DevSecOps Foundation study plan

Explain the business and security drivers behind DevSecOps, including the limitations of traditional security models and the benefits of shifting security left.

Define the core principles of DevSecOps culture: collaboration, shared responsibility, blameless postmortems, and continuous learning.

Compare and contrast DevSecOps with traditional security approaches in terms of roles, processes, and tooling.

Identify key stakeholders and describe how to build cross-functional teams that include security from the start.

Analyze strategic considerations for adopting DevSecOps, such as selecting pilot projects, defining success metrics, and securing executive sponsorship.

Evaluate common security challenges in DevOps environments, including shared responsibility models, attack surface changes, and compliance in dynamic systems.

Describe how to integrate security into CI/CD pipelines without sacrificing speed, using automation and guardrails.

Outline a threat modeling approach suitable for rapid development cycles.

Explain identity and access management principles in DevSecOps, including least privilege, just-in-time access, and identity federation.

Implement secure authentication and authorization for applications and pipelines, using standards like OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect.

Apply application security practices such as static and dynamic analysis, dependency scanning, and secure coding standards.

Integrate security testing into the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and automate vulnerability management.

Describe operational security practices for infrastructure and workloads, including hardening, patching, and configuration management.

Design a logging and monitoring strategy that captures security-relevant events across the pipeline and runtime.

Explain incident response in DevSecOps, including detection, containment, eradication, and recovery, with blameless postmortems.

Use telemetry and observability to detect anomalies and support forensic analysis.

Identify governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) requirements relevant to DevSecOps, such as regulatory standards and industry frameworks.

Integrate compliance checks and audit trails into automated pipelines to enable continuous compliance.

Perform risk assessments for changes in the software supply chain and prioritize remediation.

Explain how to generate audit evidence automatically and maintain traceability from requirements to deployment.

Synthesize the cultural and strategic aspects of DevSecOps by designing a change management plan for a security transformation.

Develop metrics and KPIs to measure the effectiveness of DevSecOps initiatives, such as mean time to remediate and deployment frequency.

Create a communication plan to engage stakeholders and foster a security-first culture.

Evaluate case studies of DevSecOps adoption and extract lessons learned.

Review and reinforce technical security controls across identity, application, and operations.

Design a secure software supply chain, including dependency verification, artifact signing, and provenance.

Implement infrastructure as code (IaC) security scanning and policy as code.

Conduct a tabletop exercise simulating a security incident in a DevSecOps environment.

Review all domains comprehensively, focusing on areas of weakness identified in practice exams.

Complete a full-length practice exam under timed conditions and analyze results.

Revisit key concepts and frameworks, ensuring understanding of GRC, logging, monitoring, and response in DevSecOps.

Finalize a personal exam-day strategy, including time management and question-answering techniques.