According to the Systems Sciences Institute at IBM, it’s about six times higher to fix a bug during the implementation compared to one that’s identified during design. Yet, 86% of developers don’t prioritize application security when writing code. The result? A higher risk of vulnerabilities making their way into production, leading to more expensive breaches and damage to reputation.
Now, if you want better quality software, where security is a core component of every feature and function, then it’s about time to make a smart move for your organization’s bottom line.
Implementing Shift-Left Security is not without its challenges. There are some obstacles that organizations have to address before they can guarantee a smooth transition and reap the benefits of early-stage security.
Before we continue, let me just tell you that, yes, it could be challenging and tedious to adopt a Shift-Left approach to security, but these challenges that we discussed are small prices to pay. Keep on reading to know why.
Implementing shift-left security is more than just adding extra steps to your development process. Integrating security practices from the very beginning of the SDLC will drastically reduce vulnerabilities, minimize expensive last-minute fixes, and make sure that your product is secure by design. Now, let’s talk about how to get your teams to catch issues before they become expensive problems, improve software quality, and speed up your time-to-market by preventing delays caused by late-stage security discoveries.
To effectively minimize vulnerabilities, security checks must be done constantly from the very beginning—starting with the requirements phase, through design, and into coding. This will help you guarantee that security is a core part of the process instead of just something added at the end.
You know this: manual security checks slow down the process and are prone to human error. With Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) integrated into your CI/CD pipeline, you can continuously monitor for vulnerabilities without disrupting your team’s workflow. Not only that, automation makes sure that important security checks are completed consistently and quickly.
This is one of the most common mistakes that organizations make. Instead of making threat modeling a one-time exercise, integrate it into your development process as a continuous process. Identify potential vulnerabilities as the software evolves. By doing so, you catch risks early and proactively address them before they become serious problems.
Collaboration between your development, security, and operations teams is very important. Having real-time communication between them will help address security concerns immediately and avoid expensive delays later in the development cycle. When teams work together, security becomes a shared responsibility, making your processes more efficient and secure. You’re essentially covering all your bases here.
Last but definitely not the least, your teams need the right skills to effectively implement Shift-Left Security. The security training that you’ll provide them has to be tailored depending on the role they play in the process of developing your product. Developers, security engineers, and operations personnel each have unique responsibilities, and their training should reflect that. Here are some of the things that you might want to consider:
Managing security training across diverse teams is challenging, especially in large organizations. To give you complete control and visibility over your organization’s security training, AppSecEngineer’s Admin Panel offers a solution to this complexity
These steps will help you create a sustainable security-first culture that’s fully integrated into your development process while reducing vulnerabilities and keeping your organization secure.
Nowadays, it’s either you’re prioritizing security or you’re waiting for a data breach to ruin everything you and your team built. Ask yourself, which one are you?
Security in every phase of the SDLC reduces vulnerabilities, accelerates time-to-market, and protects your organization’s reputation from very expensive breaches. For organizations, the best time to prioritize early-stage security integration is now. The risks of waiting until the final stages are too high, both in terms of cost and the potential for damage.
AppSecEngineer is here to support your journey. With comprehensive training programs, customizable learning paths, and tools like the Admin Panel to monitor and manage progress, your teams will have the knowledge and skills they need to effectively implement Shift-Left Security. Equip your teams, secure your software, and lead with confidence in your industry.
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