Securing CI/CD Pipelines: Preventing Secret Leaks with Doppler

The primary principle behind Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) is simple enough to summarize in a sentence, but implementing it and doing so securely is a completely different story. CI/CD is about automating and streamlining features of the development process to remove tedium from the workflow, allowing for more efficient product delivery and freeing developers to focus more on important features. If you’re looking for a more in-depth summary of the process, check out this article.

There are plenty of benefits to CI/CD. The automated processes aren’t just more efficient; they’re also more secure. Automated security tests easily catch superficial errors, freeing testing teams to run more complex simulations. For developers, the ability to continuously integrate without cross-checking every other team member frees up significantly more time in the workday and allows for more flexibility in fixing issues that arise in other stages of development.

As CI/CD speeds up the workflow, security measures are necessarily pushed to their limits, so it’s incredibly important to make sure the pipeline remains as secure as possible, especially if you’re working with sensitive customer information. Control of secrets management becomes essential to maintaining this security.

Here, we’ll examine the difference between preventative and retroactive secrets management processes and how they work together to secure your CI/CD pipeline.

Preventative secrets management practices:

Some features of secrets management solutions are preventative. They securely store secrets in an encrypted, centralized manner and allow for the secure injection of those secrets wherever they are needed in the development process. If applied correctly, these features shield the actual values of secrets from internal and external eyes, preventing any agents, malicious or not, from reading them without permission.

Preventative solutions are incredibly important for reducing the creation of vulnerabilities that inevitably arise in a fast-paced development environment. Equipping development teams with the right tools and training means future projects and features will be more secure. Professional secrets management solutions like Doppler have a host of preventative and retroactive features that make proper secrets management practices fast and secure.

Doppler’s Command Line Interface is easy to install. Since it injects secrets as environment variables, it works for any language, framework, platform, or cloud provider.

Retroactive secrets management practices:

Some features of secrets management solutions are retroactive. Audit logs, for instance, allow security teams to monitor the access and use of secrets. By continuously monitoring secrets access, they should be able to detect secrets misuse and automatically revoke access to compromised credentials. Features of secrets managers like Doppler allow for expedient revocation of privileges in the event of a security breach through automatic rotation, reversion to previous, uncorrupted builds, and platform-wide syncing features. These allow security teams to purge exposed secrets from the system without interrupting development.

Another key retroactive practice is using a secrets scanning tool. These services search existing repositories, configuration files, and other digital assets to detect secrets that have been accidentally leaked. It’s important to regularly scan code so security teams catch these vulnerabilities before bad actors do. There are plenty of reasons to use a secret scanning service, but here are a few of the broader ones:

• Mitigating Risk: Secrets that have been inadvertently exposed pose significant security risks. Secrets scanning tools play a crucial role in risk identification, allowing security teams to mitigate potential threat vectors before they are exploited. Remember, hackers have access to these tools too! It’s imperative to find vulnerabilities in your own code before they do.
• Protecting Data: Secrets that grant access to databases are among the most common types of secrets. If made publicly available, hackers can access sensitive customer and company information, which can result in significant financial and legal ramifications.
• Regulatory Compliance: Many industries, especially those handling sensitive customer health and financial information, are protected by strict government regulations. Regular secrets scanning can help meet those standards through a proactive security posture.
• Maintaining Trust: Protecting sensitive information and preventing data breaches is essential for maintaining consumer trust and industry reputation. Actively scanning for exposed secrets demonstrates a commitment to security and enhances customer confidence.

Working in tandem

Holistic secrets management solutions apply both preventative and retroactive measures to combat threats from all angles. Secrets managers integrate into the CI/CD pipeline directly, injecting secrets securely to prevent them from ending up in the wrong places. Effective secrets management services don’t just do this securely; they also make this process efficient and easy to use.

Secrets scanning services augment the CI/CD pipeline by catching hard-coded and misplaced secrets before they make it into production. This allows security teams to better identify and remediate threats before hackers have a chance.

Check out Doppler’s free demo and see how we can help update your security posture.