21st Century Tech Threat

Straight off the bat, information security is of utmost importance in our 21st-century data driven world. With people being forced to work from home over the last year and a half, there has been a greater emphasis on information security than ever before.

As technology progresses and becomes more sophisticated, the ways of stealing information have become equally sophisticated. It comes as no surprise then that the FBI hired IT specialists to become cyber special agents a few years ago. To combat hackers, you need to think like a hacker.

Corporations and governments spend millions of dollars on their IT infrastructure to secure their sensitive information from theft or attack.

The Rise of Cyber Terrorism, Hackers, and Espionage

Since the exponential growth of the internet in the 1990s, the rise of cybercrimes has increased as well. These new-era terrorists and hackers are out to steal information and sell it to the highest bidder. More malicious cyber terrorists may try to locate enemy troop movements or bases for physical attack by their armed compatriots.

These changes have forced developers and programmers to adapt their DevOps to employ DevSecOps principles from a much earlier stage in the development process.

Previously, developers focused their attention on getting a project out in the allocated timeline, preferably under budget. After this, there is a focus on getting the program to run efficiently and glitch-free. Security, and implementing security processes during the development process, are far from the center of attention of the programmers that code and write software applications.

Hackers, whether ethical or unethical, make it their mission to gain entrance to sensitive information. They do this for their financial gain or simply as a way to pass the time or challenge their skills.

With that in mind DevSecOps must get implemented into the development cycle early on, but doing so is proving to be a difficult task.

The need for tighter security in application development is further intensified with the bulk of workers now working remotely, accessing their work information through VPN or similar technologies.

After-the-fact or third-party security software doesn't necessarily offer the security required to safeguard sensitive information, warranting a DevSecOps approach during the coding phases.

The Human Factor

The truth is that cyber terrorists and hackers are human. There are also ethical hackers, whose mission is to hack systems to point out flaws that can be fixed to prevent exploitation by unethical hackers. Guided Hacking contains forums, advice and learning material to create a fleet of ethical hackers who can help the world in this regard.

Unethical hackers use their human brains and hands to attack institutions to steal their information. Since there are humans at work, the people who combat these attacks should be human, as well.

One of the reasons DevSecOps is difficult to put into action is that the developers involved don't know how or simply don't care enough to be concerned about security protocols.

Add to that a tight budget and timeline and the recipe is fraught with loopholes and areas of attack.

Conclusion

It's no secret that DevSecOps will need to become a crucial part of the development landscape soon. The IT industry as a whole can no longer sit back and rely on third-party vendors to (maybe) release security software that is strong enough against the imminent attack.

Or, maybe this is a prime opportunity for development companies to offer a DevSecOps package that is all-encompassing and reliable.

Only time will tell.