Keys to achieving continuous cloud security | Part three

A Three-Part Series to Help You Mature Your Program

Stage Three: Shift Enterprise Cloud Security Program to the Left

The concept of shifting cloud security to the left is taken from the shift-left practice in software development, which advocates for moving tasks like testing and security earlier in the development lifecycle and / or to the “left” of traditional timelines. This proactive approach aims to address potential security issues during the initial stages of development and deployment, rather than relegating them to the final checkpoint before production. Put simply, shifting cloud security to the left embeds security into the development process to create a resilient and secure cloud infrastructure. It is also the third and final stage to achieving continuous cloud security.

Understanding the Shift-Left Approach

By applying a shift-left approach in cloud security development, you can detect misconfigurations and issues early in the development cycle. This enables you to address security issues earlier, saving time and resources. Not to mention, this approach can help improve overall code security and prevents vulnerabilities in code. Key advantages to using shift-left are as follows:

• Consistency: With IaC, environments (development, testing, production) can be provisioned consistently, ensuring they are identical and reducing “works on my machine” issues and manual mistakes.
• Run-Time Risk: Scanning IaC templates for misconfigurations in CI/CD Pipelines before deployment can significantly reduce run-time risk. This consistent and repeatable infrastructure provisioning process reduces the risk of configuration drift, security vulnerabilities, and aligns to establishing, enforcing and tracking compliance.
• Compliance: By embedding automated and preventative policies into the development process, organizations can better meet regulatory requirements and compliance standards.
• Increased Collaboration: Shifting cloud security to the left encourages collaboration between development, operations, and security teams (often called DevSecOps). This collaboration fosters a culture of shared responsibility for security rather than isolating it from a specific team.
• Rapid Deployment: Finally, automating infrastructure provisioning reduces the time needed to set up or modify environments, enabling faster deployment cycles. Automated infrastructure results in an eventual immutable DRY infrastructure with auditability for each resource.

Challenges With Implementing Shift-Left

Let’s talk about cultural buy-in first. Compliance is a team sport—all coaches, staff, and players need to work together to get the win. This requires communicating goals and KPIs, as well as ensuring positive reinforcement is applied across the organization.

While shift-left improves code quality, security, and efficiency, organizations must overcome several challenges to achieve successful implementation. Often, the most significant challenge is breaking down traditional silos between development and security teams.

Organizations should expect fear of the unknown, learning curves, and feedback overload during early implementation stages. Walking with eyes wide open can help with long-term adoption of shift-left and ease tensions between teams. Simple considerations like developer enablement and policy definitions can change the game.

It is also important to remember that not every aspect can be shifted left; thus, a balanced approach with complimentary shift right program that includes monitoring, observability, and user feedback is recommended.

Getting Started

Here are five simple steps to get started with implementing shift-left cloud security. These steps will help you move the needle quickly while bridging gaps between cloud security and development teams.

1. Choose an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Tool: It’s important to embed security tools in your build and development pipelines, but they need to be the right tools. Select an IaC tool that best fits your environment and requirements. Tools like Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure ARM and Bicep, Ansible, or Pulumi are worth considering.
2. Integrate Version Control: Store your IaC files in a version control system to track changes, facilitate collaboration, and enable rollback if needed. Common systems include GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Azure DevOps.
3. Declare IaC and PaC: Write IaC definitions to specify your infrastructure’s desired state, including resources such as servers, networks, firewalls, databases, and security settings. Choose simple and readable machine languages like JSON, YAML, or Python.
4. Automate Testing: Establish security policies that guide development teams in building secure applications from the outset. Implement testing practices for your IaC, such as validating configurations and running security checks to ensure the defined infrastructure meets best practices.
5. Integrate Additional Security Tools: Embed security tools for static and dynamic analysis, vulnerability scanning, and compliance checks within CI/CD pipelines. Use IDE extensions to integrate these tools closely with the development process.

Shifting cloud security left results in better security outcomes, reduced costs, and improved application delivery efficiency. As you look to implement this strategy, focus on fostering a security-aware culture, leveraging automation and ongoing education for both your security and development teams.

As you increase repeatability, integrate tools, and optimize processes, your cloud security program will shift to the left and you will realize benefits like faster feedback loops and better collaboration across teams. Most importantly, you will be well on your way to achieving continuous cloud security.

To revisit stages one and two of the pathway towards continuous cloud security, visit our blog homepage. For help shifting your cloud security program left, contact a member of the Stratascale team.