New DevOps Research Reveals Changing Attitudes Toward Application Security | Sonatype

Fulton, MD – March 21, 2017 – Sonatype, the leader in software supply chain automation, today announced the results of its 2017 DevSecOps Community Survey.  2,292 IT professionals participated in the online survey conducted in February 2017. The survey revealed that mature development organizations ensure automated security is woven into their DevOps practice, early, everywhere, and at scale. Analysis of responses also found that IT organizations continue to struggle with breaches as nearly a 50% increase was recorded between Sonatype’s 2014 and 2017 survey.

The adoption of DevOps around the world is evidenced by 67% of survey respondents describing their practices as very mature or of improving maturity. Where traditional development and operations teams see security teams and policies slowing them down (47%), DevOps teams have discovered new ways to integrate security at the speed of development. Only 28% of mature DevOps teams believe they are being slowed by security requirements.

Other key findings from the survey include:

Development plays an active, early role in application security

• Developers are taking more responsibility for security with 24% of all respondents saying it’s a top concern while in mature DevOps organizations that number rises to 38%.
• 58% of mature DevOps teams have automated security as part of Continuous Integration (CI) practices compared to 39% of all survey participants.

For DevOps teams, security controls are increasingly automated throughout the development lifecycle

• 42% of mature DevOps organizations perform application security analysis at every stage of the software delivery lifecycle (SDLC). This number shrinks to just 27% when all survey respondents are counted.

Automated security practices allow developers to keep pace with the speed and scale of innovation

• 88% of survey respondents indicated that security was a top concern when deploying containers, yet only 53% leverage security solutions to address this problem.
• 35% of organizations keep a complete software bill of materials to help them track down new open source vulnerabilities faster (e.g., Commons-Collection, Struts2).
• 85% of those surveyed from highly mature DevOps practices received some form of application security training, ensuring awareness of secure coding practices. In immature DevOps practices, 30% received no training.

"As evidenced by this year’s survey results, organizations everywhere are now transforming their development from waterfall-native to DevOps-native tools and processes,” said Wayne Jackson, CEO, Sonatype. “Along the way, they are coming to grips with one simple fact: DevOps is not an excuse to do application security poorly; rather it is an opportunity to do application security better than ever.”

Additional Resources

• Read the 2017 DevSecOps Community Survey Report
• View and download the 2017 DevSecOps Community Survey infographic
• Join us for a webinar on April 5th to walk through the survey findings
• Read our DevSecOps blog series
• Watch our DevSecOps video series
• Learn more about Sonatype software supply chain automation solutions
• Follow Sonatype on X: @sonatype

About the Survey

The 2017 DevSecOps Community Survey provides visibility into the attitudes of software professionals toward DevOps best practices and the changing role of application security. The survey was conducted by Sonatype, Contino, DZone, Emerasoft, Ranger4, and Signal Sciences. The survey’s margin of error is ±2.02 percentage points for 2,292 IT professionals at the 95% confidence level.  

About Sonatype

Last year developers requested 31 billion components from the Central Repository to manufacture the software applications that run the world. Additionally, with more than 120,000 installations, companies around the globe use Sonatype’s Nexus solutions to manage reusable components and improve the quality, speed and security of their software supply chains. Sonatype is privately held with investments from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Accel Partners, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, Bay Partners and Goldman Sachs. For more information, visit: www.sonatype.com

Media Contact
Jennifer Edgerly
SpeakerBox Communications for Sonatype
jedgerly@speakerboxpr.com
703-287-7809