From your local cafe to Starbucks, every company today is a software company – it’s just the output that differs. Whether your end product is coffee or a DevOps solution, we’re all facing the same challenges when it comes to cybersecurity. Incidents like Solarwinds and Log4j have dominated headlines in recent years, demonstrating that implementing basic cybersecurity measures and hoping you won’t need them just isn’t enough anymore. In fact, with cybercrime damages now predicted to reach $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, the writing on the wall is clear: cybersecurity is no longer an option, it’s a requirement. No matter how large or small your organization might be, things like least privileged access, the ability to leverage a single identity store, and audit logs of user access are basic requirements to protect your organization from the risks of today and the future. 

As cybersecurity risk evolves, we must evolve along with it. With the variety and number of attacks increasing every day, it can seem an insurmountable task to build defenses that account for each and every potential risk. We can’t boil the ocean, so we need an approach to cybersecurity that adapts to constantly changing goals and can scale alongside your company’s business priorities. Continuous security is the only way organizations will ever find a level playing field. 

When teams fail to apply a continuous security approach to their processes starting at feature requirements, they ultimately run out of bandwidth. But when they do start at the beginning that’s when both Security and Development teams can get the benefits of a fully deployed and integrated Application Security program. Security is no longer a siloed responsibility, and the products that serve security purposes shouldn’t be separate either. Integration of the right security tools and processes won’t happen overnight, but it is crucial for this integration to take place from the start of the development lifecycle. 

Continuous security is no different from the continuous evolution of your products. Starbucks began selling coffee beans in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, before adding espresso drinks to the menu and embracing ethical coffee sourcing. Their innovation didn’t stop there, and neither should yours. Without a continuous security approach, organizations implementing the latest technologies can complicate an already intricate DevSecOps “hairball” that results from too many tools and too many people involved in every step of the application delivery pipeline.

With continuous security, organizations can align security risk with business risk to ensure any technology implementations are relevant to their business. It enables effective prioritization of where to start, as well as the identification of what is important versus what is best saved for later. Continuous security is about understanding all of the potential risks and making sense of what approach is most effective to protect your business and its customers. It requires an understanding of what is involved with securing your organization’s IT environment, to identify, prioritize, and automate the entire evolution of building, testing, and deploying whatever software keeps your business running. 

While incidents like Solarwinds and Log4j can serve as reminders to organizations who are on the way to enhancing their cybersecurity, it shouldn’t be a one-off process every time an attack occurs. Cybersecurity should be repeatable and scalable to align with your organization’s overall business risk and protect it from any potential future risk – that’s why we need to embrace continuous security.