DevSecOps in Action: A Tool-by-Tool Security Checklist

In today’s fast-paced software delivery pipelines, security must be baked in—not bolted on. As organizations increasingly adopt DevOps to accelerate innovation, the attack surface expands, making DevSecOps more critical than ever.

From code repositories and CI/CD pipelines to container orchestration and cloud infrastructure, every stage of the DevOps lifecycle demands security attention.

To help professionals build secure and resilient systems, I’ve curated a comprehensive list of DevOps tools and services where security must be a top priority. This guide can serve as a reference for writing secure pipelines, auditing infrastructure, and integrating security best practices across your workflow.

Here’s a categorized list of DevOps tools and services where security is a key concern, along with sub-areas to cover in your articles:

I will share each tool and service with a detailed analysis in coming days.

🔐 1. Code & Version Control

Git (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket)

• Secrets scanning (e.g., GitLeaks)
• Branch protection & signed commits
• Token and PAT security

⚙️ 2. CI/CD Tools

• Jenkins
• GitHub Actions
• GitLab CI
• Azure DevOps Pipelines

🛠️ 3. Configuration Management

• Ansible
• Chef
• Puppet

📦 4. Containerization

Docker

• Dockerfile best practices
• Image signing (Notary/Content Trust)
• Vulnerability scanning (e.g., Trivy, Snyk)

☸️ 5. Container Orchestration

Kubernetes

• RBAC
• Network policies
• Pod security standards
• Secrets management
• Admission controllers (OPA/Gatekeeper)

☁️ 6. Cloud Platforms

• AWS
• Azure
• GCP

🔐 7. Secret Management

• HashiCorp Vault
• AWS Secrets Manager
• Azure Key Vault
• Doppler

🔍 8. Security Scanning & Compliance

• SonarQube (code quality + security)
• Snyk / Trivy / AquaSec / Clair (container scanning)
• Checkov / tfsec (IaC scanning)
• OpenSCAP / Lynis (Linux compliance)

🏗️ 9. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

• Terraform
• Pulumi
• CloudFormation

📈 10. Observability & Audit

• Prometheus + Grafana
• ELK Stack
• Fluentd / Loki

🔄 11. Artifact Repositories

• JFrog Artifactory
• Nexus Repository
• GitHub Packages
• Artifact signing
• Permission control

🛡️ 12. API & Gateway Security

Kong / Istio / Ambassador

• JWT/OAuth integration
• Rate limiting & throttling
• mTLS & Zero Trust

🔧 13. Build Tools

Maven / Gradle / NPM / pip

• Dependency security
• Package integrity checks
• SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) generation

🧪 14. Security Testing Tools

• OWASP ZAP
• Burp Suite
• Nikto