CloudPassage today announced results of a survey revealing the security challenges companies face on the path to adopting continuous development methods such as DevOps. CloudPassage surveyed 102 information security professionals attending the 2016 RSA USA Conference this week to understand how organizations are using the cloud, the dynamics between security and DevOps, and associated challenges and perceived benefits for integrating security and DevOps.

Key Findings

• 58 percent of respondents said their company brings security into the design stage of a product lifecycle.
• But only 50 percent of respondents believe that security is capable of moving as fast as new release cycles.
• 65 percent cited a lack of resources (i.e. talent and budget) and siloed departments as the biggest barriers to getting security into release cycles earlier.
• 64 percent said they have a mixed or hybrid cloud deployment; only 8 percent reported not having cloud infrastructure.

"For organizations to stay competitive today, they need a faster way to continuously innovate and release new products and services. As such, continuous development methods such as DevOps are becoming commonplace among the most innovative, successful companies," said Sami Laine, chief technologist at CloudPassage. "However, with these methods, security often gets left out or drags behind. Our survey results demonstrate that organizations must find a way to integrate security with DevOps if they want to realize the benefits of continuous delivery and stay safe at the same time."

Survey Analysis

Companies Lack Infrastructure to Support Continuous Innovation
Two-thirds (65 percent) of security professionals cited both lack of resources (i.e. talent and budget) and siloed departments as the biggest barriers to getting security earlier into release cycles. Lack of resources was reported as the main barrier by 34 percent of the respondents. Fewer respondents, 18 percent, said security would slow down the release cycle. Eight percent said they believe "DevOps derails security."

Security Is Moving Toward Continuous Software Delivery
When asked the stage at which security is brought into software or product development release cycles, more than half of respondents (58 percent) said security is introduced during phase one, the concept and design phase. A quarter of respondents (22 percent) said security is brought in during phase two, the coding and implementation phase.

Mixed Emotions on Security Moving as Fast as Releases
While more than half of respondents (58 percent) said security is brought into the development lifecycle early, over half of respondents (51 percent) disagreed and or did not know if security is capable of moving as fast as product or service release cycles.

Benefits of Integrating Security and DevOps Span the Business
One-third (33 percent) of security professionals said the biggest business benefit for integrating security into DevOps methods is better security, faster. Twenty-five percent of respondents said they believe the biggest benefit is new applications without delays caused by security. Twenty-four percent said the driver is improved relationships between DevOps and security teams.

Most Businesses Have Mixed Cloud Environments
Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of IT security professionals characterized their organization's cloud deployment as being "mixed or hybrid." Alternatively, 16 percent of respondents described their cloud deployment as private, 13 percent said they operate in the public cloud, and just 8 percent of respondents said they do not have any cloud infrastructure.

Jon Oltsik, Senior Principal Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group: "The primary trend we see is companies trying to use their existing technologies and processes for cloud, for agile IT, and that makes sense. They're trying to get ROI on the tools that they know, but typically that doesn't work," says Oltsik, who advises companies to look at what they have, but also what they need to adjust in a new agile world. "You need systems that can be flexible for a heterogeneous environment, on-premise and off-premise. Typically, traditional controls weren't designed for that, and if you try to force fit them they're not very accommodating to that kind of environment." (More)

David Mortman, Contributing Analyst, Securosis: "The important thing about DevOps is that you are engaging in a culture of sharing, measuring and automation... I think the big change is, for a lot of organizations, they're very siloed. Dev does Dev only, QA does QA only, Ops does Ops only, and there's not a lot of communication between the teams... They have a whole slew of competing concerns, but the more each side understands each other's wants and needs, the better they can communicate but also the better they can be sympathetic in understanding how things need to work or what needs to happen to change."