‍SecOps: Security by Design, Security Throughout

DevOps has led companies to deliver reliable work rapidly and effectively. But how can we respond in kind in the field of security?

94% of enterprises of all sizes are in the cloud. More and more businesses place their infrastructure, data and apps in the cloud, and rely on the high-level cloud capabilities provided by AWS for reliability, availability and cost-efficiency.But they also rely on modern solutions for security. The security risks companies face are multifaceted, and cyber attacks are growing in frequency and complexity.

DevOps as a Culture for SecOps as well

Next Generation Managed Services means fully adopting the DevOps culture. For security in the cloud to be as agile as possible, you should integrate the technological and business with automation and healthy inter organizational communications. SecOps, as a methodology, addresses security considerations, from planning through development to delivery, automating security tasks while increasing accountability, visibility, and responsiveness.

Every business must address security, through policies, procedures and practical step. SecOps is the practical process whereby the security posture of your business is bolstered across the boards becomes a shared responsibility. Automated processes which simplify and standardize security operations fused with tools such as APIs allow your developers and IT engineers to work collaboratively and rapidly. In essence, this enables CI/CD, without having to wait for your security team’s approval every step of the way. Of course, this notion of security built in at every stage of the development cycle entails faster patching more often, thereby creating safer and more stable code.

In short, adopting SecOps as a model for your organization will improve your security posture and reduce risks of a data breach while improving productivity and efficiency through advanced automation and shared responsibility.

SecOps as a Service

Adopting a culture is one thing, implementing it is another. With the growing number and types of threats, this is not an easy task for any company. For instance, penetration testing and handling firewalls require different talents. Also, 24/7 monitoring means extra staff costs, who need to be trained in the appropriate technologies. Moreover, the ongoing learning required to keep up with the changes means additional personnel costs, and then additional reimbursement, causing your costs to continually grow as the threats continue to loom.

SecOps as a Service, provided by Next Generation MSPs, such as Comm-IT, enable your organization to reach achieve faster remediation and reduce risk with policies that are flexible and scalable. They provide visibility and create vulnerability management strategies in accordance with service level agreements (SLAs). With highly trained staff, they keep up to date on the latest developments. They can afford to have on staff experts from a wide variety of expertise. And because they monitor a number of clients simultaneously, they are host to Network Operations Centers (NOC) and Security Operation Centers (SOC) which protect their customers’ data and apps around the clock.

With security as a crucialelement of well-architected cloud solutions, SecOps will utilize the most advanced and efficient tools the market has to offer, such as the AWS CloudFormation Templates, and combining them with proper configuration,integration and maintenance of the tools through which users can access your system,such as AWS Identify and Access Management (IAM), AWS Key Management Services(KMS) and AWS CloudTrail.

‍

by Dima Tatur, Head Of Cyber Security Department at Comm-IT and Joe Brown, Content Strategist

‍