Secure Deployment
Software development teams require secure processes for deploying code changes and managing infrastructure to protect software systems from security threats. Secure deployment encompasses a wide range of topics, including authentication, vulnerability scanning, encryption, configuration management, and networking.
This guide provides a high-level overview of the most important secure deployment practices we follow here at Socotra, and we highly recommend our customers follow these same guidelines.
Automation
Automate code deployments using CI/CD tools like GitHub or Jenkins.
Automate infrastructure deployments using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform and AWS CloudFormation.
Automate vulnerability scanning in build pipelines, including DAST, SAST, IAST, and SCA scans. Automatically block deployments if vulnerabilities are detected.
Authentication
Require authentication and authorization to access your application code, infrastructure, and CI/CD tools.
Enforce password best practices.
Enforce the principle of least privilege.
Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC).
Store credentials, API keys, and encryption keys within a secure secrets management system like HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager. Never store credentials in your GitHub repositories.
Administration
Identify and uphold security standards relevant to your organization.
Establish a Secure Development Life Cycle (SDLC).
Perform continuous security testing using penetration testing, threat detection, threat modeling, IDS, IPS, and SIEM tools.
Review deployment configurations on a regular basis.
Development
Implement secure development best practices.
Maintain separate development, QA, UAT, and production environments.
Implement network security safeguards like firewalls, rate limiting, and DDoS protection.
Implement encryption best practices.
Implement cloud security best practices for your cloud platform.
Maintain a monitoring and alerting system using tools like Grafana and our audit log.