# DevSecOps: Bringing Code Security into the CI/CD Pipeline

**URL:** https://securesys.com.tr/en/learning/source-code-analysis/devsecops-code-security-in-cicd-pipeline

![DevSecOps: Bringing Code Security into the CI/CD Pipeline](/images/bilgi-merkezi/covers/cover-kod-09.webp)

Modern software development teams now focus not only on producing better software but on producing it faster.

New features are developed in shorter periods.

Code changes are pushed to repository systems many times a day.

Thanks to CI/CD pipelines, testing, build and deployment processes are becoming automatic.

This speed gives businesses a major advantage.

But an important question arises on the security side:

#### While software development accelerates this much, how will security controls be applied at the same speed?

In the traditional method, security usually came into play at the end of the software development process.

The application would be developed.

Testing would be completed.

The release would approach.

At the final stage it would be sent to the security team.

A pentest would be done.

Source code analysis would be carried out.

If a critical vulnerability was found, the application would go back to the development team.

This model looked workable in periods of slow releases.

But today, in an organisation making dozens of deployments a day, the same model is not sustainable.

A manual security test cannot be done before every deployment.

Every pull request cannot be examined one by one by a security specialist.

Every dependency update cannot be assessed manually.

Security controls therefore need to become a natural part of the software development process.

This is exactly where the **DevSecOps** approach comes in.

DevSecOps aims to stop security being a checkpoint that confronts development teams at the final stage.

It aims to integrate security into the whole chain:

**Planning → Coding → Commit → Build → Test → Release → Deployment → Production**

One of the most important principles of this approach is:

**Security must not stop the speed of development; it must make secure development automatic.**

### \1. What Is DevSecOps?

DevSecOps is formed from the combination of Development, Security and Operations.

Its basic aim is the integration of security into DevOps processes.

But assessing DevSecOps merely as adding a few security tools into the CI/CD pipeline would be incomplete.

A real DevSecOps approach consists of three basic components:

#### People

#### Process

#### Technology

On the people side, developers, security specialists and operations teams work together.

On the process side, security requirements and policies are brought into the software development life cycle.

On the technology side, security controls are automated as far as possible.

DevSecOps is therefore not a product.

Buying a SAST licence is not DevSecOps on its own either.

DevSecOps is a broader working model.

### \2. What Is the Difference Between DevOps and DevSecOps?

One of the basic aims of DevOps is to reduce the barriers between development and operations teams.

The developer writes code.

The pipeline runs automated tests.

The build is created.

The application is taken automatically into the relevant environment.

DevSecOps brings security into this process.

A classic DevOps pipeline might be:

#### Commit

↓

#### Unit Test

↓

#### Build

↓

#### Deploy

A DevSecOps pipeline can be extended to:

#### Commit

↓

#### Secret Scanning

↓

#### SAST

↓

#### SCA

↓

#### Unit Test

↓

#### Build

↓

#### Container Scan

↓

#### Security Quality Gate

↓

#### Deploy

The basic difference is that security becomes part of the automated development flow.

### \3. Why Is DevSecOps Necessary?

At modern software development speed it is not possible to rely on manual security processes alone.

Imagine an organisation with 100 developers.

Each developer may make several commits a day on average.

That means hundreds of code changes.

It is not realistic for the security team to examine all those changes manually.

Automation is therefore needed.

DevSecOps does not aim for the security team to examine every line of code manually;

**it aims for them to turn security knowledge into automated controls.**

### \4. The Relationship Between Shift Left and DevSecOps

One of the basic concepts of DevSecOps is the **Shift Left Security** approach.

The traditional software development flow is thought of from left to right:

**Planning → Design → Development → Test → Production**

If security is performed only on the right-hand side, problems are detected late.

The Shift Left approach moves security to earlier stages.

For example:

Threat modeling during design.

Secure coding while writing code.

Secret scanning at commit.

SAST at pull request.

SCA during build.

A security problem can then be detected before it reaches production.

### \5. Does Shift Left Mean Moving Everything Left?

No.

Shift Left is sometimes misunderstood.

The aim is not to move every security test onto the developer's machine.

The appropriate stage differs for every security control.

SAST is very valuable at the early stage, for example.

But the real WAF behaviour in the production environment can only be seen at runtime.

A pentest also produces value on the running application.

The ideal model is therefore the:

#### Shift Left + Shift Right

approach.

Security continues both at the development stage and at the running stage.

### \6. What Is CI?

CI — **Continuous Integration** — refers to the frequent integration of developers' code changes into the central repository.

When code is pushed, operations such as:

- build,
- unit tests,
- quality control

can run automatically.

One of the most important integration points for security controls is the CI process.

Because a security problem can be seen before it is taken into the main branch.

### \7. What Is CD?

CD can be used in two different ways:

#### Continuous Delivery

or

#### Continuous Deployment

In continuous delivery the application is kept in a state where it can always be taken into production, but the final deployment may require manual approval.

In continuous deployment, code that passes the necessary controls can be taken into production automatically.

In both cases having security controls inside the pipeline is critically important.

Because if deployment is automatic, insecure code can go to production at the same speed.

### \8. What Is a CI/CD Pipeline?

A CI/CD pipeline is the automated chain of operations software code passes through from the developer to the production environment.

For example:

#### Source

↓

#### Compile

↓

#### Test

↓

#### Build

↓

#### Package

↓

#### Deploy

The DevSecOps approach adds security controls to this chain.

The pipeline then does not only produce software.

It also checks whether the software meets the defined security criteria.

### \9. Where Should the DevSecOps Pipeline Begin?

The ideal security pipeline begins before the developer pushes code to the remote repository.

For example:

#### IDE

A security warning while code is being written.

#### Pre-Commit

Secret scanning.

#### Pull Request

SAST and SCA.

#### Build

Full security scan.

#### Test Environment

DAST and API security.

#### Release

Security Quality Gate.

#### Production

Continuous monitoring.

This approach distributes security across the whole life cycle rather than to one point.

### \10. What Is IDE Security?

Security plugins can be integrated into the IDE the developer uses.

When the developer uses an insecure function, for example, the IDE can show a warning immediately.

This approach is extremely valuable.

Because the developer sees the security error at the moment they write the code, not in a report weeks later.

The shorter this feedback loop, the easier remediation becomes.

### \11. The Developer Feedback Loop

One of the most important goals of DevSecOps is reducing the security feedback time.

If a vulnerability is found two months later during a pentest, for example, the developer may have forgotten the code in question.

If the same flaw is found at the pull request stage, the code is still fresh in the developer's mind.

The fix can be made much faster.

The ideal security system therefore:

**should show the problem as close as possible to the moment the code was created.**

### \12. Pre-Commit Security

Pre-commit security is the set of security checks carried out before code is pushed to the repository.

One of the most suitable controls is secret scanning.

A developer accidentally tries to commit a file containing a production API key, for example.

The pre-commit check detects the secret.

The commit is stopped.

The information then never enters the remote repository history.

This is a far stronger security approach than performing credential rotation after the event.

### \13. Pull Request Security

The pull request or merge request stage is one of the most valuable control points for DevSecOps.

The code has not yet been taken into the main branch.

The developer has completed their changes.

An automated security scan can be run.

Controls such as:

- SAST
- SCA
- Secret Scanning
- IaC Security

can be carried out automatically.

The finding can be shown to the developer on the pull request screen.

### \14. Security Review Inside the Pull Request

Carrying the security finding into the developer's working environment is more effective than presenting it in a separate PDF report.

Next to the relevant line of code, for example, the warning:

#### High – Potential SQL Injection

can be shown.

Beneath it:

- an explanation of the problem,
- the CWE information,
- a secure code recommendation

can be present.

This approach significantly improves developer experience.

### \15. How Is SAST Integrated into the Pipeline?

SAST can generally be run after the code is checked out.

Example:

#### Git Checkout

↓

#### SAST Scan

↓

#### Result Analysis

↓

#### Quality Gate

↓

#### Build

If there are new critical or high findings as a result of SAST, the pipeline can be stopped according to policy.

But the build should not be stopped because of every finding.

A risk-based approach is needed.

### \16. Why Does Incremental SAST Matter?

In large applications a full SAST analysis can take a long time.

A 45-minute scan on every pull request can worsen the developer experience.

Incremental scanning can therefore be used.

Only changed code and the related data flows are analysed.

For example, the model:

**Pull Request → Incremental Scan**

**Nightly Build → Full Scan**

can be used.

A balance is thus struck between speed and security.

### \17. SCA Pipeline Integration

SCA can be run inside the pipeline to analyse dependency files or the build output.

For example, the files:

package-lock.json

pom.xml

requirements.txt

can be checked.

If a dependency with a critical CVE is detected, the developer can be warned.

A fixed version can be recommended.

### \18. What Should the SCA Quality Gate Be?

The build should not be blocked on every CVE.

A risk model might use these criteria together, for example:

- Critical severity
- Reachable
- Public exploit
- Internet-facing application

A dependency vulnerability meeting these conditions can stop the build.

Lower-risk findings can be taken into the backlog.

This prevents the developer facing hundreds of unnecessary security warnings.

### \19. Secret Scanning Pipeline Integration

Secret scanning should run as early as possible.

But it can also be used as a second control inside the CI/CD pipeline.

The developer may have bypassed the pre-commit check, for example.

If the pipeline detects a secret, the build can be stopped.

Findings such as:

- production API keys,
- private keys,
- cloud credentials

can be suitable for automatic blocking in particular.

### \20. What Should Happen if an Active Secret Is Detected?

The pipeline should not stop at merely saying:

**"A secret was found."**

If an active production credential has entered the repository, the event can become a security incident.

The process should then proceed as:

#### Block

↓

#### Revoke

↓

#### Rotate

↓

#### Investigate

Because if the secret has entered the Git history, deleting it from the code is not enough.

### \21. What Is IaC Security?

Modern DevOps teams manage infrastructure as code too.

Terraform, Kubernetes YAML and similar Infrastructure as Code configurations can be used.

Security misconfigurations can be present in these files.

Problems such as:

- public storage,
- an open firewall rule,
- a privileged container,
- excessive IAM permissions

can be detected at an early stage with IaC scanning tools.

### \22. Why Does Infrastructure as Code Matter for Shift Left?

In a cloud environment a security problem can be detected after it reaches production.

But the same error can be found in the Terraform file before deployment even happens.

A storage bucket being public can be seen in the IaC, for example.

The pipeline can stop the deployment.

This ensures the cloud misconfiguration never reaches production at all.

### \23. How Is Container Security Added to the Pipeline?

In applications using containers, image scanning can be done after the build.

The pipeline can proceed as:

#### Code

↓

#### SAST

↓

#### SCA

↓

#### Docker Build

↓

#### Container Scan

↓

#### Sign Image

↓

#### Deploy

During the container scan, both application dependency and OS package vulnerabilities can be detected.

### \24. Base Image Policy

Developers using container base images at random can increase supply chain risk.

Corporate policy can permit only approved base images to be used.

Inside the internal registry, for example:

#### Approved Base Images

can be held.

The images are patched regularly.

Developers do not pull unknown images directly from a public registry.

### \25. Container Image Signing

After the build completes, the image can be signed digitally.

The deployment system can accept only images signed by the trusted CI/CD pipeline.

This helps prevent the following attack:

The attacker uploads a malicious image to the registry.

Kubernetes tries to run that image.

The signature policy says:

**No trusted signature → Deployment rejected.**

This is a strong control in supply chain security.

### \26. What Is a Security Quality Gate?

A Security Quality Gate is the security criterion software must meet in order to pass to the next stage of the pipeline.

A policy might be:

- No new critical SAST findings.
- No reachable critical dependencies.
- No active secrets.
- No critical exploitable CVEs in the container.

If any of these conditions is not met, the pipeline can be stopped.

### \27. What Is the Purpose of a Quality Gate?

The purpose is not to make the developer's life harder.

The purpose is to prevent unacceptable security risk reaching production.

A Quality Gate answers this question:

**"Does this release meet the minimum security level the organisation accepts?"**

That threshold is determined by the organisation's risk appetite.

### \28. Should Every Security Finding Stop the Build?

No.

This is one of the biggest mistakes made in DevSecOps projects.

If SAST produces 500 low findings, for example, they should not all stop the build.

Otherwise developers may try to disable the security tool.

The Quality Gate might be:

**Critical → Block**

**High → According to risk and application criticality**

**Medium → Ticket**

**Low → Backlog**

This is only an example.

It should be customised to the enterprise risk model.

### \29. Distinguishing New from Existing Vulnerabilities

Legacy applications can have thousands of historic security findings.

If the pipeline stops on all of them when DevSecOps is first introduced, development can become impossible.

A **New Code Policy** can therefore be used.

The basic principle is:

**Do not produce new vulnerabilities.**

Existing security debt is managed in a separate backlog.

New code is subject to a stricter security policy.

### \30. How Is Security Debt Managed Within DevSecOps?

Past security problems can be classified on a risk basis.

For example:

#### Critical

Urgent remediation.

#### High

Planned sprint.

#### Medium

Backlog.

A different policy can be applied to new code:

**New critical / high → No merge.**

This model improves security while preventing the development process stopping entirely.

### \31. What Is a Build Breaker?

A build breaker is the mechanism that stops the CI/CD process automatically when defined security criteria are not met.

For example:

#### SAST Critical Found

↓

#### Build Failed

But build breakers must be used carefully.

If builds keep stopping because of false positives, the security system loses trust.

It should therefore be applied only on high-accuracy security controls.

### \32. How Do False Positives Affect DevSecOps?

If SAST or other security tools produce too many false positives, development teams constantly deal with incorrect warnings.

This can create:

#### Security Alert Fatigue

After a while, genuine critical findings can be ignored too.

The success of DevSecOps automation should therefore not be measured by the number of tools alone.

The:

#### Signal-to-Noise Ratio

— the proportion of genuinely valuable findings — is critically important.

### \33. Can Security Triage Be Automated?

Some triage steps can be automated.

For example:

- duplicate detection,
- reachability,
- asset criticality,
- exploit intelligence

can be added to the finding automatically.

But human verification is still important in critical cases.

The ideal approach can be:

#### Automation First, Human Where Needed

### \34. The Developer Exception Process

In some cases a security finding can be accepted knowingly.

A developer might say:

**"This vulnerability is not reachable in our usage scenario."**

An exception process should exist for that case.

The exception must be:

- justified,
- time-limited,
- assigned to an owner,
- auditable.

An open-ended, uncontrolled suppression mechanism can render security policy ineffective.

### \35. How Should False Positive Suppression Be Managed?

If a finding really is a false positive, it can be suppressed in the system.

But this information must be retained:

- who suppressed it,
- why,
- when,
- for which scope,
- the expiration date.

The security decision then becomes traceable.

### \36. What Is Security as Code?

One of the more advanced DevSecOps concepts is the **Security as Code** approach.

It refers to turning security policies from manual documents into rules a machine can enforce.

For example, the rule:

**A production container may not run as root.**

can be applied as a pipeline policy instead of being written in a document.

If the deployment does not meet that condition, it can be blocked automatically.

### \37. What Is Policy as Code?

Policy as Code is the management of security and compliance policies in the form of code.

During a cloud deployment, for example, policies such as:

- public IPs prohibited,
- encryption mandatory,
- privileged containers prohibited,
- deployment outside a certain region prohibited

can be applied automatically.

This approach reduces the need for manual checking of security policy.

### \38. Can Security Policy Be Kept in Git?

Yes.

Policy as Code rules can be held in version control.

This provides important advantages.

Who changed it?

When did they change it?

Which rule was removed?

Was a pull request review done?

All of it can be seen.

Security policy can thus be managed like software code.

### \39. Where Does Threat Modeling Sit in DevSecOps?

Not every security control is automatic.

Threat modeling is done mostly at the design stage.

When a new system is designed:

- trust boundaries,
- authentication,
- data flows,
- external integrations,
- high-value assets

are analysed.

The security requirements arising from this can later be turned into pipeline controls.

If the threat model says:

**This service must be reachable only from the internal network.**

IaC policy can enforce that automatically.

### \40. Security Requirement as Code

Security requirements can be made testable as far as possible.

The requirement:

**Authentication is mandatory on all API endpoints.**

can be checked with an automated rule in some frameworks.

The security requirement is then not forgotten in a document.

It is verified continuously inside CI/CD.

### \41. Why Do Security Champions Matter in DevSecOps?

A security team cannot keep up with all development teams on its own.

Some of the developers within a team can therefore take on the security champion role.

A security champion helps to:

- understand security findings,
- assist developers,
- spread the secure coding standard,
- communicate with the AppSec team.

This model strengthens DevSecOps culture.

### \42. Is a Security Champion a Security Specialist?

Not necessarily.

Their main role is generally software developer.

But they take on more training and responsibility around security.

The aim is not to place a full-time security engineer in every team;

**it is to spread security knowledge into the teams.**

### \43. Does DevSecOps Increase the Developer's Responsibility?

Yes, but it should not load all of security onto the developer.

The developer can be expected to:

- know secure coding principles,
- assess security warnings,
- apply the correct remediation.

But the AppSec team must also:

- manage the tools,
- create the policies,
- verify critical findings,
- provide training.

Security is a shared responsibility.

### \44. "You Build It, You Secure It"

In DevSecOps culture, security is sometimes added to the principle:

**"You build it, you run it."**

That is:

**"You build it, you secure it."**

But this phrase does not remove the security team's responsibility.

The aim is for the developer to understand that security is not solely another department's job.

### \45. Developer Security Training

DevSecOps automation is incomplete without training.

If the tool gives the developer a:

#### CWE-89

warning, the developer needs to be able to understand what that means.

Secure coding training can be customised to the technology stack.

For example:

Java developers,

.NET developers,

front-end teams

can be trained with different security examples.

### \46. Just-in-Time Security Training

In addition to annual general secure coding training, short training can be given at the moment of a finding.

When a developer receives an SQL Injection finding, for example, a short guide can be shown:

**"How to use a parameterized query"**

This method can be thought of as **Just-in-Time Security Training**.

Because the knowledge is given at the moment of need, it can be more effective.

### \47. Secure Code Snippets

Good AppSec tools should not stop at showing the error.

They should offer a secure alternative too.

For example:

#### Unsafe

String concatenation SQL.

#### Secure

Parameterized query.

This approach reduces the developer's remediation time.

### \48. Security Ticket Automation

Verified findings can be transferred automatically into the work-tracking system.

For example:

SAST finding

↓

Jira ticket

↓

Application Owner

↓

SLA

↓

Remediation

↓

Retest

The security finding is then not lost inside a PDF.

### \49. AppSec Orchestration

When many security scanners are used, central management of the results can become difficult.

SAST is in one system.

SCA is on another platform.

DAST is in a separate console.

Container security is somewhere else.

At this point AppSec Orchestration or Application Security Posture Management approaches can be used.

The aim is to gather all findings into a single risk view and prioritise them.

### \50. The Duplicate Finding Problem

The same vulnerability can be found by more than one tool.

An SQL Injection can be reported separately by:

SAST,

DAST,

a pentest.

A central platform can merge these findings under a single issue.

This prevents the security backlog inflating.

### \51. Why Does Asset Context Matter?

The same vulnerability does not carry the same risk in different applications.

For example:

A critical vulnerability

may be in an internal demo application.

The same vulnerability

may be in an internet-facing payment system.

The risk is different.

Application context should therefore be added to DevSecOps findings.

### \52. Application Criticality

A business criticality can be assigned to every application.

For example:

#### Tier 1 – Critical

#### Tier 2 – High

#### Tier 3 – Standard

#### Tier 4 – Low

The Security Quality Gate can differ accordingly.

A stricter policy can be applied to a critical financial application, while a more flexible policy can be used for a low-risk internal tool.

### \53. Risk-Based DevSecOps

A mature DevSecOps approach does not apply the same security burden to every application.

It works on a risk basis.

In a Tier 1 application, for example:

- SAST
- SCA
- Secret Scan
- DAST
- Pentest
- Threat Modeling

can be mandatory.

In a Tier 4 application:

- SAST
- SCA
- Secret Scan

can be considered sufficient.

This ensures security resources are used correctly.

### \54. DevSecOps and API Security

APIs are one of the main attack surfaces of modern applications.

Within the DevSecOps pipeline:

- API schema validation,
- SAST,
- API DAST,
- secret scanning

can be applied.

A manual API pentest can also be carried out before release.

Authorisation problems in particular cannot be solved entirely by automation.

### \55. DevSecOps and Microservices

In a microservice architecture there can be hundreds of repositories and independent deployments.

A manual security approach becomes even harder here.

Thanks to DevSecOps, every microservice can pass through a standard security pipeline.

A shared template can be used, for example:

#### SAST

#### SCA

#### Container Scan

#### Sign

#### Deploy

This standardisation is very valuable in large-scale organisations.

### \56. What Is a Golden Pipeline?

A golden pipeline is a standard CI/CD pipeline template approved by the organisation.

Development teams use the secure template instead of building a pipeline from scratch.

A golden pipeline can contain by default:

- SAST,
- SCA,
- Secret Scanning,
- container scanning,
- signing.

This approach stops security being "optional".

### \57. The Paved Road Approach

The **paved road** approach used in the platform engineering world aims to offer developers a secure and easy path.

Instead of telling the developer:

"You are required to do these things."

they are offered

a secure pipeline,

a secure base image,

approved libraries,

a ready authentication component.

The secure path becomes the easiest path at the same time.

This is one of the strong principles of a successful DevSecOps culture.

### \58. Making Security Easy

If the secure method is very hard for the developer, the likelihood of it being bypassed under time pressure rises.

Security controls should therefore be as developer-friendly as possible.

For example, instead of:

Write the password into the code.

the solution:

**Pull it from the Secrets Manager with a single line.**

should be offered.

As the secure method becomes easier, compliance increases.

### \59. The Balance Between Developer Experience and Security

In a successful DevSecOps programme two goals must be balanced:

#### Security

and

#### Developer Velocity

If the security team blocks everything, software development slows down.

If it allows everything, risk increases.

Risk-based automation provides that balance.

### \60. Is Pipeline Security Itself Secure?

This is a critical question.

Adding security tools to the CI/CD pipeline is not sufficient.

The pipeline itself must be protected too.

Because the CI/CD system generally has access to:

- source code,
- production credentials,
- the container registry,
- cloud infrastructure.

If an attacker compromises the pipeline, they can affect the whole software supply chain.

### \61. CI/CD Access Control

CI/CD administration privileges should be kept to a minimum.

Not every developer should be able to change:

- production secrets,
- pipeline configuration,
- deployment approval.

Least privilege and separation of duties can be applied.

### \62. Branch Protection

Direct pushes can be prohibited on critical branches.

For the main branch, for example, the conditions:

- pull request mandatory,
- two reviewers,
- security checks successful,
- signed commits

can be applied.

It then becomes harder for a single user to change production code directly.

### \63. What Is a Code Owner?

CODEOWNERS or similar mechanisms can define mandatory reviewers for certain files and modules.

For example:

changes to authentication code can require Security Champion approval.

CI/CD configuration changes can require DevOps owner approval.

This provides an additional control in risky code areas.

### \64. Production Deployment Approval

In critical applications an approval gate can be used instead of continuous deployment.

For example:

All automated controls successful.

↓

Release Manager approval.

↓

Production deployment.

This can be useful particularly in regulated and critical systems.

### \65. Separation of Duties

The same person:

writing the code,

reviewing it,

deploying it to production

may not be desirable in every environment.

Separation of duties provides a second approval mechanism on certain critical operations.

DevSecOps automation can make this requirement easier to meet.

### \66. How Should CI/CD Secrets Be Managed?

Production credentials should not be held in plain text inside the pipeline.

A central secret store can be used.

The pipeline reaches the necessary secret only at the moment it runs.

Short-lived identity should be preferred where possible.

Workload identity can be used instead of a static cloud key, for example.

### \67. Short-Lived Credentials

Short-lived credentials can significantly increase DevSecOps security.

Instead of using a one-year access key to deploy to the cloud, for example, the CI/CD pipeline can obtain a 15-minute temporary token.

Even if the token is stolen, the attacker's window of use is limited.

### \68. Build Reproducibility

For a secure supply chain, being able to produce the same build result from the same source code is valuable.

This reproducible build approach can help detect supply chain manipulation.

The build environment should be as controlled and deterministic as possible.

### \69. Immutable Artifacts

An artifact should not be changed after the build completes.

The approach:

**Build Once → Promote the Same Artifact**

can be used.

The image approved in the test environment is moved to production without being rebuilt in any other way.

The tested artifact and the production artifact are then the same.

### \70. How Is an SBOM Added to the Pipeline?

An SBOM can be generated automatically during the build.

For example:

#### Build

↓

#### SCA

↓

#### SBOM Generation

↓

#### Artifact Signing

↓

#### Release

The SBOM can be stored with every release.

That provides fast impact analysis when a new CVE appears later.

### \71. What Is Provenance?

Software provenance provides information about how an artifact was produced.

For example:

- which repository,
- which commit,
- which pipeline,
- which build environment

was used can be recorded.

This matters in supply chain security.

Because the source of the artifact in production can be verified.

### \72. DevSecOps Metrics

Whether the DevSecOps programme is succeeding needs to be measured.

Metrics such as these can be tracked:

- Security findings per pull request
- Number of critical vulnerabilities
- Mean Time to Remediate
- Security gate failure rate
- Proportion of repositories covered by SAST
- Proportion of applications covered by SCA
- Number of secret leaks
- Number of vulnerabilities found after production

These metrics help measure AppSec maturity.

### \73. Mean Time to Remediate

MTTR expresses the average time from a security finding being detected to it being closed.

One of the important goals of DevSecOps is reducing MTTR.

Because when the finding reaches the developer quickly, remediation is faster.

### \74. Mean Time to Detect

Another important metric is how quickly the problem is detected.

In the traditional model a vulnerability can be found months later in a pentest.

In the DevSecOps model it can be found within minutes during a pull request.

That is a serious security advantage.

### \75. Vulnerability Escape Rate

A vulnerability escaping the development and test controls and reaching production can be measured.

The aim is to reduce that rate over time.

This metric can show how effective the AppSec controls are.

### \76. Security Coverage

How many repositories are covered by SAST?

How many applications use SCA?

How many pipelines apply secret scanning?

How many applications have an SBOM?

These proportions show the coverage level of the security programme.

### \77. Is Finding Count a Good Metric on Its Own?

No.

"We found 5,000 vulnerabilities this month."

is not an indicator of success on its own.

It can even be an indicator of a poor process.

More meaningful questions are:

- How many were real?
- How many were recurring problems?
- How many reached production?
- How long did they take to fix?
- Is the same CWE recurring?

### \78. The DevSecOps Maturity Journey

DevSecOps is not a one-off project.

It can be developed in stages.

#### Level 1

Manual pentesting.

#### Level 2

SAST and SCA.

#### Level 3

CI/CD automation.

#### Level 4

Security Quality Gate.

#### Level 5

Threat Modeling + Security Champions.

#### Level 6

Risk-based Continuous AppSec.

This structure can differ from organisation to organisation.

### \79. Should Every Organisation Use the Same DevSecOps Model?

No.

A small software team's needs and those of a financial institution with hundreds of developers are not the same.

DevSecOps architecture should be designed in line with:

- team size,
- technology stack,
- regulation,
- release frequency,
- application criticality.

But the basic principle is the same:

**Integrating security into the software development life cycle.**

### \80. DevSecOps Is Not a Tool Project

One of the fundamental causes of DevSecOps failure is focusing only on buying tools.

A SAST product is bought.

An SCA product is bought.

DAST is bought.

But the developer is not brought into the process.

Findings are not managed.

No Quality Gate is defined.

False positives are not cleaned up.

The tools then produce security noise.

Real DevSecOps manages the trio:

**People + Process + Technology**

together.

### The SecureSys DevSecOps and CI/CD Security Approach

At SecureSys we do not treat DevSecOps as merely adding security scanning tools inside the CI/CD pipeline.

The aim is to take security out of being a control applied at the end of the development process and make it a natural part of the software life cycle.

Depending on project scope, the controls:

#### Secure Coding, SAST, SCA, Secret Scanning, IaC Security, Container Security, DAST, API Security and Pentesting

can be assessed together with the CI/CD processes.

But there is another matter as important as technical integration:

**Running the right security control at the right point.**

Running a long full scan after every commit can spoil the developer experience.

Stopping the pipeline on every low-severity finding is not sustainable.

Requiring manual approval for every security decision can eliminate DevOps speed.

A strong DevSecOps model must therefore strike a balance of:

**speed + automation + risk-based security**

For example:

fast security feedback at the developer stage,

incremental SAST during pull requests,

SCA and secret scanning during the build,

a Security Quality Gate before release,

manual pentesting for critical applications,

continuous security monitoring in the production environment

can be assessed together.

Ultimately the real success of DevSecOps:

**should be measured not by how many security tools were installed but by how early security problems are prevented from reaching production.**

### Frequently Asked Questions

#### What is DevSecOps?

DevSecOps is the approach of integrating security controls into DevOps and the software development life cycle.

#### What is the difference between DevOps and DevSecOps?

DevSecOps brings security into DevOps processes at the design, development, build, test and deployment stages.

#### What is a CI/CD pipeline?

It is the process in which operations such as testing, building and deploying source code to the relevant environment are carried out automatically.

#### Can SAST be integrated into a CI/CD pipeline?

Yes. SAST can be run automatically at the pull request, merge request or build stage.

#### Can SCA be used within CI/CD?

Yes. Dependency files and build components can be scanned automatically for known vulnerabilities.

#### What is a Security Quality Gate?

It is the minimum security criterion software must meet in order to pass to the next stage of the pipeline.

#### Should every security finding stop the build?

No. A risk-based policy should be applied. Otherwise security controls can slow the development process unnecessarily.

#### When should secret scanning be run?

It is useful to run it starting from the pre-commit stage as far as possible, and also within pull requests and the CI/CD pipeline.

#### Does DevSecOps replace pentesting?

No. DevSecOps provides continuous automated security controls, while a pentest provides deep manual assessment from a real attacker's perspective.

#### Does DevSecOps necessarily require a large number of tools?

No. More important than the number of tools is integrating the right controls at the right stages and managing findings sustainably.

### Conclusion: Security Should Be Inside the Pipeline, Not at the End of It

In the modern software development world it is no longer sufficient for security to remain the last checkpoint before release.

Because software changes very quickly.

New code is written.

New dependencies are added.

New containers are created.

New APIs are published.

New cloud resources are brought online.

All of this can happen within a few hours.

If security falls behind that speed, risk moves into the production environment.

DevSecOps therefore tries to accelerate security.

It brings the security control closer to the developer.

It automates manual operations.

It turns policies into code.

It moves technologies such as SAST, SCA and secret scanning into CI/CD.

It stops critical risks before release.

And it lets the security specialist take their time out of thousands of routine checks and devote it to genuinely complex risks.

The basic principle of successful DevSecOps is this:

**Security must not be a gate standing in front of software development speed.**

**Security itself must be part of that road.**

Because the strongest security control is not the one that blocks the attack in production.

Stronger still is:

**the control that ensures insecure code never reaches production at all.**