Overview
In a traditional development model, security testing often happens at the very end, just before release. 'Shift Left' integrates security into the requirements, design, and coding phases, allowing vulnerabilities to be found and fixed much sooner.
Key Activities
- Threat Modeling: During the design phase.
- Static Analysis (SAST): During the coding phase.
- Software Composition Analysis (SCA): When selecting third-party libraries.
- Developer Training: Ensuring developers understand secure coding practices.
- Automated Security Testing: Integrated into the CI/CD pipeline.
Benefits
- Faster time-to-market by avoiding late-stage security bottlenecks.
- Significant cost savings (fixing bugs early is much cheaper).
- Higher quality, more resilient software.