateless and contained in a shared-nothing (SN) architecture, a distributed-computing architecture in which each node is independent and self-sufficient, and there is no single point of contention across the system. More specifically, none of the nodes share memory or disk storage. The benefits of SN architecture include eliminating any single point of failure, allowing self-healing capabilities. and providing an advantage in offering non-disruptive upgrade.
Many organizations are undertaking a “re-platforming” journey, in which the overarching platform is broken up into smaller programs that are more service focused, enabling changes to be made more quickly.
Applying Security to Step 6
Unfortunately, a major security drawback of this journey is that when you start to break up a big building block into smaller pieces, the attack surface increases. This means there are more places where requests can be sent to your infrastructure, which equates to more opportunities to send an attack. Assumptions about how code would be invoked by their callers will change when migrating to service oriented architectures, and some of those changes impact security. By way of example, consider the WhiteHat Security 2018 Stats Report. This report compared vulnerability related security metrics between monolith and microservices architectures and found that for every 100KLOC, monolith applications had 39 vulnerabilities whereas microservices had 180 vulnerabilities. Be mindful of legacy code that is being exposed over the network as you break up your app into services, as such code may have been written without security in mind.
Read Security and the Twelve-Factor App - Step 7, which focuses on exporting services via port binding, and what to apply from a security point of view.
Industry News
Copado announced the general availability of Test Copilot, the AI-powered test creation assistant.
SmartBear has added no-code test automation powered by GenAI to its Zephyr Scale, the solution that delivers scalable, performant test management inside Jira.
Opsera announced that two new patents have been issued for its Unified DevOps Platform, now totaling nine patents issued for the cloud-native DevOps Platform.
mabl announced the addition of mobile application testing to its platform.
Spectro Cloud announced the achievement of a new Amazon Web Services (AWS) Competency designation.
GitLab announced the general availability of GitLab Duo Chat.
SmartBear announced a new version of its API design and documentation tool, SwaggerHub, integrating Stoplight’s API open source tools.
Red Hat announced updates to Red Hat Trusted Software Supply Chain.
Tricentis announced the latest update to the company’s AI offerings with the launch of Tricentis Copilot, a suite of solutions leveraging generative AI to enhance productivity throughout the entire testing lifecycle.
CIQ launched fully supported, upstream stable kernels for Rocky Linux via the CIQ Enterprise Linux Platform, providing enhanced performance, hardware compatibility and security.
Redgate launched an enterprise version of its database monitoring tool, providing a range of new features to address the challenges of scale and complexity faced by larger organizations.
Snyk announced the expansion of its current partnership with Google Cloud to advance secure code generated by Google Cloud’s generative-AI-powered collaborator service, Gemini Code Assist.
Kong announced the commercial availability of Kong Konnect Dedicated Cloud Gateways on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Pegasystems announced the general availability of Pega Infinity ’24.1™.