DevSecOps Maturity Assessment
A comprehensive capability maturity assessment that evaluates how deeply security is embedded into your software delivery lifecycle. It measures 45 practices across eight domains - from strategy and culture through secur...
Overview
A comprehensive capability maturity assessment that evaluates how deeply security is embedded into your software delivery lifecycle. It measures 45 practices across eight domains - from strategy and culture through secure pipelines, supply chain security, secrets management, threat modeling, vulnerability remediation, runtime security, and governance. Written for the engineering or security leader who needs to answer: is security truly embedded in our delivery pipeline, or is it still a gate at the end that teams route around?
Detailed Description
DevSecOps is the practice of making security an invisible, automated part of software delivery - not a gate that teams route around, not a report that arrives two weeks after the release, and not a quarterly pen test that finds what automated tools should have caught months ago.
This assessment evaluates 45 practices across eight domains that cover the full DevSecOps landscape. It starts with culture - is security a shared responsibility, are champions embedded, does leadership protect the investment? It examines the pipeline - are SAST, DAST, IaC scanning, and container scanning integrated with automated gates? It assesses supply chain - are dependencies tracked via SCA, are SBOMs generated, are build environments ephemeral? It evaluates secrets - are credentials vaulted, is detection pre-commit, is rotation automated? It checks design - is threat modeling practiced, are secure patterns published, is abuse case testing included? It measures remediation - are vulnerabilities consolidated, are SLAs severity-based, is MTTR tracked? It reviews runtime - is RASP deployed, are events correlated in the SIEM, is AppSec incident response defined? And it assesses governance - is policy codified as code, is there an audit trail for every release?
The three-dimension scoring reveals a common DevSecOps pattern: security tools purchased and documented but not integrated into the pipeline, or integrated but with gates set to advisory rather than blocking - which means they are ignored under schedule pressure.
Assessment Details
Audience
CISO, VP Engineering, Head of Application Security, DevOps Lead, Platform Engineering Manager. Also valuable for audit teams assessing SDLC security controls and compliance officers evaluating software supply chain governance.
Purpose
Identifies strengths and gaps across every dimension of security-integrated delivery - not just whether SAST exists, but whether it blocks builds, whether developers see findings in their IDE, whether supply chain is governed, whether secrets are vaulted, and whether runtime protection complements pipeline scanning. Reveals the common failure: organizations that have security tools but not security integration.
Effort
Initial assessment: 3-4 hours with a cross-functional team (AppSec lead, DevOps/platform engineer, development lead, CISO representative). Allow 1-2 hours for evidence gathering including pipeline configurations and scan reports. Subsequent reassessments: approximately 2 hours.
Cadence
Biannually (every 6 months). Software delivery and threat landscapes evolve rapidly - annual assessment misses shifts in tooling, pipeline architecture, and attack patterns.
Assessment Outline
(8 chapters · 45 questions)-
1
1 DevSecOps Strategy and Culture
- 1.1 Security-Left Strategy 1 questions
- 1.2 Shared Responsibility 1 questions
- 1.3 Security Champions 1 questions
- 1.4 Security Training 1 questions
- 1.5 Executive Sponsorship 1 questions
- 1.6 Integrated Metrics 1 questions
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2
2 Secure Pipeline and CI/CD Integration
- 2.1 SAST Integration 1 questions
- 2.2 DAST Integration 1 questions
- 2.3 Automated Gate Enforcement 1 questions
- 2.4 IaC Security Scanning 1 questions
- 2.5 Container Image Scanning 1 questions
- 2.6 Pipeline Security 1 questions
- 2.7 Developer-Native Feedback 1 questions
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3
3 Software Supply Chain Security
- 3.1 SCA for Dependencies 1 questions
- 3.2 Artifact Signing 1 questions
- 3.3 SBOM Generation 1 questions
- 3.4 Dependency Hygiene 1 questions
- 3.5 Registry Governance 1 questions
- 3.6 Ephemeral Build Environments 1 questions
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4
4 Secrets Management and Configuration Security
- 4.1 Secrets Vaulting 1 questions
- 4.2 Secret Detection Scanning 1 questions
- 4.3 Automated Rotation 1 questions
- 4.4 Configuration Validation 1 questions
- 4.5 Emergency Revocation 1 questions
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5
5 Threat Modeling and Secure Design
- 5.1 Threat Modeling Practice 1 questions
- 5.2 Living Threat Models 1 questions
- 5.3 Secure Design Patterns 1 questions
- 5.4 Attack Surface Management 1 questions
- 5.5 Abuse Case Testing 1 questions
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6
6 Vulnerability Management and Remediation
- 6.1 Consolidated Vulnerability Backlog 1 questions
- 6.2 Severity-Based SLAs 1 questions
- 6.3 MTTR Tracking 1 questions
- 6.4 Exception Governance 1 questions
- 6.5 Zero-Day Response 1 questions
- 6.6 Penetration Testing 1 questions
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7
7 Runtime Security and Observability
- 7.1 Runtime Protection 1 questions
- 7.2 SIEM Integration 1 questions
- 7.3 Security Logging 1 questions
- 7.4 Anomaly Alerting 1 questions
- 7.5 AppSec Incident Response 1 questions
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8
8 Compliance, Governance and Improvement
- 8.1 Policy as Code 1 questions
- 8.2 Release Audit Trail 1 questions
- 8.3 Benchmarking 1 questions
- 8.4 Improvement Register 1 questions
- 8.5 Maturity Self-Assessment 1 questions
At a Glance
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