What is Shift Left Security | Concept Overview and more

Q: What is the purpose of Shift Left?

Traditional security practices involved testing for vulnerabilities at the end of development that proved to be reactive and costly. To address this challenge, a shift left security approach emerged, advocating for the integration of security considerations into the early stages of development.

Q: How to implement shift left security in your organization?

There are 4 key steps to implement shift left security - Define your shift left security strategy, Understand your software development process, Implement security guardrails, and Continuous monitoring. Read the article to understand more about implementation process.

Q: What are some best practices for shifting security left in your organization?

Shift-left security prioritizes early vulnerability detection, improves security posture, speeds up deployments, enhances developer productivity, reduces rework, and fosters a continuous security culture.

Security teams were always known as a team of NO; When we asked developers the reason, they responded by saying “Security team will always say NO to everything - and keep on instructing to embed all the security-related changes”. It was realized that it was challenging for the developers to incorporate security best practices into their systems post-development.

Shift left security is a mindset that focuses on incorporating security practices earlier in the software development lifecycle. The idea is to move security considerations right within the SDLC. In other words, integrating security tasks and controls into earlier stages of development, such as code reviews, static code analysis, and unit testing.

Purpose of Shift Left

It was noticed, that organizations were increasingly recognizing the need to prioritize security throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Traditional security practices, which involved testing for vulnerabilities at the end of development, have proven to be reactive and costly. To address this challenge, a shift left security approach has emerged, advocating for the integration of security considerations into the early stages of development.

By shifting security left, organizations directly and indirectly aim for the following;

Promote DevSecOps: Shift left security suits best with DevSecOps practices, which emphasize collaboration between development, security, and operations teams throughout the SDLC.
Improve security posture: By proactively addressing security throughout SDLC, organizations can build more secure software from the ground up.
Identify and fix vulnerabilities: as mentioned above, proactively identifying security issues allows for faster and more cost-effective remediation.
Reduce rework: Catching security issues earlier in development allows for faster and cost-effective remediation. Now your developers will not be hesitant in meeting your security teams!

How to implement shift left security in your organization?

So far, we understood that the traditional security (shift right) approach is time-consuming, costly, and cumbersome for developers. Whereas, the shift left security approach flips the cards by emphasizing proactive security measures throughout SDLC.

From our talks with industry experts in our ScaletoZero podcasts - we have realized the importance of shift left security, and have explained four key steps to implement shift left security in your organization.

Define your shift left security strategy

This stage builds a direction for your organization to get started with a shift left security approach. It includes the following processes.

Define goals and objectives: Clearly define what “shift left” means for your organization. This helps you address what security goals you want to achieve by integrating security earlier in your SDLCs. This might include goals such as reducing vulnerabilities, increasing security awareness within developers and other business units, or faster and more secure deployments.
Identify stakeholders and responsibilities: It is important to outline the roles and responsibilities of different teams involved in the SDLC. This includes outlining roles in development, security, and other relevant teams like operations or IT.
Choose metrics and monitoring: Understand and establish metrics to track the effectiveness of your shift left security strategy. The number of vulnerabilities identified now and earlier, and the time taken for remediation, are some of the good metrics that you can get started with.

Understand your software development process

In this stage, you will be able to understand your end-to-end development process including SDLC, and its integral work areas like associated security gaps, tools required, etc. The process includes;

Map your SDLC: Document the various stages of your software development lifecycle. This helps to identify integration points for security controls in different stages of your SDLC.
Identify security gaps: Analyze your existing SDLC and identify security gaps. These security gaps can include phases with security testing or limited developer security awareness.

Implement security guardrails

This stage involves building and implementing security processes and tools including important tasks like developer training. Let us understand more about this.

Security policies and procedures: Define and develop clear policies and procedures outlining security best practices for development teams. This might include guidelines for secure coding practices, password management, and vulnerability reporting.
Developer training: Provide developers with training on secure coding practices, common vulnerabilities, and how to leverage security tools effectively.

Continuous monitoring

This stage refers to capturing metrics and taking actions based on them to improve the overall security strategy.

Track metrics: Monitor the metrics you established to assess the effectiveness of your shift-left strategy.
Refine and adapt: Based on your findings, refine your shift-left approach. This might involve adjusting security controls, improving training programs, or adopting new tools as required.

What are some best practices for shifting security left in your organization?

In the above section, we studied implementation strategies of shift left security. While those can be your go-getters for best practices, we have listed 6 best practices to achieve a robust shift-left security strategy, focusing on the outcomes and not the specific implementation methods. Let us understand them each.

Early vulnerability detection

Shifting security left prioritizes identifying vulnerabilities as soon as possible in the development lifecycle. This allows for faster remediation and reduces the risk of vulnerabilities persisting through later stages. Remember, fixing vulnerabilities in later stages becomes more complex and expensive.

Improved security posture

By integrating security practices throughout your SDLC, organizations can build applications with a stronger security foundation from the ground up. This reduces the attack surface and makes applications less susceptible to exploitation.

Faster and secure deployments

Shift-left security can help organizations streamline the development process by allowing developers and PR approvers (Quality Gate) to identify and fix security gaps early. This minimizes delays caused because of security vulnerabilities discovered during the later testing phase, leading to faster and more secure deployments.

Enhanced developer productivity

When security considerations are integrated seamlessly into the development workflow, developers can write code more efficiently including security best practices. Training and tooling provided through a shift-left approach empower developers to identify and address security concerns without significant disruptions to their workflow.

Reduced rework

Shifting security left helps to minimize the need for rework in the later development phases. By catching vulnerabilities early, organizations can avoid the time-consuming and resource-intensive tasks of fixing them in partially or fully developed code.

Continuous security culture

A successful shift-left strategy fosters a culture of security awareness throughout the development process. Developers, security teams, and other stakeholders become more knowledgeable in building secure applications, leading to a more collaborative and security-focused development environment.

What are the challenges of implementing shift left security?

While shift-left security provides a set of benefits, implementing it effectively can bring some challenges for organizations. We have explained 6 key challenges that organizations should consider.

Integration complexity

Integrating security tools and practices seamlessly into the existing development environment can be challenging. This might involve modifying existing processes, learning new tools, and potentially encountering compatibility issues. Organizations need to carefully plan the integration process and ensure it doesn't disrupt development velocity.

Shortage of security skills

Shift-left security often demands a basic understanding of security concepts and vulnerabilities from developers. However, there might be a skills gap within development teams, requiring additional training or potentially hiring developers with a strong security background. You can refer to our latest blog that focuses on hiring cybersecurity professionals.

Alert fatigue and time constraints

Shift-left security tools can generate a high volume of security alerts. Development teams may find it challenging to keep analyzing and prioritizing these alerts. Situations like these often lead to alert fatigue and potentially overlooking critical vulnerabilities. Thus, effectively managing alerts and prioritizing remediation efforts is crucial.

Signing up for unnecessary security tools

The current security landscape considering the rise of AI offers a wide range of security tools for different aspects of shift-left security. Organizations need to carefully evaluate and select tools that suit them and integrate efficiently with their existing development environment.

Resistance to change

Adapting shift-left security often requires a cultural shift within organizations (especially development teams). Development teams who are accustomed to traditional development processes might resist integrating security practices into their workflow. Effective communication and demonstrating the benefits of shift-left security are essential for winning buy-in from developers.

Legacy applications and infrastructure

In the same way, the developers are resistant to accepting the cultural shift, your traditional applications and infrastructure may not support the integration of new tools. Because shift-left security is most effective when implemented from the very beginning of the development process. However, organizations might have existing applications built without security in mind, or rely on legacy infrastructure that isn't well-suited for modern security practices. Addressing security in these environments can be particularly challenging and might require additional resources or modernization efforts.

By understanding these challenges and proactively taking action and developing strategies to address them, organizations can overcome the hurdles of shift-left security and reap the long-term benefits of building more secure and reliable software applications.

Key considerations while implementing shift left security in your organization

Shift-left security offers a powerful approach to building secure software, but implementing it effectively at an enterprise level requires careful planning and consideration. We have prepared a list of key factors to keep in mind to ensure a smooth and successful shift-left security implementation within your organization:

Approvals from stakeholders: Secure leadership buy-in from stakeholders to ensure necessary resources, finances, and support are allocated for the shift-left initiative.
Cross-functional collaboration: Foster a collaborative environment where everyone feels invested in building secure applications.
Automation: Enterprises adapting shift left must embrace automated build, security checks, and testing.
Standardization and Governance: Establish clear standards and policies for secure coding practices, vulnerability management, and alert handling to ensure consistency across the organization.
Security Champions: Identify and empower security champions within development teams to promote secure coding practices and act as a resource for their peers.
Threat modeling: No matter what threat modeling format your organization decides to use, it requires all teams to maintain a security focus throughout the project.

What are the different types of shift left security tools?

Security is no longer a job that can be done manually or without getting help from a variety of tools. Shift left security relies on a range of tools integrated throughout the development lifecycle to identify and address vulnerabilities early. Here's a breakdown of some common types of shift-left security tools that also include their functionalities:

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

SAST tools help in analyzing source code to identify potential security vulnerabilities, coding errors, and security best practice violations. In practice, SAST tools integrate early in the development cycle, during coding and code reviews, to detect vulnerabilities like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) weaknesses.

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

Think of DAST as a simulator that simulates real-world attacks on a running application to identify vulnerabilities that might be missed by SAST. DAST tools are used later in the development process, during functional testing or pre-deployment stages, to uncover vulnerabilities like authentication bypass or insecure direct object references.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

SCAs are used to scan third-party libraries and open-source components used in applications to identify known vulnerabilities and licensing issues. SCAs are often integrated throughout the development process to ensure secure software dependencies are used and potential vulnerabilities within components are addressed.

Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST)

IASTs are used to combine elements of SAST and DAST, analyzing application behavior during runtime to identify vulnerabilities in real-time. IAST provides deeper insights compared to traditional DAST, particularly useful for complex web applications and detecting vulnerabilities related to user interactions.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security Scanners

IaC security scanners are responsible for scanning infrastructure as code templates (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation) to identify security misconfigurations that could lead to vulnerabilities in cloud deployments. It is recommended to integrate IaCs early in the infrastructure provisioning process to ensure secure configurations are deployed and potential security risks are mitigated.

Secret Detection and Management Tools

These tools scan code repositories and configuration files to identify sensitive data like passwords, API keys, and access tokens. Secret detection and management tools help prevent accidental exposure of sensitive data within code and configurations, promoting secure coding practices and data handling.

Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR)

SOARs are responsible for automating security tasks like vulnerability scanning, alert correlation, and incident response to name a few. Improves efficiency and streamlines security workflows within the shift-left approach, allowing teams to focus on more strategic security initiatives.

These were the 7 most common types of shift-left security tools. Going into specifics, the right tool should be selected depending on your organization’s needs and development environment. By effectively integrating these tools throughout the development lifecycle, organizations can significantly improve their application security posture and build more secure software.

What is Shift Left Security?

Unblocking developers on every step without compromising security