Context-Aware Security Platform for CI/CD Pipelines
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing security solutions struggle to keep pace with the rapid software development speed in DevOps environments, leading to increased challenges for security teams in identifying and managing risks, and resulting in a high volume of false positives and noise from security tools.
Innovation Solution
A context-aware code security platform that integrates with CI/CD pipelines to receive security vulnerabilities and contextual data from DevOps tools, augmenting vulnerabilities with contextual information, prioritizing them, and notifying responsible owners to facilitate timely fixes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If security teams use traditional security tools in DevOps pipelines, then security vulnerabilities can be detected, but the volume of false positives and noise increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary component that sits between security tools and security teams. This intermediary automatically triages security alerts by analyzing contextual data from DevOps tools, prioritizing vulnerabilities based on relevance, and filtering out false positives. This mediator handles the information filtering function that was previously manual, restoring the signal-to-noise ratio while maintaining vulnerability detection capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the manual mechanical process of security team triage with an automated computational system. The system uses algorithms to process security alerts, correlate them with contextual data from DevOps tools, and automatically prioritize vulnerabilities. This substitution eliminates the manual labor while improving consistency and speed of vulnerability prioritization.
2Measurement precision
If security teams manually triage security vulnerabilities, then prioritization can be achieved, but the process becomes increasingly time-consuming and resource-intensive
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by automatically gathering contextual data from DevOps tools and pre-processing security alerts before they reach security teams. The system performs initial triage, enrichment, and prioritization in advance, so that when security teams review vulnerabilities, the work is already partially completed. This preliminary automation reduces both time and manual resources required.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent establishes continuous automated monitoring and prioritization of security vulnerabilities within the DevOps pipeline. Rather than batch processing, the system continuously analyzes security alerts as they occur, maintaining an up-to-date prioritization list. This continuous automated action eliminates the need for repeated manual triage cycles, reducing time loss while maintaining prioritization accuracy.
3Productivity
If DevOps teams increase software development speed, then productivity improves, but application security risk management becomes more difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements self-service by enabling the security system to automatically manage itself through continuous automated triage, prioritization, and monitoring. The system autonomously processes security alerts, correlates them with contextual data, and maintains prioritization without requiring proportional increases in security team resources. This self-service capability allows the system to handle increased development speed and associated security risks without adding complexity to risk management.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes key parameters of the security management system by transitioning from manual to automated processes, and from periodic to continuous monitoring. These parameter changes enable the system to scale with increased development speed. The automated system can process higher volumes of security alerts without proportionally increasing complexity, as the automation handles the scaling burden.
Data Source
AI summary
In one aspect, a system that provides a context-aware code security solution within a continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline is disclosed. During operation, the system can receive a set of security vulnerabilities generated by a set of security tools incorporated with the CI/CD pipeline. The system further receives contextual data associated with the set of security vulnerabilities from a set of DevOps tools used by the CI/CD pipeline. Next, the system augments the set of security vulnerabilities with the received contextual data. The system next prioritizes the augmented security vulnerabilities to identify a subset of high-priority vulnerabilities within the set of security vulnerabilities. The system subsequently notifies the owners of the identified subset of high-priority vulnerabilities to cause the subset of high-priority vulnerabilities to be fixed by the owners.