Too Many Security Testing Tools? Here Are 5 Things Your DevSecOps Tools Should Do

DevSecOps is more than just a buzzword—it's a game-changing approach for modern software development teams. Weekly cyber-attacks have increased worldwide by 7% in Q1 2023 compared to the same period last year. Gone are the days of slapping security on as an afterthought. The only way to ensure software is safe is to integrate security testing into your DevOps process.

The problem? Software security testing is time-consuming for development teams. Security testing tools can help save time, especially if they help automate your process. But there are a lot of tools out there, and you don’t want to purchase tools that won’t be used or more tools than you need.

So what DevSecOps tools do you need? And what’s the best way to buy as few tools as possible while still conducting comprehensive security testing?

In this blog post, we'll delve into the five essential boxes that your DevSecOps tools need to check. Armed with this knowledge, you'll be able to make informed decisions and equip your team with the perfect tools for the job—without introducing extra complexity or unused tools into your process.

5 Things Your Devsecops Tools Should Do

1. Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) 

CI/CD tools are the backbone of DevSecOps, automating essential processes like building, testing, and deploying software. By leveraging these tools, DevSecOps teams can swiftly identify and resolve code issues, resulting in enhanced application security and overall quality.

Top 3 CI/CD DevSecOps Tools

1. Jenkins is a veteran in the CI/CD world, known for its versatility and extensive plugin ecosystem. 

“Jenkins is the leading open source automation server supported by a large and growing community of developers, testers, designers and other people interested in continuous integration, continuous delivery and modern software delivery practices. Built on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), it provides more than 1,800 plugins that extend Jenkins to automate with practically any technology software delivery teams use. In 2022, Jenkins reached 300,000 known installations making it the most widely deployed automation server.”

With its robust integration capabilities, Jenkins seamlessly integrates with various tools and technologies, allowing you to tailor your DevSecOps workflow to suit your unique requirements.

2. GitLab has emerged as a powerhouse in the CI/CD landscape, offering an all-in-one DevOps platform. 

Alongside version control and issue tracking, GitLab provides a comprehensive CI/CD pipeline that covers the entire software development lifecycle. It combines code repository management, automated testing, and deployment orchestration, making it a popular choice for teams seeking an integrated DevSecOps solution.

3. CircleCI is a cloud-based CI/CD platform that emphasizes simplicity and scalability. 

It offers a user-friendly interface and supports multiple programming languages and frameworks. CircleCI automates the testing and deployment processes, allowing teams to catch and rectify code issues early on. With its flexible configuration options and seamless integration with popular version control systems, CircleCI empowers teams to accelerate their DevSecOps practices.

What’s the best way to integrate CI/CD tools into your process?

You might be wondering how to seamlessly integrate these CI/CD tools into your existing processes. Here's a tip: consider incorporating a security testing solution like Mayhem into the mix. Mayhem offers a comprehensive set of security testing capabilities that can integrate seamlessly with these tools, simplifying your setup and enhancing your overall security posture. 

2. Dynamic Security Testing 

Security testing tools help ensure that software meets security requirements and standards. These tools can be used to perform security testing throughout the software development lifecycle. There are many different kinds of security testing tools, including static and dynamic code analysis, penetration testing, and compliance testing. 

Why DAST tools?

SCA and SBOM are useful for finding potential vulnerabilities in third-party code, but they only detect known vulnerabilities and have limitations in identifying unknown vulnerabilities. SAST tools can find potential vulnerabilities in your own code but cannot confirm their existence. In contrast, DAST tools offer a real-world view by running the software and observing its behavior, allowing them to confirm vulnerabilities before reporting them. 

Our Pick: Mayhem

Mayhem, a DAST solution, stands out with its automated triage, reproducibility, and continuous testing capabilities, making it an effective choice for comprehensive security testing. 

3. Vulnerability Scanning

Vulnerability scanning tools help identify potential security vulnerabilities in software. These tools can be used to scan code, dependencies, and infrastructure for known vulnerabilities and potential threats.

While vulnerability scanning is helpful, vulnerability scanning alone isn’t enough to keep your software secure. It only addresses known vulnerabilities, leaving unknown vulnerabilities and zero-day threats unaddressed. While vulnerability scanning identifies defects that can potentially cause damage, it falls short in detecting the bigger picture of unknown vulnerabilities and exploits. 

What’s the best way to integrate vulnerability scanning into your process?

While you should look for a tool that does vulnerability scanning as part of your overall security testing process, you should either combine vulnerability scanning tools with other DevSecOps tools or find a tool that covers more than one base. 

Our pick? Mayhem, our Dynamic Application Security Testing platform, not only covers traditional vulnerability scanning, but goes far beyond by utilizing generational fuzz testing and symbolic execution to autonomously generate new test cases. 

4. Configuration Management 

By incorporating a configuration management tool early in the development process, organizations can ensure that their software is deployed consistently and securely across different environments. 

One of the significant benefits of using a configuration management tool is the ability to automate the configuration of infrastructure, containers, and applications. By defining and managing the desired state of the software environment, configuration management tools simplify the deployment process and reduce the chances of human error, ultimately improving the reliability and security of the software.

Configuration management tools also facilitate the enforcement of security policies and compliance requirements. By centralizing the management of configurations and ensuring their consistency, these tools provide an effective means to enforce security controls, monitor deviations from the desired state, and quickly address any configuration-related security issues.

Top 3 configuration management tools:

1. Ansible

Ansible is a Python-based, open source IT automation software application that operates through the command line. It can effectively configure systems, facilitate software deployments, and coordinate complex workflows. 

Ansible prioritizes security and reliability by minimizing its components. It leverages OpenSSH for transport (with additional transport options and pull modes available), and employs a human-readable language specifically crafted for swift onboarding and ease of use, requiring minimal training.

2. Puppet

Puppet enables organizations to automate their infrastructure and streamline their software delivery processes. It offers features such as infrastructure management, configuration management, and continuous delivery. With Puppet, users can easily manage and scale their IT infrastructure, enforce security and compliance policies, and deploy applications consistently across multiple environments. The platform provides a centralized dashboard for visibility and control, allowing users to monitor and remediate any issues that arise. 

3. Chef

Chef Infrastructure Management allows organizations to define, deploy, and manage their infrastructure as code. It offers features such as configuration management, compliance automation, and application delivery. With Chef, users can streamline their infrastructure processes, enforce desired state configurations, and ensure compliance with industry standards. The platform provides a unified dashboard for visibility and control, allowing users to track and manage their infrastructure resources effectively. 

What’s the best way to integrate configuration management tools into your process?

Incorporating configuration management tools early in your development process is a good way to ensure that security stays top of mind and misconfigurations don’t lead to security vulnerabilities later in your software's lifecycle. 

Configuration management tools are best implemented into your process along with a security testing solution that integrates into your existing CI/CD pipeline to test your software throughout the production process.

5. Monitoring and Logging

Once your software is deployed to production, security becomes an ongoing concern. Monitoring and logging tools allow teams to identify and address any potential security issues that may arise in the operational environment.

By leveraging these tools, DevSecOps teams can proactively identify potential security vulnerabilities, unauthorized access attempts, abnormal behavior patterns, or performance bottlenecks. Real-time monitoring and logging enable immediate responses to security incidents, allowing teams to take necessary actions to mitigate risks, protect sensitive data, and maintain the integrity of their software systems.

These tools also play a key role in compliance and auditing processes. By collecting and retaining logs, organizations can demonstrate adherence to security standards and regulations. In the event of an incident or breach, detailed logs can be invaluable for conducting post-incident analysis, assessing the impact, and implementing necessary remediation measures.

Top 3 monitoring tools:

1. Prometheus 

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for monitoring highly dynamic containerized environments. It specializes in collecting and storing time-series data, allowing you to analyze and visualize metrics related to system performance, resource utilization, and application health. Prometheus offers a flexible query language, powerful alerting capabilities, and seamless integration with other tools in the ecosystem, making it a popular choice for cloud-native environments.

2. ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana)

The ELK Stack, now known as the Elastic Stack, is a combination of three open-source tools that provide a comprehensive solution for log management and analysis: Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. Elasticsearch is a highly scalable search and analytics engine that stores and indexes data in real-time. Logstash is a data processing pipeline that collects, filters, and transforms log data from multiple sources before sending it to Elasticsearch. Kibana is a data visualization and exploration platform that provides a user-friendly interface to analyze and visualize the logged data stored in Elasticsearch. Together, these tools form a comprehensive solution for managing and gaining insights from large volumes of log data. The ELK Stack is widely used for log monitoring, troubleshooting, and security analysis, enabling organizations to effectively understand and react to events occurring in their systems.

3. Splunk

Splunk is a leading commercial solution for monitoring, logging, and analyzing machine-generated data. Splunk's Advanced Threat Detection solution aims to help organizations identify and respond to sophisticated cybersecurity threats. It leverages machine learning and analytics to detect anomalies, patterns, and indicators of compromise within the network and system logs. By collecting and analyzing vast amounts of data, including logs from various sources, Splunk enables proactive threat hunting and real-time monitoring for potential security incidents. 

What’s the best way to integrate monitoring and logging into your process?

Integrating robust monitoring and logging tools into your software security strategy ensures that your products will remain secure throughout their lifecycle. By combining these tools with a security testing solution that runs throughout production, organizations can establish a holistic approach to software security.

Mayhem: Your Comprehensive DevSecOps Security Testing Solution

In today's fast-paced software development landscape, efficiency is key. Instead of juggling multiple tools for different aspects of DevSecOps, it's best to find DevSecOps tools that offer you more. That's where Mayhem, our cutting-edge developer-first security testing solution, comes in.

Mayhem is not just another tool in the market. It seamlessly integrates into your existing CI/CD pipeline, working continuously in the background to identify defects in your apps and APIs. By automatically generating and running thousands of tests, Mayhem ensures that your software is rigorously tested for security vulnerabilities throughout the development lifecycle.

Mayhem covers defect testing, vulnerability scanning, and more in one tool, thoroughly verifying and identifying potential vulnerabilities and zero-day exploits. By combining multiple testing approaches, Mayhem helps strengthen software security and detects vulnerabilities that may have been missed by other DevSecOps tools in the market.

By combining Mayhem with other DevSecOps tools, such as configuration management tools and monitoring and logging tools, you’ll have a comprehensive DevSecOps process that helps you stay ahead of security issues even after your product is shipped—and avoid having redundant tools in your process.

Mayhem:

Developer-First Security Testing

Mayhem is application security built by professional hackers. Every result is real and actionable for immediate triage and rapid remediation.

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