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As Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment techniques for software development become more widely adopted by enterprises worldwide, their benefits continue to accrue.
According to research by the Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF), developers using continuous integration/continuous deployment tools were twice as likely to rank high when it comes to service restoration performance, deployment frequency, and code change lead time advantages were realized as a result of using these techniques.
However, the automation and complexity of CI/CD pipelines and processes can introduce serious security threats to development projects if organizations do not plan carefully for implementation.
Organizations must ensure security checks are built into the fast-paced workflow of CI/CD processes as well as protect tools used within them as part of their pipeline infrastructure.
What Is CI/CD Security?
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline is responsible for moving an application from source code commit to production system deployment.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery Security seeks to detect and correct application security issues throughout all stages of this pipeline, its purpose being to lower both costs and impacts associated with software defects by shifting security leftward.
Why CI/CD Security Is Critical
DevOps design methods rely on their CI/CD pipeline for successful operation. The pipeline automatically builds, tests, and prepares code committed to repositories for deployment to production after it has been produced, edited, and committed.
Production code security depends heavily upon the safety of its CI/CD pipeline. When test cases are incomplete or altered without adequate review procedures in place, vulnerabilities can go undetected.
At the same time, malicious or vulnerable code could also enter an app through third-party dependencies during its CI/CD process.
By employing comprehensive CI/CD security controls in their entirety, more vulnerabilities and issues related to security will be detected earlier and reduced during development cycles.
Securing The CI/CD Pipeline
CI/CD pipelines and the apps they support are vulnerable to an array of security risks, so here are a few strategies for CI/CD pipeline security:
- SCA solutions detect third-party dependencies within an application and any vulnerabilities they present, protecting them from third-party code vulnerabilities or supply chain attacks.
- Static application security testing (SAST) evaluates an app's source code to identify vulnerabilities that might compromise it, which DevOps teams can leverage code scanning tools to detect early on in its software development lifecycle (SDLC) when fixing such flaws is often more cost-effective.
- Security Testing: Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) solutions can detect vulnerabilities in functional apps during SDLC testing; these tests typically occur later but could reveal issues that SAST solutions cannot identify.
- Vulnerabilities may go undetected during testing or only become evident once an application has gone live.
However, runtime security solutions like runtime application self-protection (RASP) offer continuous monitoring and protection after going live.
CI/CD Security Risks
Corporate CI/CD pipelines, applications, and DevOps processes are vulnerable to various security threats, including those listed below:
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Testing Code In Prep For Production Deployment: Before deployment into production, code testing is an integral component of continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD).
Security testing helps detect vulnerabilities before they are exploited - something critical in today's climate of cyber security risk management.
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Access Control Issues: Code within a CI/CD pipeline must access specific data and resources in order to create working images for testing.
Pipeline access controls restrict this access only as necessary to perform their role effectively, thus decreasing any risks of malicious code execution within it.
- Misconfigurations In Security: The Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery pipeline is an intricate ecosystem consisting of various systems; if one or more are misdesigned or incorrectly deployed, its security could be jeopardized and put at risk.
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Secrets Leaked: Applications may require access to sensitive data like passwords and API keys; therefore, these secrets must be thoroughly tested within continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows before becoming public knowledge within DevOps environment variables or pipelines.
Should such secrets become accessible by an attacker who could then gain entry to corporate systems or add harmful functionality directly into applications.
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Vulnerable Third-Party Libraries: Most programs rely on third-party code from various libraries for various activities.
If these third-party libraries contain vulnerabilities or backdoors that allow an attacker to compromise apps that utilize them, an attack could gain entry.
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Supply Chain Attacks: In a supply chain attack, attackers target an application's open-source and third-party dependencies and take measures such as placing bugs, backdoors, or vulnerabilities within them in order to compromise its functionality and cause disruption in its supply chain.
This might involve adding flaws such as backdoors or adding weaknesses within them that leave holes that allow their attacks against these dependencies to be open for attack by adding faults, vulnerabilities, or defects that expose the application itself as vulnerable to attack.
How To Ensure CI/CD Pipeline Security
Security tests at various stages of your CI/CD Pipeline Security play a crucial role in verifying that your code meets security requirements and that all security concerns have been met.
There are multiple strategies you may employ to secure it effectively.
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Planning phase: At this stage, requirements and consumer feedback must be collected to create an initial product roadmap and also establish best practices and policies necessary for an efficient DevOps approach.
Utilize threat modeling to help identify possible points of attack on your pipeline and take the necessary measures to secure it.
Threat modeling allows you to detect security gaps and implement solutions to decrease them; when applied to CI/CD pipelines, threat modeling identifies attack vectors so you can take precautionary steps against attacks in these areas.
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Coding phase: Developers create the code needed to build software during this phase.
All standards and design criteria must be respected when writing code.
Use source code scanners to quickly identify code that could pose security threats and identify those code segments that need further review.
- Build phase: Developers are responsible for contributing their source code changes to a common repository during the build phase, which then triggers builds with automated tests run to verify they meet requirements.
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Testing Phase: Once a build is successful, the software should be thoroughly examined to identify any flaws.
When new features are added, regression testing on that new version should ensure all functional tests pass successfully.
At this stage, container scanning tools or dynamic analysis security testing (DAST) tools such as should be utilized as DAST tests to perform dynamic security testing of any changes introduced into code.
- Monitoring Phase: At this final stage of a standard DevOps CI/CD pipeline, construction is carefully observed to make sure everything runs as intended and performance and other features of an app deployed into production are examined for evaluation.
CI/CD Security Checklist
Black-hat hackers are continually exploring new encryption codes and looking for security flaws, so this post provides recommended practices and approaches for strengthening the security posture of CI/CD pipelines.
Code repository access restriction and using audited code. Continuous integration primarily relies on code repositories and version control systems to host its codebase and promote collaboration and sharing.
Still, attackers could gain entry if these platforms have weak security protections and become accessible publicly.
These organizations search for any large secrets or security holes in codebase versions; any security vulnerability in one will likely exist in live application code as well.
Therefore, keys must be encrypted; most importantly, do not embed secrets directly in application code; instead, use secret managers such as Doppler to secure the environment and share keys securely and safely.
Reviewing Code Efficiently
As part of the code review process, various parts and components of code must be thoroughly assessed. Software that needs analyzing may contain over 200,000 lines; although this may seem intimidating at first, keeping focused when reviewing code can make all the difference when it comes to quality results.
To efficiently inspect 400 lines at any given session without losing focus and attention will help identify errors that would otherwise go undetected when obsession has waned - helping identify flaws that otherwise go overlooked when concentration wanes.
Before beginning code review procedures, ensure the code author has properly annotated their code to make it more readable.
Annotation provides more clarity around specific changes or additions made and how best to utilize a program. Upon evaluation of code, ensure your input to developers and testers remains constructive - this will foster greater insight into flaws discovered and how best to address them.
Maximizing Testing Accuracy And Test Coverage
Testing tools can be an invaluable asset when it comes to discovering potential risks and flaws before releasing a product.
Still, developers sometimes inadvertently overlook certain parts of code or components for testing purposes. When secret files were left uncovered during development, some products went into production with defects that are difficult to pinpoint since programmers often remain unaware that certain files weren't examined thoroughly before going into production.
Code coverage tools provide the most thorough way of thoroughly testing functions within your application and its functionalities.
Code Coverage Instruments Use test reports generated by testing tools to assess whether your software has been fully tested by looking through untested code or files, notifying any untestable lines and files after looking over code analyzed by them, along with information such as execution of functions, branches, and statements; several lines tested etc.
Image Scanning And Repository Auditing
Consistency is of utmost importance when creating a safe and secure production environment, particularly with third-party components that use photos downloaded from unprotected repositories; their security professionals can easily be breached as such activities compromise our network infrastructure.
Audit and scan images regularly in repositories in order to keep them free from compromise; such ideas can compromise security if downloaded improperly from untrustworthy repositories. Images must be thoroughly scanned during production and development processes to detect security concerns that exist within them, with docker scan being an ideal means for this purpose.
Other tools for checking Docker vulnerabilities might also prove beneficial.
Levelling Up Your CI/CD Pipeline Security
CI/CD pipeline security best practices provided in this article are critical for protecting applications against bugs and security vulnerabilities, while education on how to implement security policies and measures and respond when vulnerabilities are found is also integral in avoiding security breaches.
Cybercrime will cost businesses over $10.5 trillion by 2025 and has devastating repercussions for business operations teams.
A security puzzle breach can erode client confidence in your software or website and have irreparable implications for brand loyalty and promotion efforts. Maintaining the security tools of your CI/CD pipeline will help keep trust among clients while further building brand equity and strengthening relationships within it.
However, safeguarding CI/CD pipelines alone won't reduce cyber assaults; you also must prioritize, analyze, and mitigate risks effectively.
Cyber risk management platform helps at every step in this process and integrates seamlessly into existing tools for total risk control.
Conclusion
Attack surfaces are increasingly targeting your infrastructure for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD).
Their goal is to prevent you from shipping secure code, not simply disrupt your workflow. Consider this: CI/CD pipelines are pivotal components in digital transformation activities at your organization - disruption could have serious ramifications as these systems distribute new features to clients efficiently.
An improper Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment pipeline can have dire repercussions. In this article, learn multiple techniques for increasing its security frameworks as well as deployment strategies that help roll back new apps if major security vulnerabilities emerge.
