7 best practices to secure your CI/CD

Why should I worry about my CI/CD security?

In today's fast-paced software development world, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines have become essential for delivering high-quality software quickly and efficiently. However, as these pipelines often interact with cloud resources and sensitive data, it's crucial to implement robust security measures.

This article outlines critical best practices for securing your CI/CD pipelines in cloud environments.

What are the best security practices for managing my CI/CD?

Securing CI/CD pipelines in cloud environments is an ongoing process that requires vigilance, automation, and adherence to best practices. By implementing the following strategies, you can significantly reduce the risk of security breaches and ensure the integrity of your software delivery process.

Remember that security should be an integral part of your CI/CD pipeline, not an afterthought. Regularly review and update your security measures to stay ahead of evolving threats in the cloud landscape.

I have checked the external dependencies for known vulnerabilities

Our Recommendation:

Your application's security starts with the security of its components. It's essential to check external dependencies for known vulnerabilities regularly.

• Use an available security scanner, such as trivy, to build some generic pipelines to scan different languages.
• Integrate these checks into your CI/CD pipeline for early detection of issues.

Risks addressed by the recommendation:

• Exploitation of known vulnerabilities in third-party libraries
• Supply chain attacks through compromised dependencies
• Unintentional introduction of security flaws or malicious code

Regularly checking dependencies reduces the risk of attackers exploiting known vulnerabilities in your application's components, which could lead to data breaches, system compromise, or other security incidents.

I scan my application source code (SAST)

Our Recommendation:

Source code security is fundamental. Implement regular code scans in your CI/CD pipeline.

• Use Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools like SonarQube to proactively detect exploitable flaws.
• These tools allow developers to check used versions and exploitable application vulnerabilities.
• Integrate these scans into your CI/CD pipeline. Here's an example of a SAST scan job in Gitlab:

sast-scan:
  stage: test
  script:
    - sonar-scanner
  only:
    - merge_requests
    - main

Risks addressed by the recommendation:

• Introduction of security vulnerabilities through coding errors
• Insecure coding practices leading to common vulnerabilities (e.g., SQL injection, XSS)
• Unintentional exposure of sensitive information in code

SAST helps catch security issues early in the development process, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities entering production and potentially being exploited by attackers.

I have Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Scanning

Our Recommendation:

With the increasing adoption of Infrastructure as Code, it's essential to scan this code to detect security issues.

• Use specialized tools to scan your infrastructure code, like Checkov
• Integrate these scans into your CI/CD pipeline to detect misconfigurations before deployment.

Risks addressed by the recommendation:

• Misconfigurations in cloud resources lead to security vulnerabilities
• Unintended exposure to sensitive resources
• Non-compliance with security best practices or regulations

IaC scanning helps prevent security issues from misconfigured infrastructure, reducing the risk of attacks exploiting improperly set up cloud resources.

I have a secret detection tool

Our Recommendation:

The leakage of secrets (API keys, passwords, etc.) can have disastrous consequences.

• Implement a secret detection tool in your pipeline.
• This helps prevent "secret sprawling" (uncontrolled spread of secrets).
• Ensure that this tool scans the source code, configuration files, and environment variables.

Risks addressed by the recommendation:

• Accidental exposure of sensitive credentials in source code or configuration files
• Unauthorized access to systems or data due to leaked secrets
• Compliance violations related to improper handling of sensitive information

Secret detection tools help prevent the accidental exposure of credentials, API keys, and other sensitive information, reducing the risk of unauthorized access to your systems and data.

My security results are blocking

Our Recommendation:

The results of security tools should have a tangible impact on the deployment process.

• Configure your pipelines so that security tool results block your production deployment, both for infrastructure and application codes.
• Blocking a deployment if a tool detects an exploitable flaw significantly reduces the risk of an attack.
• You can have a non-blocking security pipeline on the development branch to avoid slowing down the development process.

Risks addressed by the recommendation:

• Deployment of known vulnerable code to production environments
• Bypassing of security checks due to time pressures or oversight
• Inconsistent application of security standards across deployments

By making security results blocking, you ensure that known security issues are addressed before the code reaches production, reducing the risk of deploying vulnerable applications.

I follow the least privilege principle for runners

Our Recommendation:

Deployment runners should have only the necessary permissions to perform their tasks.

• Apply the principle of least privilege to your deployment runners.
• Use specific access roles or policies for each runner, limiting their actions to only those necessary.

Risks addressed by the recommendation:

• Unauthorized access or actions performed by compromised CI/CD runners
• Excessive permissions lead to an higher impact in case of a breach
• Difficulty in auditing and tracking actions performed by CI/CD processes

Implementing the least privilege reduces the potential impact if a CI/CD runner is compromised, limiting an attacker's actions within your environment.

My CI/CD runners are isolated

Our Recommendation:

Isolating your CI/CD runners is crucial to maintaining the security of your overall infrastructure.

• Ensure that your CI/CD runners are isolated from the rest of your infrastructure.
• Use separate virtual networks, strict security groups, or even separate cloud accounts for your runners.

Risks addressed by the recommendation:

• Lateral movement within your infrastructure if a CI/CD runner is compromised
• Unauthorized access to sensitive production resources from CI/CD environments
• Potential for CI/CD processes to interfere with or impact production systems

Isolation of CI/CD runners helps contain potential security breaches, reducing the risk that compromising your CI/CD environment could lead to broader system or data breaches.

Conclusion

By following the best practices presented in this article, you can significantly reduce the risk of attacks through your CI/CD and improve the overall security of your infrastructure. Secure your CI/CD should not exempt you from adding some automatic vulnerability scanning tools at runtime (DAST for applications, AWS Config, or GCP Security Command Center for infrastructure).