What is DevSecOps and why does it matter?

Security should be a key consideration for any Salesforce DevOps team, no matter what development you’re doing or data you’re storing. As highlighted in the most recent State of Salesforce DevOps report, 38% of teams consider enhanced security to be one of the most important elements of ROI when it comes to Salesforce.

More and more teams are thinking about implementing security earlier in their software development process rather than adding it in later on — otherwise known as DevSecOps. In this post, we’ll dive into what Salesforce DevSecOps means and why it is important, along with common challenges your team might face, and how to overcome them.

If you want to learn even more about closing the security gaps in your Salesforce DevOps lifecycle, join Gearset on March 12 for a live webinar with DevOps Architect, Andy Barrick. Register here.

What is DevSecOps?

DevSecOps is a methodology or framework to integrate security capabilities into the DevOps process. It helps address security issues being treated as an afterthought, something still seen in many development teams.

Why are potential security flaws so often neglected? Traditional development practices prioritize speed, functionality, and delivery over secure code and data protection — security is often handled by an entirely separate security team at the end of the software development lifecycle. For Salesforce teams that rely upon low- or no-code solutions, it can be all too easy to expose sensitive data and introduce security vulnerabilities. The combination of these factors and siloed working practices means that software vulnerabilities are often discovered too late and security threats are more likely to occur.

DevSecOps champions a ‘secure by design’ approach, embedding security policies and compliance requirements into every stage of the Salesforce development lifecycle. By ensuring compliance and integrating security from the ground up, one of the biggest benefits of DevSecOps is that teams can detect vulnerabilities and mitigate them early, avoiding the need to fix vulnerabilities last minute, which can cause compliance bottlenecks. Ultimately this prevents most security issues making it anywhere close to your production environment.

What’s the difference between DevSecOps and DevOps?

DevOps and DevSecOps are separate but related concepts — it could even be said that DevSecOps is DevOps done right.

DevOps focuses on collaboration between agile development and operational processes to enable faster software delivery. In the Salesforce context, there is a focus on streamlining and automating the delivery process to enable team members in different roles to collaborate effectively and deliver more value to end users, more quickly. In traditional DevOps, security can be treated as a separate concern, addressed late in the process or handled by a separate team, which can introduce security flaws and compliance challenges.

Embedding security at every stage of the development lifecycle, a DevSecOps framework integrates security as a shared responsibility across development, security and operations teams. Security is seen as a continuous process, including automated security checks and testing, compliance monitoring, and proactive vulnerability detection. For Salesforce, this might include static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), security scanning for Lightning components, automated testing for Apex, or security policies like archiving that enforce secure configurations and ensure compliance with industry regulatory requirements — such as GDPR or HIPAA.

Why should I care about DevSecOps in Salesforce?

DevSecOps should be a priority for any Salesforce team, not least because Salesforce often handles a lot of sensitive customer and company data. By not protecting your systems effectively you are putting the trust of your customers — and the reputation of your business as a whole — at risk.

While Salesforce does provide robust security tools, developing on the platform comes with inherent security risks — misconfigurations, insecure custom code, and weak access or security controls can all expose data to breaches, compliance violations, and insider threats. All of these are even more apparent due to the iterative nature of Salesforce development, where deployment speed is frequently used over security metrics as a key performance indicator.

DevSecOps best practices and how to overcome common challenges

Dedicate energy to shifting attitudes

As is common with any new process, one of the most frequently encountered challenges when implementing DevSecOps is cultural resistance, where people struggle with changing the status quo. Even though the DevSecOps process is ultimately beneficial to the team and wider business, you’ll likely need to dedicate some time and resources to shifting attitudes. Consider recruiting ‘security champions’ within the team, who can explain the rationale behind changes and help foster a security-first mindset.

Upskill your team with security training

Salesforce teams are typically made up of a number of different roles — software developers, admins, release managers and a whole host of others. As well as having different responsibilities, team members are likely to have a mixed level of understanding of security issues. Ensure that your team is set up for success with the appropriate security training, and review your security requirements with them regularly. If the team feels involved with the process, implementing and maintaining a robust DevSecOps strategy throughout your DevOps workflow is likely to be much easier.

Shift security left

“Shifting left”, or ensuring security testing takes place earlier in the software lifecycle rather than just as a final step, is an important part of any DevSecOps strategy, and automation can play an important role here. It’s recommended — once your processes are working reliably — to automate as much as possible, to reduce human error and minimize the chance of introducing bugs that could leave room for security vulnerabilities. Automated security testing could include static code analysis, threat modeling, configuration monitoring, security auditing, and enforcing access control, all helping to proactively address threats before they reach production.

Build an incident response plan

Ensuring that you have a solid incident response and disaster recovery plan in place is also vital in protecting your org against any malicious activity or data loss. Helping the team to understand that security practices and data management are everyone’s responsibility may take a little effort.

Strive for a DevSecOps culture

Ultimately, the key to successfully implementing DevSecOps tools isn’t just about the processes — it’s about the people. Creating a strong DevSecOps culture underpins all of the above best practices. This means fostering open communication between development teams, security teams, and operations, providing ongoing security training, and ensuring everyone understands their role in addressing security issues. A thriving DevSecOps culture encourages proactive thinking, version control, continuous improvement, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), and most importantly a team alignment on security measures — enabling faster, safer, and more compliant software delivery throughout the development pipeline.

Learn more about Salesforce DevSecOps

Want to dig deeper into DevSecOps for Salesforce? Download Gearset’s free ebook, Deciphering DevSecOps for Salesforce teams, or sign up to this webinar for best-practice advice on embedding security throughout your DevOps lifecycle. You might also find the DevOps Launchpad courses on Salesforce backup and data management useful, especially when thinking about compliance issues and DevSecOps. Good luck!