Automate testing and validation of security controls in pipelines

Establish secure baselines and templates for security mechanisms that are continuously tested and validated as part of your build, pipelines, and processes. Automating the testing and validation of security controls ensures that vulnerabilities and configuration errors are caught early, maintaining the integrity of your environment. Tools such as AWS CloudFormation Guard can help verify that infrastructure templates are secure, saving time and reducing risks.

1. Establish secure baselines and templates: Create secure configuration baselines for machine images, infrastructure-as-code (IaC) templates, and other resources. Ensure that all baselines follow your organization’s security policies and industry best practices.
2. Automate security testing in pipelines: Integrate automated tools to test and validate security controls during each stage of the CI/CD pipeline. Use tools that can scan for vulnerabilities, configuration drift, and irregularities in machine images and IaC templates, such as AWS CloudFormation Guard, to prevent security flaws from being deployed into production.
3. Continuous validation of controls: Implement mechanisms that continuously validate security controls, ensuring they remain effective over time. This helps detect any configuration drifts or security risks introduced by changes in code or infrastructure.
4. Scan infrastructure-as-code templates: Regularly scan IaC templates for security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. This helps ensure that the infrastructure provisioned in your environment aligns with security best practices and remains free from known vulnerabilities.
5. Monitor and report: Generate reports from automated security tests to ensure that any issues are promptly addressed. Implement alerting mechanisms to notify teams of any security control failures or drifts detected during the pipeline process.

Supporting Questions:

• How do you establish secure baselines and ensure they are enforced in your pipelines?
• What tools are integrated into your CI/CD pipelines to automate security testing and validation?
• How do you handle security control failures detected during automated testing?

Roles and Responsibilities:

DevSecOps Engineer:

• Responsibilities:
  • Implement automated security testing tools in the CI/CD pipeline.
  • Establish and maintain secure baselines for machine images and IaC templates.
  • Continuously monitor and validate security controls during the build process.

Cloud Security Architect:

• Responsibilities:
  • Define security baselines and standards for infrastructure and code templates.
  • Ensure that automated testing tools are used to verify the security of all pipeline stages.
  • Review reports and alerts from automated tests to ensure timely mitigation of risks.

Artefacts:

• Security Baseline Templates: Pre-defined secure configurations for machine images and IaC templates used in the pipeline.
• Pipeline Security Testing Reports: Documentation of security test results, including any detected vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or security drift.
• CloudFormation Guard Rules: Rulesets used to validate that CloudFormation templates are secure and comply with organizational policies.