Balancing innovation with technology can often be a big challenge for startups and small development teams. They usually need to have fast development processes, meet tight deadlines, and be able to scale their projects. However, all of this can sometimes result in security oversights. This is where DevSecOps comes in, offering the practice of integrating security right into your development processes.
However, these tools might often feel like they’re only built for bigger organizations as they offer things that smaller teams don’t need, and not to mention, price tags that they can’t afford. However, luckily, there are some platforms that can help maintain security while providing the options to scale and automate, even for startups and smaller organizations.
Top DevSecOps Platforms for Small Development Teams
Here are three of the best DevSecOps tools that startups and small development teams can use to scale and secure their operations seamlessly.
Aikido
Aikido is a well-known security platform that can help simplify DevSecOps even for smaller businesses. It is considered to be one of the best enterprise security tools with a focus on a positive development experience, automation, and a huge selection of different tools.
- All-in-One Security Scanning
Aikido combines several tools into one easy-to-use platform. It covers things like SAST (static application security testing), DAST (dynamic testing), SCA (open-source dependency scanning), CSPM (cloud posture), IaC scanning, container security, license compliance, malware scanning, and more.
- Developer-First Experience
Aikido offers a one-click Autofix and AI-generated pull requests. Its AI Autofix can help resolve any vulnerabilities in code, and it also features AutoTriage, which can filter out alerts that are not critical so that developers aren’t constantly overwhelmed with false alerts.
- Autonomous Pentesting
If you are looking for a platform that can simulate real-world attack scenarios, Aikido can be the perfect solution as it provides AI-driven autonomous penetration testing agents. These can simulate the behavior of hackers and help you identify some critical issues and vulnerabilities in your code.
- Cost-Effective and Fast
You can start using Aikido for free and use its scanners, take advantage of credit-based pentests, IDE plugins, and rescans every 3 days. Keep in mind that Aikido can also integrate into your existing CI/CD workflows with tools like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure Pipelines, and VSCode.
- Compliance-Friendly
Aikido is SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliant, and is a really strong option for startups in regulated industries like HealthTech, FinTech, or LegalTech.
StackHawk
StackHawk is a DAST (dynamic application security testing) tool, the main focus of which is making the API and application security testing easier and more streamlined for developers.
- Developer-Centric DAST
Traditional DAST tools are often only used by security teams, and developers don’t even have access to them. StackHawk, however, was designed for developers. It can integrate directly into CI workflows and help test security during the development process. It also supports REST, GraphQL, and SOAP APIs, as well as web applications.
- Pre-Production Focused
By running tests in staging environments and local development, StackHawk can help make sure that issues and vulnerabilities are identified and resolved early on, before reaching production. This can be perfect for small teams where catching issues early on can be critical.
- Automation and CI/CD Integration
This tool can work with GitHub Actions, CircleCI, GitLab CI, and other CI tools. This can help automatically scan every build or pull request seamlessly.
- Actionable Findings
StackHawk doesn’t just show where the vulnerabilities are. It also provides developer-friendly remediation tips directly in the CI/CD output. This helps simplify the process of fixing issues quickly instead of treating them as roadblocks.
- Scalable Pricing
This tool offers a free plan that works with some scan limits, making it a good starting point for smaller teams that cannot afford enterprise pricing yet.
Snyk
Snyk is yet another security platform built to help teams easily identify and fix vulnerabilities in code.
- Focus on Open Source and Containers
Snyk initially started with SCA (software composition analysis) and helped identify issues in open-source packages, but now it extends to container security (Docker images) and Kubernetes. It can be the perfect option for startups that are building cloud-native apps with open-source dependencies.
- Easy Integration
Snyk can easily integrate into JetBrains, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Azure Repos. It can scan pull requests, offer suggestions on what to fix, and even block code that is unsafe from being merged.
- Infrastructure and Container Scanning
This platform can scan tools like Terraform, Kubernetes, and CloudFormation to help catch setup issues early on. It can also check container images to find outdated or even risky software.
- Security as Code
By using Snyk, you can create your own security rules and checks. It can also generate useful reports for your team to help identify, track, and manage risks on the go.
- Pricing
Snyk also offers a free plan for smaller teams and has paid options as the project scales. Keep in mind, it also has good documentation and can work well with many tools.
Conclusion
For smaller teams and startups, the best DevSecOps tool is the one that offers the best features for the best price. They need tools that are not only simple to integrate into their already existing workflows, but are also affordable and built with developers in mind.
Today, this industry is focused more on the positive developer experience and simplification, and all three of the tools we mentioned above can help startups empower their dev teams and scale their projects securely.
