Create Secure Applications By Building Complete CI/CD Pipelines 2nd Edition

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, developing secure applications has become vitally important. The rise in cyber threats has necessitated a shift towards a more proactive approach to security, with development teams now expected to incorporate best practices throughout the entire software development lifecycle. An effective way to achieve this is by implementing Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. This article will delve into the various aspects of building complete CI/CD pipelines for creating secure applications, with a focus on the latest 2nd edition of this essential methodology.

Understanding CI/CD Pipelines

CI/CD pipelines are automated systems that enable developers to continuously integrate code changes, build applications, run automated tests, and ultimately deploy them to production environments. By automating these processes, development teams can ensure that every code change undergoes rigorous testing and verification, reducing the chances of introducing vulnerabilities or security loopholes.

Implementing Security at Every Stage

The key to building secure applications lies in implementing security measures at every stage of the CI/CD pipeline. This includes code reviews, vulnerability scanning, and automated testing. By incorporating security tools and practices into the pipeline, potential vulnerabilities can be identified and addressed early on, saving time, effort, and potential reputation damage later.

Continuous Delivery with Docker and Jenkins: Create secure applications by building complete CI/CD pipelines, 2nd Edition

by Ric Messier(2nd Edition, Kindle Edition)

4.4 out of 5

Language	:	English
File size	:	5368 KB
Text-to-Speech	:	Enabled
Screen Reader	:	Supported
Enhanced typesetting	:	Enabled
Print length	:	540 pages

FREE

1. Code Reviews

Code reviews play a crucial role in spotting security flaws in the early development stages. By conducting thorough code reviews, developers can identify potential weaknesses, such as injection vulnerabilities, weak authentication mechanisms, or insecure encryption practices. Furthermore, implementing peer code reviews can foster knowledge sharing and improve the overall code quality.

2. Vulnerability Scanning

Integrating vulnerability scanning tools into the CI/CD pipeline is an excellent way to identify potential security risks. These tools automatically analyze the codebase, dependencies, and libraries to detect known vulnerabilities. By continuously monitoring for vulnerabilities, development teams can proactively address any identified issues, ensuring the application is as secure as possible.

3. Automated Testing

Automated testing is an integral part of CI/CD pipelines and plays a significant role in ensuring application security. By implementing static and dynamic security testing tools, developers can automatically perform security-centric tests, such as penetration testing, code analysis, and vulnerability assessments. This enables the identification of potential security weaknesses and ensures the application meets the desired security standards.

Securing Deployment and Infrastructure

CI/CD pipelines not only automate the build and test processes but also streamline application deployment. It is important to implement security measures at this stage as well to ensure secure deployments and infrastructure. Some key aspects to consider include:

1. Configuration Management

Proper configuration management is crucial to avoid potential security risks in production environments. Ensuring that the infrastructure and deployment configurations are compliant with security best practices significantly reduces the attack surface. Tools like infrastructure-as-code enable teams to define security configurations and track changes effectively.

2. Secrets Management

Protecting sensitive information, such as database credentials or API keys, is paramount for application security. Implementing secrets management solutions helps securely store and provide access to sensitive information, ensuring that only authorized systems and personnel can access them.

3. Secure Deployment Processes

Secure deployment processes involve strategic considerations, such as implementing a rollback mechanism, performing health checks, and ensuring proper access controls during deployment. Automating these processes within the CI/CD pipeline enables teams to deploy applications securely, ensuring minimal disruption and reduced risks.

Benefits of Building Complete CI/CD Pipelines

Building complete CI/CD pipelines brings numerous benefits to development teams beyond just application security. Some notable advantages include:

1. Increased Developer Productivity

By automating repetitive tasks like building and testing, developers can focus more on coding new features and resolving critical issues. This significantly improves their productivity, allowing them to deliver high-quality code faster.

2. Faster Time-to-Market

CI/CD pipelines enable quicker delivery of software updates to end-users. The automation of the deployment process reduces the time required to deploy new features, bug fixes, and security updates, allowing the team to respond to user needs promptly.

3. Continuous Feedback Loop

CI/CD pipelines facilitate a continuous feedback loop, as teams constantly receive insights into the quality, performance, and security of their applications. This feedback loop enables swift identification and resolution of issues, ensuring ongoing improvements in the development process.

Building complete CI/CD pipelines is essential for creating secure applications in today's fast-paced digital environment. By implementing security measures at every stage of the pipeline and securing deployments and infrastructure, development teams can proactively mitigate risks and ensure the highest level of security for their applications. The 2nd edition of CI/CD pipelines brings additional features and improvements to the process, making it an even more robust and reliable approach to application development.

Continuous Delivery with Docker and Jenkins: Create secure applications by building complete CI/CD pipelines, 2nd Edition

by Ric Messier(2nd Edition, Kindle Edition)

4.4 out of 5

Language	:	English
File size	:	5368 KB
Text-to-Speech	:	Enabled
Screen Reader	:	Supported
Enhanced typesetting	:	Enabled
Print length	:	540 pages

FREE

Create a complete Continuous Delivery process using modern DevOps tools such as Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Docker Hub, Ansible, GitHub and many more.

Key Features

• Build reliable and secure applications using Docker containers.
• Create a highly available environment to scale a Docker servers using Kubernetes
• Implement advance continuous delivery process by parallelizing the pipeline tasks

Book Description

Continuous Delivery with Docker and Jenkins, Second Edition will explain the advantages of combining Jenkins and Docker to improve the continuous integration and delivery process of an app development. It will start with setting up a Docker server and configuring Jenkins on it. It will then provide steps to build applications on Docker files and integrate them with Jenkins using continuous delivery processes such as continuous integration, automated acceptance testing, and configuration management.

Moving on, you will learn how to ensure quick application deployment with Docker containers along with scaling Jenkins using Kubernetes. Next, you will get to know how to deploy applications using Docker images and testing them with Jenkins. Towards the end, the book will touch base with missing parts of the CD pipeline, which are the environments and infrastructure, application versioning, and nonfunctional testing.

By the end of the book, you will be enhancing the DevOps workflow by integrating the functionalities of Docker and Jenkins.

What you will learn

• Get to grips with docker fundamentals and how to dockerize an application for the CD process
• Learn how to use Jenkins on the Cloud environments
• Scale a pool of Docker servers using Kubernetes
• Create multi-container applications using Docker Compose
• Write acceptance tests using Cucumber and run them in the Docker ecosystem using Jenkins
• Publish a built Docker image to a Docker Registry and deploy cycles of Jenkins pipelines using community best practices

Who this book is for

The book targets DevOps engineers, system administrators, docker professionals or any stakeholders who would like to explore the power of working with Docker and Jenkins together. No prior knowledge of DevOps is required for this book.

Table of Contents

1. Introducing Continuous Delivery
2. Introducing Docker
3. Configuring Jenkins
4. Continuous Integration Pipeline
5. Automated Acceptance Testing
6. Clustering with Kubernetes
7. Configuration Management with Ansible
8. Continuous Delivery Pipeline
9. Advanced Continuous Delivery
10. Appendix: Best Practices