What is an AppSecOps Platform?

What is an AppSecOps Platform and Why is it Critical to AppSec Success?

I know, I know, the last thing you want to hear about is another *Ops buzzword, but please hear me out. In the same way that DevSecOps is really “DevOps done right” (i.e. DevOps should always include security), AppSecOps is “Application Security at scale”. Successful application security practices need to bring people, process and technology together to enable software development teams to ship secure and ship fast - and this necessitates a new category.
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What Challenges are Driving the Need for AppSecOps?

Modern software development has many moving parts. Modernization efforts such as Agile, DevOps, cloud deployment, microservices architectures and the increased adoption of open source have all dramatically accelerated application delivery and complexity. Today’s AppSec teams are outnumbered by as much as 100:1 by developers meaning they are usually overworked and underfunded. They depend on a collection of point security products and siloed manual processes. This leaves them struggling to gain the visibility, insight, and process scale they need to identify and protect the always changing and growing application risk surface.  

This resulting AppSec chaos means applications ship fast and furious but often without the assurance of security, leaving the organization at risk of breaches, liability and losses. AppSecOps is the drive to help identify and protect the -- always changing and growing -- modern application risk surface from security breaches and losses and security coverage and compliance gaps without slowing down or impacting application delivery.

What is AppSecOps?

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AppSecOps is the process of identifying, prioritizing, remediating and preventing Application Security breaches, vulnerabilities and risks - fully integrated with existing DevSecOps workflows, teams and tools

AppSecOps starts with the ingestion and processing of findings from security testing and scanning tools across the DevSecOps pipeline, presenting actionable insights in the form of prioritized findings and remediation recommendations. AppSec tasks and workflows are automated across the entire DevSecOps pipeline, and service level agreements (SLAs) between Security, Development and Operations teams are managed and measured. Cross-team collaboration is optimized, and developers are empowered with the contextual information they need to fix issues fast and effectively without specialized training and skills. 

How is AppSecOps Different?

Now you might be thinking “we’re already doing that!” and, in some cases, this is partially true since AppSecOps encompasses traditional application security practices and interconnects with many parts of DevSecOps. However, AppSecOps is more concentrated on, and more responsible for, security than other parts of DevSecOps and even if you are already doing vulnerability management or AppSec posture management, AppSecOps goes beyond these practices to incorporate:

• A single process for AppSec visibility, workflow automation, vulnerability management and compliance
• Integration of data from code security and scanning tools
• Integration with the DevSecOps pipeline and workflows
• Integration with issue tracking and developer communications
• Actionable insights usable across the secure software development lifecycle (S-SDLC)
• Automated SLAs between processes and components of the pipeline
• Extensive and extensive Knowledge Base to boost developer productivity‍
• Continuous compliance checking to ensure compliance readiness
• Workflow automation across the SDLC
  

So, AppSecOps not only overlaps with other established practices, it encompasses them and is a key element to ensuring you achieve AppSec operational efficiency. 
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Why You Need an AppSecOps Platform

Hopefully it’s clear there’s a problem to solve and scaling AppSec across the organization is key to improving security but to succeed in AppSecOps you need an AppSecOps platform, a category of solutions that allows application security teams to scale their ability to successfully identify, remediate and prevent high priority application level security, vulnerability, and compliance issues, as well as identify and eliminate coverage gaps. 

AppSecOps platforms provide the following benefits: 

• Reduces loss exposure and risk through continuous visibility and actionable insight across security, vulnerability, and compliance use cases.
• Operational efficiency through task and process automation for security analysts, developers, and operations engineers
• Scales application security and compliance impact by enrolling and enabling developers to ship more secure applications faster at scale; without significantly growing teams, training or tools.
  

AppSecOps is the keystone for a successful application security practice - and an AppSecOps platform is how you implement the process. 
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What does an AppSecOps Platform Look Like?

Ok, so AppSecOps is a necessary part of any software organization's security posture. What does the platform look like? The foundational aspect of any AppSecOps solution is integrations (lots of integrations) with various security, CI/CD orchestration and issue tracking tools on the market for handling different aspects of security. For example, a AppSecOps platform must integrate with the following ecosystem components:

• Software testing and scanning tools including but not limited to: SAST, DAST, RASP, pen testing, specific vulnerability scanners, bug bounty programs
• DevSecOps pipeline managers such as GitHub, GitLab, Harness, Jenkins and others
• Ticketing and communications systems such as Jira and Slack
• Threat Intelligence, modeling and security databases such as those provided by NIST, commercial solutions and internal knowledge bases
• Infrastructure alerting and monitoring such as Prisma and Orca
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ArmorCode: The 10x AppSec Force Multiplier™

The ArmorCode AppSecOps platform is the industry leading solution to tackle the AppSec challenge, providing AppSec teams with the visibility, actionable insight, automation, and integration needed to build, deliver, and scale an effective and efficient AppSec program across the entire organization and DevSecOps pipeline.

Visit here to learn more about how the ArmorCode AppSecOps platform can help you get control of today’s AppSec chaos, and scale your success. 

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Summary

AppSec is critical to the delivery of secure software and if security is to be a priority, as software development leaders say it should be, then they need to integrate AppSecOps with their DevSecOps pipeline to ensure they ship secure and ship fast. AppSec personnel are already outnumbered in the organization but you can make the most of their expertise by leveraging an AppSecOps platform to focus on the highest risk security issues and scale their skills and experience across the organization. It is possible to reign in software security chaos with AppSecOps.