How to Combine Observability-driven Development and Security

In today’s tech landscape, applications are more intricate, making them vulnerable to various cyber threats and data breaches due to their extensive data connections.

Traditional security methods struggle to keep up with the rapidly evolving threat landscape.

This is where observability steps in.

What is observability-driven development?

Observability-driven development (ODD) strives to create highly transparent systems by integrating observability into the entire software development process, starting from the early stages of code instrumentation.

Unlike conventional monitoring which concentrates solely on the application’s health, observability offers a comprehensive understanding of the system’s performance through real-time data.

Embedding observability in development

Observability-driven development is emerging as a methodology for comprehensively observing, maintaining and optimizing complex systems. By utilizing metrics, logs, traces, events, and observability tools, development teams can achieve several key objectives:

1. Understand the underlying causes of system issues, going beyond mere identification to uncover why problems occur.
2. Attain a comprehensive view of the entire system, from the application to the network layer.
3. Streamline development processes and daily operations through the integration of observability pipelines and automation.
4. Detect performance issues early in the development cycle and address bottlenecks, including those originating from intricate systems such as microservices and cloud-native applications.
5. Minimize incidents and downtime, while continually enhancing application performance and user satisfaction.

For a more detailed exploration of observability and its implementation in the software development lifecycle, refer to the articles below:

• “What is Observability in Custom Software Development?”
• “Observability Best Practices: How to Future-proof Your Software”

The convergence between observability and security

Organizational growth often involves adopting a variety of technologies, such as cloud containers, microservices, low-code, and no-code tools. However, this expansion diversifies the attack surface, making applications more susceptible to security threats.

Furthermore, as modern systems become more interconnected, it becomes increasingly challenging to identify the exact root cause of an incident. As a result, the level of visibility offered by observability becomes an essential component of a robust security strategy.

Understanding security observability

By harnessing the internal visibility offered by observability and integrating it with security data, development teams can establish what is referred to as security observability. Security observability enables IT Ops, DevOps, and security administrators to:

• Attain a comprehensive understanding of the application’s security status.
• Detect and investigate security incidents in real time.
• Swiftly address issues and minimize potential damage.
• Enhance system security against anticipated future threats.

Observability platforms introduce an additional layer of insight to conventional security monitoring. Unified observability solutions combine all data sources into a single platform, establishing a centralized reference point for security teams. Advanced technologies like AI, machine learning, and automation further assist security teams in interpreting this consolidated data and preventing monitoring fatigue.

Benefits of integrating observability and security

Observability-driven security offers numerous important advantages compared to conventional security monitoring.

1. Understanding the root cause of security incidents

Observability tools empower teams to utilize AI and root cause analysis to comprehend and resolve issues. Instead of manually sifting through countless similar logs in search of correlations, DevOps teams can employ machine learning to pinpoint and address the underlying factors that triggered a security incident.

2. Faster response time to security breaches

Observability equips teams with the vital context and data to respond quickly to security incidents. Through real-time monitoring of events across the entire infrastructure, observability platforms enable security administrators to detect unusual activity promptly, conduct rapid investigations, and implement necessary actions.

3. Ability to predict threats

With cyber threats growing in sophistication, relying solely on reactive measures is no longer enough. A proactive strategy is essential to preemptively secure applications against potential attacks.

Observability tools, combined with predictive analysis and root cause analysis, offer valuable insights into an application’s most susceptible areas, enabling proactive security measures.

4. Full visibility across the security lifecycle

Traditional monitoring primarily concentrates on high-level metrics, which can hinder the tracking of issues throughout the system.

In contrast, observability offers a finer level of insight into security incidents, enabling teams to meticulously follow them from the initial identification to their resolution.

5. Improved efficiency and cross-team collaboration

Observability, along with its associated toolset, helps teams automate and streamline many of their everyday tasks. It enables teams to enhance their decision-making processes, reducing the volume of security alerts they must filter through.

Furthermore, it promotes collaboration between different teams, fostering improved coordination among developers, security engineers, and IT engineers for incident resolution.

The vast amount of data collected by IT teams involved in observability can be shared with security teams, eradicating redundancy and data segregation.

Unlocking the power of observability in building secure applications

Ensuring the security of applications against attacks isn’t solely about applying cybersecurity measures after the application is already in use. In a landscape where cyber threats evolve in parallel with technology, security measures must be integrated during the application delivery process.

Security observability emerges as a means for development teams to construct applications that prioritize security right from the inception, enabling teams to address potential threats throughout the development lifecycle. This fresh approach to security is often referred to as the “shift left” paradigm, signifying the practice of tackling vulnerabilities from the earliest phases of a development project.

Best practices for observability-driven security

To effectively merge observability and security, teams should stick to a set of recommended practices. This enables them to establish ecosystems that prioritize security by default, beginning with how developers configure their environments.

Developers often struggle with the challenge of setting up and managing the various technologies essential for the software development lifecycle, including observability tools.

To address this, implementing practices to secure data at early stages becomes essential. These may encompass:

• Secure configuration templates
• Non-root mode
• IP-based and other access restrictions
• Automatic signature verification
• Automatic environment authentication

By strengthening the infrastructure from its foundation, you can establish a resilient environment for the application’s growth. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security plays a pivotal role here, enabling engineers to identify misconfigurations and vulnerable default settings.

Another noteworthy best practice involves integrating security into both CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipelines and observability pipelines, a topic we’ll delve into in the forthcoming sections.

Integrating security into CI/CD Pipelines

Traditionally, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines have not incorporated security considerations, leading development teams to handle security as a separate process. Through the integration of automated security testing into CI/CD pipelines, this gap can be bridged, ensuring that checks occur at every developmental stage.

This approach, often referred to as DevSecOps, guarantees the detection and resolution of vulnerabilities before they reach production environments. It empowers engineers to address issues while constructing the application.

While CI/CD pipelines automate the software delivery process, it’s essential not to compromise security in the pursuit of automation. With each code alteration, the potential for vulnerabilities rises. Incorporating security assessments within CI/CD pipelines adds an additional layer of protection.

Scanning and analyzing source code

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools can be smoothly incorporated into the pipeline, delivering immediate feedback to developers during the code-writing process. SAST, also referred to as “white box testing,” aids in the early detection of issues during development.

In fact, it doesn’t require the execution of the code, hence the term “static.” This enables engineers to rectify problems without disrupting builds or transferring vulnerabilities to subsequent development stages.

Assessing the security of third-party dependencies

Third-party dependencies and libraries can greatly quicken development, but they also introduce a possible vulnerability. Many major breaches have exploited weaknesses in third-party dependencies.

To address this issue, Source Composition Analysis (SCA) automatically evaluates the security of open-source software within a codebase, including third-party libraries. This guarantees that the end product is free from known risks or vulnerabilities, enabling teams to enhance productivity without compromising quality or security.

Automating security testing and vulnerability remediation

Automated testing isn’t limited to functional and performance evaluations; it also encompasses security testing. Automated security tests can replicate real-world attacks, like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.

By incorporating security tests into the CI/CD pipeline alongside other performance checks, development teams can attain a more comprehensive understanding of their application’s condition and security posture.

Furthermore, the pipeline should be equipped with mechanisms to automatically address vulnerabilities as they are detected.

Runtime security and observability pipelines

Security monitoring and testing should continue even after the application is deployed. Observability pipelines and tools empower security engineers to gather, analyze, and leverage data for identifying and mitigating threats.

One of the primary issues is the sheer volume and variety of data engineers must oversee, originating from multiple application components and environments. Observability pipelines alleviate much of the management responsibility from engineers, granting them enhanced control over runtime application data and promoting more robust security practices.

Observability pipelines explained

Observability pipelines empower teams to gather diverse observability data, including logs, metrics, traces, and more, from various sources like AWS and Kubernetes containers. This data can then be sent to different destinations.

This approach offers several notable advantages:

• Centralized Management: By combining data into a single location, observability pipelines simplify the management of telemetry data and the detection of anomalies.
• Breaking Down Silos: These pipelines break down data silos within organizations, facilitating information exchange and maintaining data consistency across different sources and formats.
• Data Visualization: Observability tools use pipelines and data visualization to create user-friendly dashboards, graphs, and charts. This enables stakeholders throughout the organization to gain better insights into system behavior and performance.
• Real-Time Monitoring: Pipeline-based real-time monitoring provides a complete view of the application on multiple levels, including resource utilization and performance, infrastructure insights, and scaling insights.

Leveraging observability pipelines for enhanced security

Observability pipelines, initially designed for capturing performance data, can be expanded to include security-related information. By incorporating security telemetry into these pipelines, organizations can access real-time insights into potential security risks, unauthorized access attempts, and unusual activities.

Let’s explore some of the ways in which observability pipelines contribute to strengthening security measures.

Early anomaly detection

Traditional security approaches often centered around post-incident investigations. However, observability pipelines shift this paradigm by enabling the early detection of unusual activities, like unexpected surges in network traffic or unusual authentication patterns.

Observability pipelines leverage machine learning algorithms to analyze incoming data streams and detect deviations from established patterns proactively.

Real-time incident response

Continuous monitoring and alerts within observability pipelines empower security teams to respond swiftly to security incidents, thereby reducing their impact. When a potential breach is identified, the pipelines activate pre-defined alerts that notify administrators.

In some cases, based on alert configurations, these alerts can autonomously address issues without requiring human intervention, further accelerating response times.

360-degree view of security incidents

Observability pipelines offer an all-encompassing perspective on security incidents. They excel not only at correlating data but also at forecasting potential threats and gleaning insights from past occurrences.

Security teams can utilize observability to study the progression of an incident, track its source, measure its ramifications, and implement measures to prevent its recurrence.

Compliance with security regulations

Security observability pipelines serve as pivotal tools in upholding compliance standards and streamlining audit procedures. Through the collection and examination of security-focused data, these pipelines guarantee the fulfillment of regulatory requirements.

During an audit, the historical data stored within observability pipelines can be of immense significance in showcasing commitment to compliance guidelines.

Conclusion

In a constantly changing landscape of threats, development, and security teams confront endless challenges. Safeguarding modern applications against attacks requires a more forward-thinking and adaptable approach than what conventional monitoring can offer.

The integration of observability-driven development and security stands out as a potent strategy to overcome these challenges and promote security as a central concern throughout the complete development process.

Through the combination of observability and security, teams can attain a better understanding of security incidents, quicken responses, and ultimately construct more powerful applications.

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