How DevOps Platform Can Secure You Against Log4j Vulnerabilities
Tags: devops, webdev, programming
Published: 2022-10-27 20:22:37

More than 45% of companies have had a security breach in the past few years. Heightened security measures aren’t just a necessity, they are absolutely critical to the protection of software systems.

Log4j vulnerability is a security risk when logging into a java library. Log4j is recognized as an open-source library, used by different apps. However, if Log4j is left unprotected, hackers can take passwords and information and infect malicious malware into software systems. 

Since Log4j is used universally, there’s greater vulnerability. Log4j is used with individuals when they use apps. And for organizations who need to be aware of how their web servers and applications are at risk.

The concern for software companies is if this is a DevOps security problem and how it’s preventable.

## How Log4j Is Affecting DevOps Security
 
DevOps is responsible for software security and automation. So, when it comes to Log4j security measures, DevOps is responsible for these security measures. Since DevOps tracks all the components that go into an application, they should determine what vulnerabilities exist within that application. 

When Log4j or any other vulnerability compromises an internally developed application, will DevOps teams have a process to mitigate these issues? In addition, would security teams be able to isolate the attack and mitigate its damage? Do software organizations have DevOps practices to prepare to mitigate compromised code? 

Log4j is affecting DevOps security through trial and error. Breaches in the past that affected Log4j have made DevOps security teams more accountable. It makes software security organizations accountable. 

However, Log4j is not an issue of the past, but rather a focus on the future of software security. These security issues will continue to arise in the future. Learning how to prepare for them will be the difference between some software security companies.

## How a DevOps Platform Will Reduce the Impact of Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities
Log4j vulnerabilities may present software security issues, but even more revealing is how it shows the need for greater security software. Although it’s an impossible task to protect all security vulnerabilities, organizations need to realize the value of maintaining their information, to restore it safely and quickly.

While DevOps security teams should have these best practices in place, it’s also important to implement no-code DevOps orchestration in organizations. Because it helps automate and reduce the impact of product vulnerabilities.  

The future of software security is in no-code DevOps orchestration. Here’s how it benefits organizations.

**‍Automates scanning for vulnerabilities**
Efficiency is found in advanced automation.

Solving security issues quickly and efficiently is highly important in order to mitigate security issues. With manual code inspection, there’s often way too much time devoted to tasks that could be automated. Manual code inspections compared to automation also lead to more errors.

With no-code DevOps orchestration, automated [CI/CD pipelines ](https://www.opsera.io/ci-cd-pipeline)automate building the code. They are also scanning for vulnerabilities, unit testing, and deployment to development, QA and production. ‍

**Sends automatic security alerts**
As a result of automation, organizations are more aware of security vulnerabilities faster. And they can respond more efficiently with the proper measures.

DevOps teams can send automatic security alerts that make organizations aware of what steps need to be taken to mitigate the issue. This empowers your team to focus on other tasks while advanced software automation focuses on sending security alerts.‍

**Assesses the impact of vulnerability with detailed insights**  
Security insights help you assess future security threats. With these insights, your organization will have the opportunity to efficiently work on security issues through automation.

In addition to looking ahead, you can also analyze the risk of security vulnerabilities. You can assess how your team resolved past issues and what steps need to be taken to improve that process.

Implementing no-code DevOps orchestration enables these real-time insights. They help security teams to respond more efficiently so that fixes across end-to-end deployment can happen as quickly as possible. 

In addition, everyone in the organization needs to work in unison, to look at the details of the cybersecurity threat. With No-code DevOps orchestration, your organization easily integrates all of the tools within the software development ecosystem so that every step of the process is visible.

**Offers visibility across an organization**
With detailed insights and automated security alerts, organizations have universal visibility. They can find compromise due to a vulnerability like Log4j. 

While these insights don’t make vulnerabilities nonexistent, they do help no-code DevOps orchestration build a seamless process on how to address these vulnerabilities.

## How a Fortune 100 company used Opsera to tide over the Log4j crisis
Opsera is no stranger to solving a Log4j crisis. When a [Fortune 100 company had such a crisis](https://www.opsera.io/case-study/log4j-cybersecurity-vulnerability-solved), Opsera solved it efficiently and quickly. 

This Fortune 100 has been in defense and industry equipment manufacturing for 100+ years. While they had an IT team to innovate faster through better intelligence, automation, and other forms of digital transformation across the supply chain, there was still a security risk.

Their Log4j vulnerability exposed one of any team’s biggest obstacles: a lack of visibility and transparency in their libraries. With this vulnerability, it would normally have taken an IT team more than a week to secure systems against the Log4j vulnerability manually. And this was not fast enough.

With Opsera, the client’s team immediately identified the software components that were compromised. Individual code no longer needed to be scanned manually; in fact, scans can be automated and scheduled to run within Opsera’s orchestration platform. This saved the team countless hours and let them turn their focus to building the change to actually fix the issues. 

Opsera has integrations with DevSecOps tools like Sonarqube, Twistlock, Anchor, Vault, and Coverity, making everything easier.

After the team applied the fix for their Log4j version, they used Opsera’s no-code pipelines and unified insights to build the code, scan for vulnerabilities, do unit testing, and deploy to all three instances: development, QA, and production. 

As a result, the team executed 164 pipelines and 500+ releases across all environments in less than 48 hours, slamming the door on its Log4j vulnerabilities.