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Rezilion has integrated its workload analysis tool with the continuous integration (CI) framework provided by GitLab. The move is part of an effort to make it simpler for developers to discover issues such as vulnerabilities before they upload code into a repository.
Sam White, a senior product manager for GitLab, said this integration will provide developers with an instant feedback loop that will enable them to address a wide range of issues before their code is ever reviewed. Rather than experiencing the shame of, for example, missing a vulnerability, the Rezilion platform enables developers to quickly write code while relying on a code analytics tool to surface common mistakes that they can remediate as they see fit, he added.
Rezilion CEO Liran Tancman added that the proprietary workload composition analysis engine, dubbed Unison, on which the Rezilion platform is based makes it feasible to shift more responsibility for application security further left without requiring developers to become cybersecurity experts.
Unison automatically creates a model of all the applications that include the underlying infrastructure and runtime environments. It reverse-engineers and maps that environment in memory to dynamically track the inventory, provenance, runtime execution, exposure and interdependencies between each piece of code and can generate a software bill of materials (SBOM).
The code that is most in need of immediate attention is also surfaced directly with the GitLab user interface, said Tancman. That capability can reduce remediation time of the vulnerability backlog an organization might be working through by as much as 70% over time, he added. Rezilion enables organizations to achieve that goal because non-exploitable vulnerabilities are marked as “false positives” that shouldn’t hold back a release.
Tancman said that without this level of automation it would be extremely challenging for an organization to implement a set of DevSecOps best practices. It might take developers years to attain the level of cybersecurity training that would be required in the absence of the automation enabled by the Unison engine, he noted.
Historically, the relationship between application developers and cybersecurity teams has been tense. Cybersecurity teams tend to put off code review until it’s about to be deployed in a production environment. It’s not uncommon for an application to be pulled at the last minute because of a vulnerability discovered by a cybersecurity team. In some instances, that vulnerability is a legitimate concern but in others, it turns out to be a false positive because the flagged piece of code isn’t actually included in the application.
By providing developers with a workload composition analysis tool within the context of a CI framework, GitLab is trying to reduce the level of friction that the process tends to create between developers and cybersecurity teams.
It may be some time before most organizations fully master DevSecOps, but it’s clear that merely telling developers they will be held accountable for application security without providing the appropriate tools isn’t going to make applications any more secure.
