Shift-Left Strategies for Cloud-Native and Serverless Architectures

The growth observed in modern-day cloud applications is staggering to say the least. Applications are being built faster and deployed at a faster pace. However, there can be several obstacles on this journey toward proactive security, as security and compliance often lag behind rapid development cycles. Traditional, end-of-cycle security checks simply haven’t kept up. Shift-left security has become a true game-changer in this regard. The whole architectural framework of shift-left security depends on moving critical security practices earlier in the development lifecycle. Incorporating security in the development lifecycle should not be an afterthought. Within this context, teams are empowered to identify and eliminate risks at design time, build time, and during CI/CD — not after. These modern workloads are highly dynamic and interconnected, and a single mishap can trickle down across the entire environment. And as cloud-native and serverless architectures grow more prominent by the day, it becomes imperative to adopt this proactive approach. In this article, we will take a look at some of the ways in which shift left security strategy can be incorporated into cloud native and serverless architecture from day one.