• What is shift left approach

• The Shift Left security strategy means integrating security earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) — as early as design, development, and testing stages, rather than waiting until deployment or production.

• Why is it required

• • Catch vulnerabilities early
  • Reduce cost and effort of fixing issues
  • Build secure code by default
  • Promote developer ownership of security

• How to

• • 1. Secure Code Practices

  • Train developers on secure coding (and OWASP Top 10).
  • Use linting and static code analysis (SAST) tools in the IDE.

• • 2. Security in CI/CD Pipelines

  • Integrate security scanning tools:
  • SAST – Static Application Security Testing (e.g., SonarQube, Checkmarx)
  • DAST – Dynamic App Security Testing (e.g., OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite)
  • SCA – Software Composition Analysis (e.g., Snyk, WhiteSource)

• • 3.Secrets Management

  • Use tools like GitHub Secrets, AWS Secrets Manager, or Vault to avoid hardcoding secrets.

• • 4. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security

  • Analyse Terraform, CloudFormation, or Kubernetes manifests early in the pipeline.

• • 5. Policy as Code

  • Use Open Policy Agent (OPA) or HashiCorp Sentinel to enforce security policies programmatically.

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