How Developer-Centric AppSec Testing Can Dramatically Change Your DevOps Team

Over the past decade, the rapid acceleration of software development with the adoption of DevOps has significantly increased software deployment speed, enhancing business value by delivering innovations to customers more quickly. However, security practices have lagged behind, often becoming a blocker in the deployment process. To address this, the integration of developer-centric application security tooling within the Continuous Integration (CI) pipeline is proposed as a solution, aligning engineering and security by identifying security bugs before they reach production and reducing fix cycles. This modern approach encourages the testing of microservices, allowing developers to self-serve fixes and enabling security teams to focus on strategy rather than administrative tasks. Key practices include Software Composition Analysis (SCA) for open-source dependencies, Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) for simulating real-world attacks, and secrets detection to prevent credential leakage. Implementation involves local testing, non-blocking CI instrumentation, bug triage, and eventually switching to blocking tests to prevent new security bugs from reaching production. The shift requires a cultural change, aligning engineering and security with a focus on safe-by-default frameworks and developer-centric tooling, as leading teams are increasingly incorporating application security testing into every build.