9 DevSecOps Tools Worth Trying

By definition, DevSecOps is an approach to IT security built based on the philosophy and principles of DevOps. While the field is still formulating and advancing, it is useful to understand emerging technologies and tools for securing applications and APIs without disrupting the flows and operations. DevSecOps spans the entire IT Stack and full software lifecycles while monitoring application security, operations, and preventing vulnerabilities. Some of the tools used for performing these operations will be discussed shortly.

Grafana

In the world of DevSecOps, visualization is expedient and relevant to identifying any security information that passes through the application processes. Grafana is an open-source tool used for visualization with a variety of different data. It is used in conjunction with Graphite, Prometheus, ElasticSearch, and InfluxDB. It has a graphite target parser that enables easy metric and function editing.

StackStorm

Automation is a significant activity done in DevSecOps, and StackStorm does this. Automation platforms help in providing a scripted remedy to any security issues that may surface at the absence of the user. StackStorm is a platform that studies events strange to the system, check the set rules, and runs a set of instructions then execute the relevant commands needed to keep the operations safe. It can be incorporated with users existing infrastructure and this eliminates the need to change existing workflows.

GRR Rapid Response

The GRR rapid response platform is used for hunting in DevSecOps, which means providing capabilities necessary for finding security anomalies in DevOps activities, identify the necessary rules that need to be automated, and move them to support scale demands. It focuses on remote live forensics and is installed on target systems as well as python server infrastructure that communicates with external clients. Users can go through the documentation here.

Contrast Security

Testing is an activity done to foster security in DevOps, it helps teams to prepare for rugged operations and to determine possible security threats before they can be exploited externally. Contrast Security is an application security tool built around security observability. It is also used for testing, and it can deliver continuous security that natively integrates into every stage of the software development life-cycle from development to production level. Also, it integrates CI/CD pipelines and empowers developers to detect and fix vulnerabilities themselves.

Alerta

In working around DevSecOps, time is of the essence especially in responses to issues and security defects. Alerta is a tool used for sending responses and notifications back to the developer if there are threats in the system. The tool was developed to be distributed and decoupled. It accepts minimal configurations that can receive alerts from multiple sources. The open-source tool can be studied easily with just a glance at the visualization logs. Users can go implement Alerta in their DevSecOps operations by following the steps here.

Threat Connect

Over the years, threat intelligence has been a thing in DevSecOps for collation and studies, so better researches can be done to foster better security options. Threat Connect is used to collate threat intelligence. It is also used to unite Cyber Risk Qualification, threat intelligence platform, and security orchestration. Also, the platform response capabilities could align itself with the entire security lifecycle. With Threat connect, organizations can reduce complexity for everyone in the team, enable better decisions, improve defenses and unify processes that would foster risk reduction.

IriusRisk

In DevSecOps, there is a need to build modeling capabilities that can help in bringing defenses around the system. One of the tools used for this is IriusRisk and it can model threats with best-in-class architecture. It is driven by an expert system that could guide the users about the expected architecture, planned features, and security drive of the application. The model can display a list of potential security risks in the systems along with possible countermeasures that can keep the system secured.

Git Secrets

Git Secrets is a sensitive tool used to ensure passwords are not committed to any git repository. Generally, Git Secrets helps to manage security as code and maintain automation on the platform. The commands and steps to managing secrets in DevOps are shown here.

Hound

Hound is an open-source tool that is used as a code search engine. It is observed to be an extremely fast search engine and it is a static React frontend app that communicates with a Golang backend as shown in the official Git repository. The Hound tool helps in the Red Team and Wargame exercises where reconnaissance and other activities are performed for system testing.