Agile Security

In Agile development, software is released using an incremental, iterative development cycle that speeds up the development process. While Agile development is excellent, it's important to realize that you can still unintentionally introduce security vulnerabilities with each new release.

The solution is to embrace Agile Security.

Agile Application Security: The Key to Rapid, Secure Software Development

Agile's development philosophy focuses on rapid and flexible software development. It's important to realize that nothing in the Agile Manifesto suggests you shouldn't be developing your software with security in mind. In fact, a lack of attention to security can slow down the software release cycle because developers will ultimately have to use more development time to fix issues that leave customers and their data open to compromise.

What Is Agile Security?

Agile Security is simply the process of building security processes into the Agile development process. That might sound challenging, but secure software development should already be a part of several Agile steps:

Welcome changing requirements - In Agile development, changes to security requirements in response to changing threat landscape can be integrated like any other requirement change
Deliver working software frequently - Agile's focus on small, rapid releases that improve software incrementally allows for patches to fix security flaws discovered after a release as soon as possible.
Continuous attention to technical excellence - More-secure software is better software, because it’s safer for your organization and your users. Automated security testing fits well with the “make better software faster” as it fills a similar need to automated integration tests.

By building security into the Agile software development process, including using automated security tools like static analysis, organizations can ensure they meet their production goals without sacrificing their customers' security.

Veracode can help.

Agile Security Solutions From Veracode

Security testing doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Our powerful cloud-based platform effortlessly builds security testing into your software development process, enabling your developers to deliver releases that are secure and on time.

With Veracode, your developers can continue to work in the environment they're familiar with. There's no new hardware or software to learn, and no need to hire new security experts. Instead, Veracode uses a simple process to analyze code and provide guidance that helps developers fix security vulnerabilities easily. Here's the process broken down:

Developers write code.
Developers upload code to Veracode's cloud platform using APIs or the web interface.
Veracode performs automated static analysis and other types of security testing.
Veracode delivers in-context guidance for fixing security vulnerabilities in your program's code.

Features of Agile Security With Veracode

With Veracode’s help, Agile security can become a rapid, automated, and accurate activity that fits in with the rapid pace of modern software development. Veracode's cloud-based platform delivers timely, and automated security feedback on your developers' code at any stage of the Agile development cycle.

Here's how it works.

Accuracy

Veracode's static analysis and dynamic analysis are highly accurate. With expertise gained from trillions of lines scanned, Veracode has a false positive rate of less than 1.1%. Additionally, our static analysis scans binary (or "compiled") code, meaning it can even find errors for parts of your application you don't have source code for.

With highly accurate results and no need for tuning, Veracode delivers security guidance your developers can trust.

Automation

Manual review of code, no matter how knowledgeable the reviewer, is extremely time consuming. Automation can help ensure that code is reviewed at critical stages, without slowing developers down. Veracode's platform automates security scanning, making it easy to build routine security checks into an Agile workflow.

Speed

Some automated security scans can take hours to complete, significantly slowing the development process. Veracode's scanning process is fast as well as accurate. With our most comprehensive scanning system, 91% of applications are analyzed in under an hour, and 86% are done in under 30 minutes (this data is based on scan metrics for the 6 months ending Feb 2, 2021). And with our rapid Pipeline scan, built for Agile workflows, the median time to scan is just 90 seconds.

Results You Can Act On

When you perform a scan on Veracode, you'll receive your results in an easy-to-parse format that focuses on locating and fixing vulnerabilities. Instead of digging through pages of reports or moving from file to file, our cloud system presents developers with contextualized error reporting and relevant guidance on how to fix vulnerabilities, as well as integrations with common work planning systems like Jira and a comprehensive API so that customers can build their own as needed.

For even more expert knowledge, you can tap into your team of security experts, who will work with your developers to provide step-by-step guidance on understanding, prioritizing, and fixing vulnerabilities.

Integrations

Veracode's Agile Security tools don't only live in our online platform. We offer nearly 40 integrations with APIs, CI/CD systems, IDEs, and other popular development tools as well as a robust API so you can build your own if you prefer.

With our powerful cloud-based system integrated into the systems and tools your developers already use, it's easy to build secure software in an Agile development environment.

Learn More About Agile Security With Veracode

Veracode is more than just a cloud-based security app. We also provide developer training on all aspects of secure software development, with courses that include self-paced learning, instructor-led courses, and workshops. Developers can also learn through Veracode Security Labs, a hands-on training platform that helps shift security knowledge left. Download a free analyst report on building an enterprise DevSecOps program to see the kind of quality instruction we offer.

You can also join our community of Veracode users, security experts, and developers to be a part of the conversation.