Challenge

Addepar identified an opportunity to enhance security in its application development lifecycle by integrating robust measures to protect production environments from potential vulnerabilities. By automating threat detection and resolution, they aimed to meet essential compliance requirements like PCI DSS—critical for onboarding new clients to the platform.

Solution

We introduced a comprehensive DevSecOps strategy to embed security at every stage of Addepar's software development lifecycle

Integrating security as code to automate vulnerability detection during builds and deployments.

Implementing shift-left security practices to identify and mitigate risks during early stages of development.

Deploying compliance automation tools

Standardizing security policies across teams to ensure consistency.

Key solutions included:

Security Automation in CI/CD Pipelines: Integrated tools like Snyk, SonarQube, and Checkmarx for static application security testing (SAST) and dependency analysis.Configured automated runtime validation for containerized workloads using tools like Aqua Security.

Policy Enforcement: Implemented build policies to block deployments with critical vulnerabilities. Integrated IaC (Infrastructure as Code) scanning to detect security issues in cloud resources.

Centralized Monitoring and Logging: Deployed the ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) stack for real-time monitoring and compliance reporting. Enhanced traceability with audit trails for deployments.

Training and Awareness: Rolled out pre-commit hooks and IDE plugins() for real-time vulnerability feedback during development.

Objectives and Key Results

Objective 1: Integrate security without compromising the development velocity.

Key Result 1.1: Achieve 80% coverage of automated security testing in CI/CD pipelines within the first quarter.

Key Result 1.2: Reduce the average time to detect and fix vulnerabilities by 60%.

Objective 2: Meet regulatory compliance requirements (PCI DSS).

Key Result 2.1: Achieve 95% compliance in the first quarter.

Key Result 2.2: Implement centralized dashboards to monitor compliance adherence across all applications.

Objective 3: Introduce a security-first culture among developers.

Key Result 3.1: Increase the adoption of pre-commit hooks and IDE plugins by 70% among developers.

Project Outcomes:

Significant improvements across multiple areas. Faster detection and remediation were achieved by reducing the time to detect and fix vulnerabilities by 60%, while also improving the response time to critical threats during runtime. In terms of compliance, the team successfully achieved 95% PCI DSS compliance within the first quarter and streamlined audit processes with automated logs and dashboards. Developer productivity was enhanced by providing immediate feedback on security issues, which boosted developer confidence and reduced late-stage security bottlenecks, ensuring faster release cycles. Additionally, the security posture saw a marked improvement with a 90% reduction in high-severity container vulnerabilities and enhanced runtime protection, which significantly reduced the attack surface.

Future Updates

Expanding continuous compliance monitoring by incorporating additional frameworks such as SOC 2 and GDPR. DevSecOps practices will be scaled to cover more pipelines across all business units, with the introduction of gamified security exercises to further engage developers. Additionally, cloud-native enhancements will be made by adopting advanced cloud security tools to improve infrastructure observability and enhancing container orchestration security through the use of service mesh technologies. These initiatives aim to further strengthen the security posture and compliance capabilities of the platform.