What is DevSecOps automation?
DevSecOps automation is the practice of embedding automated security controls into every phase of software development and deployment. It means security checks happen automatically as developers write code, build applications, and push updates to production. Instead of waiting for a security team to review everything at the end, security becomes part of the process from day one.
This approach extends DevOps principles—collaboration, speed, and automation—to include security as a core component. You're not adding security on top of your existing workflow. You're weaving it into the fabric of how your team builds and ships software.
The key difference from traditional security is timing. Old security models perform checks late in the development cycle, often right before release. DevSecOps automation focuses on "shifting left," which means catching and fixing vulnerabilities as early as possible when they're simpler and cheaper to fix.
This automation covers multiple security activities throughout your pipeline. It includes scanning source code for vulnerabilities, checking open-source dependencies for known issues, validating Infrastructure as Code templates for misconfigurations, and enforcing security policies automatically. By turning security rules into code and automating fixes, you maintain strong security without slowing down your development speed.
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Why DevSecOps automation matters for modern development teams
Manual security processes can't keep pace with modern development speeds. Teams ship code faster than ever, and traditional security reviews create bottlenecks that force you to choose between speed and safety. According to Datadog's 2024 State of DevSecOps report, 38% of organizations still perform manual production actions via console rather than using automation. DevSecOps automation eliminates this trade-off by making security a seamless part of your high-velocity workflow.
Cloud-native applications make this even more critical. Distributed architectures, microservices, and containers that spin up and down create a complex, constantly changing attack surface. Legacy security tools weren't built for this dynamic environment. DevSecOps automation gives you the continuous visibility and control needed to protect modern applications.
Compliance requirements add another layer of complexity. You may need to meet multiple frameworks simultaneously—SOC 2 for service organization controls, ISO 27001 for information security management, PCI DSS for payment data, HIPAA for healthcare information, and NIST SSDF (Secure Software Development Framework) for supply chain security.
Automating compliance checks and evidence gathering ensures your applications stay compliant by default. This "compliance-as-code" approach reduces manual audit work and helps you maintain continuous compliance. For example, automated security scans provide evidence for SOC 2 CC7.1 (system monitoring) and CC7.2 (threat detection), while SBOM generation and provenance attestations support NIST SSDF practices PW.1.1 (procure software components) and PS.3.1 (verify third-party software integrity). Policy-as-code enforcement demonstrates ISO 27001 control A.14.2.5 (secure system engineering principles) through version-controlled, auditable security rules.
The bottom line: automation lets you innovate rapidly while keeping your applications secure and compliant. You don't have to sacrifice one for the other.
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Core components of DevSecOps automation
A successful DevSecOps automation strategy relies on several essential components working together. These building blocks integrate security seamlessly into your existing workflows.
Automated security scanning forms the foundation of your security automation. This should include:
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) scans your source code for vulnerabilities before it runs
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) tests running applications to find security flaws
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) identifies risks in the open-source libraries and dependencies you use
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scanning checks Terraform, CloudFormation, and Kubernetes manifests for misconfigurations before deployment
Container and image scanning validates base images and application layers for CVEs and policy violations before they reach production
Agentless scanning at cloud scale ensures complete coverage of ephemeral resources, serverless functions, and short-lived containers, reducing operational overhead in multi-cloud environments while maintaining comprehensive visibility.
Policy enforcement engines let you define and enforce security rules as code. Tools like Open Policy Agent let you write policies for everything from cloud configurations to Kubernetes deployments, and enforce them via Kubernetes admission controls (using Gatekeeper or Kyverno) and CI/CD pipeline policy gates that block non-compliant deployments.
CI/CD pipeline integration serves as the backbone for DevSecOps automation. When you integrate security tools directly into your build and deployment pipelines, security checks become automatic with every code commit. Developers get immediate feedback without leaving their workflow.
Security orchestration coordinates multiple security tools and automates response workflows. In environments with many tools, orchestration platforms (also called SOAR—Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) connect them, aggregate findings, and trigger automated actions like creating Jira tickets, quarantining vulnerable container images, rolling back risky infrastructure changes, or blocking deployments that violate policy.
Automated feedback loops close the gap between finding and fixing. Route findings to code owners in Jira or Slack with SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) references showing affected components, code ownership context from version control, and specific remediation guidance. Enforce merge and deployment gates that block changes until fixes meet defined SLAs for critical and high-severity issues.
Supply chain security automation protects your software supply chain from tampering and ensures artifact integrity:
SBOM generation creates a Software Bill of Materials (in SPDX or CycloneDX format) for every build, listing all components and dependencies. This inventory helps you quickly identify affected systems when new vulnerabilities emerge.
Artifact signing uses tools like Sigstore and Cosign to cryptographically sign container images, binaries, and packages. Signatures prove artifacts haven't been modified since your CI pipeline built them.
Provenance attestations follow SLSA (Supply chain Levels for Software Artifacts) framework to record build metadata—what source code version, which build system, and what dependencies were used. Admission controls can verify this provenance before allowing deployments.
Signature verification in admission policies blocks unsigned or untrusted images from running in production, ensuring only validated artifacts reach your clusters.
Kubernetes admission controls enforce security policies at the cluster level, ensuring runtime matches what passed CI checks:
Policy enforcement via admission controllers (Gatekeeper, Kyverno, or Kubewarden) blocks pods that violate security rules—like privileged containers, missing resource limits, or unapproved base images.
Image allowlists restrict which container registries and image repositories can deploy to production, preventing unauthorized or unscanned images from running.
Drift detection continuously compares running workloads against your IaC definitions and admission policies, alerting when manual changes create security gaps.
Runtime verification checks that deployed workloads maintain the security posture validated during build time, closing the gap between CI security checks and production reality.
What is a DevSecOps Pipeline?
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at why DevSecOps is a necessity. Then we’ll cover each step of implementation, giving you a comprehensive list of DevSecOps pipeline best practices in 2025.
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Benefits of implementing DevSecOps automation
DevSecOps automation delivers advantages that go beyond just finding vulnerabilities. It fundamentally changes how you build, ship, and secure software.
You'll detect and fix vulnerabilities faster. Continuous scanning in your CI/CD pipeline catches vulnerabilities the moment they appear. This immediate feedback, combined with automated remediation guidance, dramatically reduces the time it takes to fix security issues.
Your security becomes more consistent with less human error. Automating security policies as code eliminates configuration drift and enforces least privilege access and baseline hardening (like disabling unused services and enforcing encryption) consistently across all environments—development, staging, and production.
Your teams collaborate better with shared ownership. DevSecOps automation breaks down walls between development, security, and operations. A common platform and shared data create a culture where everyone takes responsibility for security.
You'll reduce security debt over time. Proactive risk management prevents vulnerabilities from piling up in your codebase. By addressing security issues early and consistently, you build a more resilient and maintainable application.
Measurable outcomes you can track:
DevSecOps automation delivers quantifiable improvements across security, speed, and efficiency:
Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR) vulnerabilities drops from weeks to days or hours as automated workflows route findings to owners with fix guidance
Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) security issues decreases as continuous scanning catches problems immediately instead of during periodic reviews
Pipeline coverage shows the percentage of CI/CD pipelines with automated security gates—target 100% for production deployments
Automated vs. manual testing ratio tracks your automation maturity—mature teams achieve 80%+ automated security testing
Auto-remediation rate measures what percentage of findings get fixed automatically via pull requests or policy enforcement without manual intervention
Service coverage indicates the percentage of applications and services with SBOM generation, scanning, and policy enforcement—aim for complete coverage
False positive rate should decrease over time as you tune policies and prioritization, reducing alert fatigue and improving developer trust
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DevSecOps automation best practices and implementation strategies
Adopting DevSecOps automation requires a strategic approach that combines the right tools, processes, and mindset. You can't automate everything overnight, so start with these proven practices.
First, establish your security policies as code. Define your security and compliance requirements in a format that can be version-controlled and automatically enforced. A unified policy engine used from code to runtime avoids drift and eliminates inconsistent enforcement across teams and environments—the same policies that gate CI/CD deployments should also govern what runs in production clusters. This creates a single source of truth for security rules across your entire infrastructure—an approach that is rapidly gaining enterprise adoption as organizations shift security left.
Implement progressive automation by starting small. Begin with critical checks like Infrastructure as Code scanning and secrets detection in your CI/CD pipeline. Use short-lived, federated credentials (OIDC—OpenID Connect) for pipelines instead of long-lived API keys, and expand to more comprehensive tests as your team matures.
Secure CI/CD identity with keyless authentication and short-lived credentials:
Use OIDC (OpenID Connect) federation to let your CI/CD platform (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI) authenticate to cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) without storing long-lived secrets.
Implement workload identity federation so each pipeline run receives a unique, time-limited token scoped to only the permissions needed for that specific job.
Rotate any remaining secrets automatically (database passwords, API keys) using secret management tools like HashiCorp Vault or cloud-native secret managers.
Audit credential usage to detect anomalies—like a pipeline accessing resources it shouldn't or credentials used outside expected time windows.
Create clear ownership models that empower developers. Give your developers the tools and training they need to identify and fix vulnerabilities in their own code. When security becomes part of their normal development process, it stops feeling like an obstacle.
Build a security champions program to spread security expertise. Champions advocate best practices, help triage issues, and own enablement activities like maintaining secure coding guidelines, configuring pre-commit hooks for secrets scanning, creating threat-model checklists for new features, and running security workshops for their teams.
Common challenges and how to overcome them
You'll face obstacles when implementing DevSecOps automation. Knowing these challenges ahead of time helps you address them proactively.
Alert fatigue: Traditional tools generate too many alerts, including false positives and low-priority findings. Use intelligent prioritization with runtime and cloud context—Datadog's State of DevOps 2025 report found that only 18% of critical vulnerabilities remained critical after applying runtime context like network exposure, active exploitation, and permission scope. Platforms that correlate vulnerabilities with network exposure, identity permissions, and data sensitivity using graph-based analysis surface true attack paths instead of isolated findings, helping teams focus on exploitable risks first.
Tool sprawl: Many organizations end up with a collection of security tools that don't work together well. This creates complexity and visibility gaps. The solution is consolidating onto a unified platform that gives you a single view of risk across your entire development lifecycle.
Cultural resistance: Developers may see new security processes as roadblocks to innovation. To gain buy-in, frame security as a shared goal. Provide developers with tools that integrate into their existing workflows and offer clear, actionable guidance that reduces friction.
How Wiz enables comprehensive DevSecOps automation
Wiz provides a unified platform built specifically to address DevSecOps automation challenges. It transforms how you secure cloud-native applications from code to cloud by integrating security into every development stage.
Wiz Code shifts security left into developer workflows, scanning Infrastructure as Code templates, container images, and source code for vulnerabilities, secrets, and misconfigurations directly in code repositories and CI/CD pipelines. Findings automatically route to code owners based on version control metadata, ensuring the developers who wrote the code receive actionable alerts with context about what's vulnerable and how to fix it. This prevents risks from reaching production.
The Wiz Security Graph powers a context-aware approach, mapping relationships between cloud resources (compute, storage, databases), workloads (containers, VMs, serverless), identities (users, service accounts, roles), data stores, and APIs, correlating risks from code to runtime. This prioritizes "toxic combinations" that form real attack paths—like an internet-exposed service with a critical CVE, over-privileged IAM role, and access to sensitive data—and reduces alert fatigue by filtering out isolated findings that don't create exploitable paths.
Findings are enriched with runtime signals and cloud context so teams focus on exploitable risks first. A vulnerability in a container image gets prioritized based on whether that image is actually deployed, if the vulnerable service is internet-exposed, what permissions it has, and whether it can access sensitive data—not just the CVE severity score.
Wiz's agentless scanning provides complete visibility across your multi-cloud environment in minutes. You don't deal with the performance overhead or operational friction of agents. This ensures complete coverage of all your assets, including short-lived workloads and serverless functions.
Want to see code-to-cloud automation, agentless visibility, and graph-based prioritization in action? Wiz provides a unified platform that shifts security left while maintaining runtime context, helping teams ship faster without compromising security.
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