What Is DevOps and How Does It Work?

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AI-generated code | Harness the power of AI coding assistants while managing the risks.
API Security Testing | Manage software risks with a holistic API security testing program.
AppSec Program Consolidation | Simplify your application security program.
Application Security Testing | Solutions to address security risks at all stages of the application life cycle.
DevSecOps | Solutions to help shift security left without slowing down your development teams.
Software Supply Chain Security | Solutions to identify and manage software supply chain risks end-to-end.
Manage Enterprise AppSec Risk | Scale your application security program without increasing complexity or adding friction.
Cloud & Container Security | Optimize your applications for secure deployment and operation in the cloud.
Open Source License Compliance | Effective solutions for ensuring open source license compliance.
M&A Due Diligence | Identify software risks that could negatively impact the value of acquired IP.
Quality and Security Standards Compliance | Ensure your software complies with the standards critical to customers and regulators.

Static Analysis (SAST) | Analyzing code for security vulnerabilities without executing it.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) | Analyzing software components for security and license compliance.
Dynamic Analysis (DAST) | Testing running applications for security vulnerabilities.
Interactive Analysis (IAST) | Real-time security testing during application execution.
Penetration Testing | Simulated cyberattacks to identify vulnerabilities.
Mobile Application Security Testing (MAST) | Ensuring the security of mobile applications.
Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) | Managing and improving application security posture.
Fuzz Testing Solutions | Identifying vulnerabilities by inputting random data to applications.

Automotive | Security solutions for automotive industry applications.
Financial Services | Security solutions tailored for financial services.
IoT & Embedded | Security for Internet of Things and embedded systems.
Medical Devices | Security solutions for medical devices.
Public Sector | Security solutions for government and public sector organizations.

Dev and DevOps Teams | Security tools and practices for development and DevOps teams.
Security Teams | Solutions and support for dedicated security teams.
Legal Teams | Resources and compliance tools for legal teams.

Table of Contents

How does DevOps differ from DevSecOps?
What are the benefits of DevOps?
What are the challenges of DevOps?
What tools are used in DevOps?
How can Black Duck help with DevOps implementation?
DevOps resources

Definition

DevOps (a portmanteau of “development” and “operations”) is the combination of practices and tools designed to increase an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services faster than traditional software development processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.

In simple terms, DevOps is about removing the barriers between traditionally siloed teams, development and operations. Under a DevOps model, these teams work together across the entire software application life cycle, from development and test through deployment and operations.

How does DevOps differ from DevSecOps?

DevOps security, more commonly referred to as DevSecOps, refers to the discipline and practice of safeguarding the entire DevOps environment through strategies, policies, processes, and technology. The DevSecOps philosophy is that security should be built into every part of the DevOps life cycle, including inception, design, build, test, release, support, maintenance, and beyond.

Traditional security operates from the position that once a system has been designed, its security defects can then be determined and corrected before release. With the DevOps model, traditional security practices occur too late in the development cycle and are too slow for the design and release of software built by iteration. Thus, security can become a major roadblock to delivering applications and services at speed.

With DevSecOps, security becomes the focus of everyone on a DevOps team. DevSecOps has the goal of implementing security decisions at speed and scale without sacrificing safety. DevSecOps involves ongoing, flexible collaboration between release engineers and security teams. The concepts of “speed of delivery” and “building secure code” are merged into one streamlined process. Security testing is done in iterations without slowing down delivery cycles. Critical security issues are dealt with as they become apparent, not after a threat or compromise has occurred.

What are the benefits of DevOps?

Several key practices can help organizations innovate faster by automating and streamlining the software development management process.

Development velocity. DevOps automation and practices let you innovate faster, adapt to changing markets better, and increase the pace of releases, so you can improve your product faster and build competitive advantage.
Reliability. DevOps practices like continuous integration and continuous delivery can ensure the quality of application updates and infrastructure changes, so you can reliably deliver at a more rapid pace while maintaining an optimum experience for end users.
Improved collaboration. Communication and collaboration are keystones of DevOps practices. Automation of the software delivery process establishes collaboration by physically bringing together the workflows and responsibilities of development and operations. Communication across developers, operations, and even other teams, such as marketing and sales, allows all parts of the organization to align more closely on goals and projects.
Security. You can adopt a DevOps model without sacrificing security by using automated, integrated security testing tools.

What is the state of DevSecOps?

Uncover the strategies, practices, and tools that make up an effective DevSecOps program.

Read the report

What are the challenges of DevOps?

The challenges of implementing DevOps include integrating diverse development and testing technologies, reinforcing development pipelines so they don’t break under increased loads, and instituting robust security testing.

Development environments comprise a multitude of frameworks, languages, and architectures, each with their own unique ways of operating. It can be a challenge to bring all these moving parts into alignment with one another.

While automation is the key to standardizing and centralizing your strategy, policies, SLAs, and risk metrics, all these moving parts leave you vulnerable to brittle pipelines that can break or stop. When one part goes down, or when automations fail or block actions from proceeding, you have to stop everything and search for the problem and solution before you can continue. Managing all those triggered events and the policies that govern them can be like working with the brakes on.

Since AppSec risk can enter anywhere across the pipeline, it can be difficult to gain risk visibility across such a variety of frameworks, languages, and architectures. Each of these comes with its own quirks, and managing across all these tools can be complicated.

What tools are used in DevOps?

DevOps practices rely on effective tools to help teams rapidly and reliably deploy and innovate for their customers. These tools should automate manual tasks, help teams manage complex environments at scale, and keep engineers in control of the high-velocity pace that is DevOps.

The DevOps workflow consists of phases.

Planning the next iteration of the product’s development
Building the code
Testing and deploying to the production environment
Delivering product updates
Monitoring and logging software performance
Gathering customer feedback

Planning. Planning and task-tracking tools are needed to ensure that DevOps teams achieve a seamless and efficient project management cycle and ensure timely product delivery. Popular tools for this stage include Confluence and Jira.

Build and delivery. Developers need rapid deployment of development and testing environments and can’t wait long for repairs when something goes wrong. Containerization allows you to break big applications into smaller discrete parts, which in turn allows you to update those parts without having to redeploy the entire application. You can simply replace or update the affected container. Moving to containerization has allowed DevOps to speed up development cycles. Popular tools for this phase include Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform.

Testing. Automating testing is an important element of implementing DevOps because it allows you to use automation tools to run test scripts, and perform functional testing in ways that don’t impede the velocity you’ve gained by moving to DevOps. Popular tools for this phase include Jenkins, CircleCI, and GitLab CI.

Software monitoring and logging. Once software is moved to production, it must be monitored to ensure stable performance and increased customer satisfaction. This stage also involves performance analysis and logging, raising smart alerts on various issues, and gathering customer feedback. Popular tools for this stage include Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic (ELK) Stack, Splunk, and Sumo Logic.

How can Black Duck help with DevOps implementation?

DevOps and DevSecOps is not a destination, it is a journey. DevOps is fundamentally changing how development and operations are done today. You can use DevOps practices, process, frameworks, and workflow to build security into your software development life cycle at speed and scale, without sacrificing safety, and while minimizing risks, ensuring compliance, and reducing friction and costs. DevOps and DevSecOps allow development, operations, and security teams to balance security and compliance with speed of delivery, and to build security into the full SDLC.

Black Duck has the most complete set of security testing tools of any company in the industry. We provide testing tools that run at every stage of your pipeline and help you determine how to test appropriately, so you don’t slow down your development velocity. Our testing tools can run atop a centralized platform for easy administration and management, providing visibility of risk across all your projects and pipelines, and allow you to implement unified policies to reduce potential points of failure. In addition, we have integrations with all the most common DevOps tools like GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, and Jenkins.