What is Shift left security? Why it is critical for organizations in 2024?

The term “shift left” refers to the efforts of a DevOps team to guarantee application security at the earliest stages in the development lifecycle, as part of an organizational pattern known as DevSecOps (collaboration between development, security, and operations). 

To shift left means to move a process to the left on the traditional linear depiction of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

What is shift left security?

Until recent years, security testing was implemented at the end of the development cycle, following application testing. At this stage, security teams would perform various types of analysis and security testing, such as static analysis(SAST) and dynamic analysis (DAST). 

The results of security testing would either permit the application to proceed for deployment into production, or reject the application and pass it back to developers for remediation. This resulted in long delays in development or increased risk of releasing software without necessary security measures. 

To shift security left means to implement security measures during the entire development lifecycle, rather than at the end of the cycle. The goal of shifting security left is to design software with security best practices built in, and to detect and fix potential security issues and vulnerabilities as early in the development process as possible, making it easier, faster, and more affordable to address security issues.

Approaches for shift left security

Below are the tools and techniques that can be used for shift left security

• Static Application Security Testing (SAST) is used to scan source code for known weaknesses and insecure coding practices. In DevSecOps, this testing is typically integrated into developers’ development environments for immediate security risk feedback.
• Software Composition Analysis (SCA) analyzes software to detect known software components, such as open source and third-party libraries, and identify any associated vulnerabilities. SCA complements SAST by finding vulnerabilities not detectable by scanning source code.
• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) scans applications in runtime, prior to deployment into production environments. This enables an outside-in approach to testing applications for exploitable conditions that were not detectable in a static state.
• Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) runs alongside applications in production to observe and analyze behavior and notify or block anomalous and unauthorized actions. While this may place an additional infrastructural burden on production environments, it delivers a real-time look into potential application security risks.
• Container image scanning tools can continuously and automatically scan container images within the CI/CD pipeline and in container registries, prior to deployment into production environments. This enables identification of vulnerabilities or unsafe components, and provides remediation or mitigation guidance directly to developers and DevOps teams.

Process for Implementing Shift Left Security

Understanding the Software Supply Chain

To shift security to the left, you need to know where and how your organization’s software is created. For many organizations, this includes a mix of in-house and third-party developers and software vendors. This software supply chain adds complexity when architecting a comprehensive DevSecOps and shift left security program. 

It is important to fully assess your software supply chain, and understand that your security risk posture is, to a large degree, subject to the security proficiency of others. Take this into account and establish the tools, standards, and practices necessary to safeguard your organization from such risk exposure.

Defining the Common Goals

Shift left requires a cultural and organizational change. To facilitate this change, all team leaders should make decisions together. This helps ensure that any process or tool introduced into the development cycle has broader implications on all stakeholders. Organizations can promote this collaboration by encouraging leaders and teams to discover commonalities and align success criteria

Automate Security Processes

A shift left process typically involves the introduction of new technologies into the pipeline and retiring technologies that are no longer needed. Tools play a major role in DevOps and DevSecOps pipelines, facilitating collaboration, automation, and generally supporting the efforts of various teams. Choosing the right tools can help teams establish security practices during all stages of the lifecycle in a quick and timely manner. 

Train the team with DevSecOps Tools and Processes

As the population of career developers and software engineers grows, the disparity of security risk awareness and secure coding proficiency is becoming more apparent. Many developers were not trained in secure coding practices or lack adequate resources to identify security shortcomings, and research shows that a large proportion of developers do not code securely and are not confident in their organization’s security practices. 

Defining the OKR and KPIs for measuring the success

Defining below OKR and KPIs related to shift left will help in measuring the success of the program

1. Vulnerability Density

2. Security Compliance

3. Security Training Completion

4. Security Incident Severity

5. Security Metrics

6. SAST and DAST Security Issue Discovery Rate

Why it is critical for organizations in 2024?

Increasing Cloud Security Risks

According to a threat report by Palo Alto’s Unit 42 team, the cloud is the dominant attack surface, with 80% of security exposures present in cloud environments compared to on-premise at 19%. cloud-hosted exposures each month were a result of the constant change in cloud-hosted new services going online and old ones being replaced.

Increasing Trend in Software Supply Chain Exploitation

Most enterprises' critical infrastructure and operational pipelines rely on an intricate web of software, online services, and cloud applications. This level of complexity makes supply chain risk management one of the biggest challenges for CISOs today. 

Today, malicious actors choose to exploit software supply chain vulnerabilities rather than just target end users. These SSC attacks have caused some of the most notable security incidents and data breaches in recent years.

Software supply chain security attacks will continue to escalate in the coming years, potentially costing businesses a staggering $138 billion by 2031 based on 2023 supply chain attack report the pressing need to take proactive measures and secure software supply chains immediately.  

Introduction of New Compliance Requirements

Following the software supply chain attack on solarwinds and the worldwide panic from the vulnerability affecting Log4J, government and regulatory bodies around the world have been trying to address this looming problem.

The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is the European Union's proposed regulation to combat threats affecting any digital entity and to "bolster cybersecurity rules to ensure more secure hardware and software products."

Taken directly from European Commission itself, they describe two main goals that were kept in mind when developing this proposal:

1. Create conditions for the development of secure products with digital elements by ensuring that hardware and software products are placed on the market with fewer vulnerabilities and ensure that manufacturers take security seriously throughout a product’s life cycle; and
2. Create conditions allowing users to take cybersecurity into account when selecting and using products with digital elements.