Fixing a security vulnerability in production costs 100x more than catching it during development. IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach report puts those numbers at $7,600 per issue in production versus $80 during development. Multiply that across the 30,000+ vulnerabilities disclosed annually, and the math is straightforward: security that happens late costs orders of magnitude more than security that happens early.
That cost difference is the core argument for DevSecOps. Not as a replacement for DevOps, but as its security-embedded evolution.
We have secured over 60 CI/CD pipelines across organisations in healthcare, finance, SaaS, and e-commerce. This guide shares what the transition from DevOps to DevSecOps actually looks like in practice: what changes, what stays the same, and where most organisations get it wrong.
What Is DevOps?
DevOps is a culture and set of practices that unifies software development and IT operations to deliver software faster and more reliably. The core principles, sometimes summarised as CAMS (Culture, Automation, Measurement, Sharing), focus on:
- Breaking down silos between development and operations teams
- Automating the build, test, and deployment pipeline (CI/CD)
- Measuring delivery performance through metrics like deployment frequency and lead time
- Sharing ownership of production systems across the entire team
In a mature DevOps practice, code moves from a developer’s machine to production through an automated pipeline. Developers write code, the pipeline builds and tests it, and infrastructure as code provisions the environments. The feedback loop from monitoring flows back into development.
What DevOps does not prescribe is where security fits in that pipeline. In many DevOps implementations, security remains a manual review gate at the end of the cycle, a pre-deployment checkpoint that creates bottlenecks and catches problems too late to fix cheaply.
For a full guide to DevOps automation practices, see our DevOps automation guide.
What Is DevSecOps?
DevSecOps integrates security practices into every phase of the DevOps lifecycle. The “Sec” is not bolted on at the end. It is woven into planning, coding, building, testing, deploying, operating, and monitoring.
The foundational concept is shift-left security: move security checks earlier in the development process where vulnerabilities are cheaper to find and faster to fix. But DevSecOps also includes shift-right practices: runtime protection, continuous monitoring, and incident response in production.
Key principles:
- Security is everyone’s responsibility, not just the security team’s
- Automate security checks so they run on every commit, not once per release
- Fail fast on security issues the same way you fail fast on broken tests
- Treat security policies as code that is version-controlled, reviewed, and tested
The critical distinction: DevOps teams often have security as an external concern. DevSecOps teams have security as a shared responsibility built into every tool, process, and decision.
For a comprehensive look at the tools involved, see our DevOps security tools guide.
DevOps vs DevSecOps: The Complete Comparison
| Dimension | DevOps | DevSecOps |
|---|---|---|
| Primary goal | Speed and reliability of delivery | Speed and reliability with verifiable security |
| Security role | External checkpoint, often late-stage | Built-in, automated at every stage |
| Team structure | Dev + Ops collaboration | Dev + Ops + Security as equal partners |
| Automation scope | Build, test, deploy | Build, test, deploy + SAST, DAST, SCA, secrets scanning, policy enforcement |
| Risk focus | Downtime, deployment failures | Vulnerabilities, compliance violations, data exposure |
| Security timing | Pre-deploy or post-deploy review | Throughout entire SDLC (shift left and shift right) |
| Compliance | Addressed separately, often manually | Automated, continuous, policy-as-code |
| Toolchain | CI/CD, IaC, monitoring | All of DevOps + security scanning, SBOM generation, admission control |
| Feedback loop | Production metrics → development | Production metrics + security signals → development |
| Cultural mindset | ”You build it, you run it" | "You build it, you run it, you secure it” |
What They Share
DevSecOps is not a separate methodology. It extends DevOps. Everything that makes DevOps work, including CI/CD automation, infrastructure as code, monitoring, and collaborative culture, remains foundational in DevSecOps. The difference is that security becomes a first-class concern at every stage rather than an afterthought.
A useful way to think about it: all DevSecOps teams practice DevOps, but not all DevOps teams practice DevSecOps.
The Cost of Not Shifting Left
The business case for DevSecOps is built on hard numbers, not philosophy.
Vulnerability Remediation Costs by SDLC Phase
| Phase | Average Cost to Fix | Relative Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Requirements/Design | ~$80 | 1x |
| Development | ~$240 | 3x |
| Testing | ~$960 | 12x |
| Production | ~$7,600 | 100x |
Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025
The Numbers That Matter in 2026
- $4.44 million: Average global cost of a data breach. In the U.S., it hit a record $10.22 million in 2025.
- $1.9 million saved per breach by organisations using AI and automation in their security practices, with incident lifecycle reduced by 80 days.
- 86% of applications contain vulnerable open-source components. 81% have high or critical-risk vulnerabilities. Black Duck OSSRA 2025.
- $80 billion annually in damages from software supply chain attacks by 2026.
- 50% of organisations admit to deploying vulnerable code due to time pressure.
The pattern is clear: organisations that catch vulnerabilities early pay dramatically less than those that find them in production, or worse, after a breach.
Real-World Consequences
- Equifax (2017): An unpatched Apache Struts vulnerability exposed 147 million records. Total cost exceeded $1.4 billion. The patch had been available for two months before the breach. Automated dependency scanning would have flagged it on day one.
- SolarWinds (2020): A compromised build pipeline injected malicious code into software updates distributed to 18,000 organisations. DevSecOps practices including build verification, artifact signing, and SBOM tracking would have detected the tampering.
- Log4Shell (2021): A critical vulnerability in a ubiquitous logging library affected millions of applications. Organisations with software composition analysis (SCA) in their pipelines identified and patched vulnerable instances in days. Those without SCA took weeks or months.
The DevSecOps Pipeline: Security at Every Stage
This is where DevSecOps becomes concrete. Here is what security looks like at each stage of the CI/CD pipeline, with specific tools and practices.
Stage 1: Plan
| Practice | Description |
|---|---|
| Threat modelling | Use frameworks like STRIDE or DREAD to identify potential threats before writing code |
| Security requirements | Define security acceptance criteria alongside functional requirements |
| Compliance mapping | Identify which regulations (HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2) apply and what they require |
| Risk assessment | Prioritise what needs protection and to what degree |
Stage 2: Code
| Practice | Tool Examples |
|---|---|
| IDE security plugins | SonarLint, Snyk IDE, Semgrep |
| Pre-commit hooks | GitLeaks, TruffleHog (secrets detection) |
| Secure coding standards | OWASP guidelines, language-specific linters |
| Peer review with security focus | Require security-aware review for sensitive components |
Stage 3: Build
| Practice | Tool Examples |
|---|---|
| SAST (Static Application Security Testing) | SonarQube, Checkmarx, Semgrep, CodeQL |
| SCA (Software Composition Analysis) | Snyk, Black Duck, Dependabot, Renovate |
| License compliance checking | FOSSA, Snyk License |
| SBOM generation | Syft, CycloneDX, SPDX |
Stage 4: Test
| Practice | Tool Examples |
|---|---|
| DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing) | OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, StackHawk |
| IAST (Interactive AST) | Contrast Security |
| API security testing | Postman security tests, 42Crunch |
| Fuzzing | AFL, libFuzzer |
Stage 5: Release
| Practice | Tool Examples |
|---|---|
| Container image scanning | Trivy, Grype, Anchore |
| Image signing | Cosign, Notary |
| IaC scanning | Checkov, tfsec, Terrascan |
| Vulnerability threshold gates | Block deployment if critical/high CVEs are found |
Stage 6: Deploy
| Practice | Tool Examples |
|---|---|
| Admission controllers | Kyverno, OPA Gatekeeper |
| Policy-as-code enforcement | OPA, HashiCorp Sentinel |
| Secrets injection | HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager |
| Network policy validation | Cilium, Calico |
For Kubernetes-specific deployment security, see our Kubernetes security best practices guide.
Stage 7: Operate
| Practice | Tool Examples |
|---|---|
| Runtime protection (RASP) | Falco, Sysdig Secure |
| WAF | AWS WAF, Cloudflare WAF, ModSecurity |
| SIEM integration | Splunk, Elastic Security, Datadog |
| Incident response automation | PagerDuty, Opsgenie with security runbooks |
Stage 8: Monitor and Feedback
| Practice | Description |
|---|---|
| Continuous vulnerability scanning | Scheduled scans of production workloads and dependencies |
| Compliance dashboards | Real-time visibility into policy adherence |
| Security metrics | Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR), vulnerability age, critical issues in production |
| Threat intelligence feeds | Automated alerts on newly disclosed CVEs affecting your stack |
The feedback from monitoring flows back to the Plan stage, creating a continuous security improvement loop. For application-level monitoring practices, see our application security monitoring guide.
AI-Generated Code: Why DevSecOps Is Non-Negotiable in 2026
This is the development that has fundamentally changed the DevOps vs DevSecOps calculation.
By 2026, 42% of code in enterprise applications is AI-generated. Developers use AI assistants for everything from boilerplate to business logic. The productivity gains are real. So are the security risks:
- 25% of AI-generated code contains security flaws including injection vulnerabilities, hardcoded credentials, and insecure API usage.
- Gartner predicts that by 2027, 30% of application security exposures will come from “vibe coding”: developers accepting AI-generated code without adequate security review.
- Shadow AI (unofficial AI tool usage) adds $670,000 to the average breach cost according to IBM.
- 97% of developers use or plan to use AI in development, but only 37% trust AI-generated code without human review (GitLab DevSecOps Report).
The velocity of AI-generated code makes manual security reviews impossible at scale. Automated DevSecOps practices, specifically SAST scanning on every commit, SCA for dependency analysis, and policy-as-code enforcement, are the only viable mechanism for maintaining security posture when code volume increases this dramatically.
In practical terms: if your pipeline does not automatically scan AI-generated code before it reaches production, you are accepting a level of security risk that grows with every AI-assisted commit.
DevSecOps and Compliance Frameworks
For regulated industries, DevSecOps is not optional. It is the most efficient path to continuous compliance. Here is how DevSecOps practices map to common frameworks:
| Requirement | HIPAA | PCI-DSS | SOC 2 | GDPR | DevSecOps Practice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Access controls | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | IAM-as-code, RBAC, least privilege |
| Encryption (transit/rest) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Automated TLS, encrypted volumes |
| Audit logging | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Centralised logging, immutable audit trails |
| Vulnerability management | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | SAST, DAST, SCA in every pipeline |
| Change management | - | Yes | Yes | - | Git-based workflows, approval gates |
| Incident response | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Automated alerting, security runbooks |
| Data protection | Yes | - | - | Yes | Secrets management, data classification |
| Supply chain security | - | Yes | Yes | - | SBOM generation, dependency pinning |
Policy-as-code makes compliance continuous rather than periodic. Instead of quarterly manual audits, tools like OPA and Kyverno enforce policies on every deployment. Drift detection catches configurations that deviate from compliant baselines.
For more on building a compliance-ready security posture, see our cloud computing security checklist and cloud native security practices guide.
NIST SP 800-204D provides specific guidance on integrating security into CI/CD pipelines for federal systems, and the principles apply broadly to any regulated environment.
DevSecOps Maturity Model
Not every organisation needs to reach the highest maturity level immediately. Use this model, based on the OWASP DevSecOps Maturity Model (DSOMM), to assess where you are and plan your next step.
Level 1: Ad Hoc
- Security reviews happen manually before releases (if at all)
- No automated security scanning in the pipeline
- Vulnerability management is reactive: respond to incidents after they happen
- Security knowledge is concentrated in one person or team
Level 2: Repeatable
- Basic security tools are in place but inconsistently used
- Dependency scanning runs on some projects
- Secrets detection exists but is not enforced across all repositories
- Security incidents trigger improvements, but there is no systematic approach
Level 3: Defined
- SAST and SCA run automatically on every build
- Security gates block deployments with critical vulnerabilities
- Secrets scanning is enforced via pre-commit hooks
- Container images are scanned before deployment
- Security champion programme exists in development teams
Level 4: Managed
- Policy-as-code enforces security standards across all environments
- SBOM generation is automated for every release
- Security metrics (MTTR, vulnerability age) are tracked and reported
- DAST runs in staging environments automatically
- Kubernetes admission controllers enforce pod security standards
Level 5: Optimised
- Security is fully embedded and transparent to developers
- AI-assisted vulnerability detection and remediation
- Zero-trust architecture implemented across all services
- Continuous compliance monitoring with automated evidence collection
- Security telemetry feeds into predictive models for proactive risk management
- Supply chain security includes SLSA verification and signed artifacts
Where most organisations are today: 43% remain at the lowest maturity levels, and 40% still do not use SCA or SAST consistently. Moving from Level 1 to Level 3 delivers the highest return on investment.
How to Transition from DevOps to DevSecOps
The transition is incremental, not a big bang. Here is the path we recommend based on what works in practice.
Step 1: Assess Your Current Security Posture (Weeks 1-2)
Run a security audit of your existing pipelines, infrastructure, and applications. Identify:
- Which pipelines have zero security scanning
- Where secrets might be exposed (environment variables, config files, Git history)
- What open-source dependencies you use and whether they are vulnerable
- What compliance requirements apply to your organisation
Our DevOps strategy and assessment service includes security posture evaluation as a standard component.
Step 2: Start with Quick Wins (Weeks 3-6)
Implement the three security practices that deliver the most value with the least friction:
- Secrets scanning with pre-commit hooks (GitLeaks or TruffleHog). This catches credentials before they enter the repository. Zero false-positive burden.
- Dependency scanning with SCA (Snyk or Dependabot). Automatically flags vulnerable dependencies and in many cases generates fix PRs.
- Container image scanning with Trivy. Add a single step to your CI/CD pipeline that scans images before deployment.
These three practices address the most common vulnerability categories without slowing down developers.
Step 3: Embed Security Champions (Months 2-3)
Designate one developer per team as a security champion. This person receives additional security training and serves as the first point of contact for security questions within the team. They do not replace the security team; they extend security awareness into every sprint.
Step 4: Automate Security Gates (Months 3-6)
Add SAST scanning (SonarQube or Semgrep) and configure quality gates that block merges when critical vulnerabilities are detected. Start with blocking only critical-severity findings to avoid overwhelming teams with noise.
For Jenkins-based pipelines, this means adding security scanning stages to your Jenkinsfiles. For GitHub Actions, add Snyk or CodeQL actions to your workflows.
Step 5: Implement Policy-as-Code (Months 6-9)
Deploy OPA Gatekeeper or Kyverno to enforce security policies at the infrastructure level:
- Block privileged containers
- Require resource limits on all pods
- Enforce network policies
- Prevent deployment of images from untrusted registries
This automates guardrails that previously required manual review.
Step 6: Measure and Iterate (Ongoing)
Track these security metrics alongside your existing DevOps delivery metrics:
| Metric | Target | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR) | < 7 days for critical | Speed of vulnerability closure |
| Vulnerability age | Declining trend | Measures how quickly you address known issues |
| Critical issues in production | Zero tolerance | Validates that security gates are working |
| False positive rate | < 5% | Too high and developers ignore findings |
| Security scan coverage | 100% of pipelines | No pipeline should be exempt |
Is DevSecOps Replacing DevOps?
No. DevSecOps is DevOps with security built in, not a different practice.
The trajectory is clear: as security threats increase and regulations tighten, the distinction between DevOps and DevSecOps is narrowing. Five years ago, security in the pipeline was optional. In 2026, with AI generating 42% of code and supply chain attacks costing $80 billion annually, it is not.
The DevSecOps market reached $10.88 billion in 2026 and is growing at 22-24% CAGR. 85% of organisations have adopted DevOps, but only 36% have mature DevSecOps practices. That gap represents both risk and opportunity.
The organisations that treat security as an integral part of their delivery pipeline, not as a separate workstream, are the ones that ship faster, spend less on remediation, and avoid the breaches that make headlines.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does DevSecOps slow down development?
Not when implemented correctly. Automated security scanning adds seconds to minutes to a pipeline run. The time saved by catching vulnerabilities early (instead of firefighting them in production) far exceeds the scanning overhead. 82% of DevSecOps teams deploy to production at least weekly, demonstrating that security and speed coexist.
What are the biggest challenges in adopting DevSecOps?
According to industry surveys: 60% find it technically challenging, 40% cite implementation costs, 38% lack education, and 36% have insufficient skills. The most successful transitions start small (secrets scanning + SCA) and expand incrementally.
Is DevSecOps mandatory for regulated industries?
While no regulation specifically mandates “DevSecOps,” frameworks like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, and GDPR require continuous security practices that DevSecOps automates most efficiently. Manual compliance processes become untenable at scale.
What is the difference between shift-left and shift-right security?
Shift left means moving security checks earlier in the development lifecycle: code analysis during development rather than testing before release. Shift right means monitoring security in production: runtime protection, anomaly detection, and continuous vulnerability scanning. DevSecOps includes both.
How long does the transition from DevOps to DevSecOps take?
For quick wins (secrets scanning, SCA, container scanning): 4-6 weeks. For a full pipeline with SAST, DAST, policy-as-code, and automated compliance: 6-12 months. The key is incremental implementation, not a big-bang rollout.
What skills do DevSecOps engineers need beyond DevOps?
Application security fundamentals (OWASP Top Ten), threat modelling, security tool configuration (SAST/DAST/SCA), compliance framework knowledge, and incident response. The skill set commands a salary premium, averaging approximately $140,000 annually.
Making the Shift to Security-First Delivery
DevOps gave organisations speed. DevSecOps ensures that speed does not come at the cost of security. The question is not whether to make the transition, it is how quickly you can implement it before the next Log4Shell-scale vulnerability lands in your dependency tree.
Start with the three quick wins (secrets scanning, dependency analysis, container scanning), embed security champions in your teams, and build from there. Every automated security check you add to your pipeline is a vulnerability that will never reach production.
Ready to Secure Your DevOps Pipelines?
Our team has implemented DevSecOps practices across 60+ pipelines for organisations in healthcare, finance, SaaS, and retail.
Our DevOps consulting and cybersecurity services include:
- Security assessment of existing CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure
- DevSecOps pipeline implementation with SAST, SCA, DAST, container scanning, and policy-as-code
- Compliance automation mapped to HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, and GDPR requirements
- Knowledge transfer so your team owns and operates the security toolchain independently
Every engagement starts with an assessment so we solve the right security gaps first.