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21 Best DevSecOps Tools and Platforms for 2025

devsecops tools

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DevSecOps is the practice of tightly integrating security tools and processes throughout the software delivery lifecycle. Unifying development, operations, and security tasks within one consolidated workflow lets you deliver reliable software more efficiently. It ensures security is always front of mind, minimizing the risk of vulnerabilities.

In this blog post, we’re going to round up some of the top DevSecOps tools to try in 2025. These platforms and solutions support your DevSecOps implementation by enabling safe collaboration, operations, and configuration management. We’ll share why each tool is so helpful and highlight the roles it supports—whether developers, operators, security experts, or all three.

What is a DevSecOps tool?

A DevSecOps tool is software designed to integrate security into the DevOps pipeline, ensuring that security practices are automated and embedded throughout the development lifecycle. These tools help identify vulnerabilities, enforce security policies, and maintain compliance without slowing down software delivery.

DevSecOps tools typically include static and dynamic security testing (SAST, DAST), container security scanners, infrastructure as code (IaC) security checks, and runtime protection.

However, a DevSecOps platform doesn’t exclusively serve security needs. Many solutions are aimed at developers and operations teams but include powerful security and governance capabilities that ensure they’re suitable for production use.

While DevSecOps tools complement DevOps tools, both are essential for secure and scalable software delivery.

Why use DevSecOps tools in the software development lifecycle?

Adopting DevSecOps tools and workflows delivers clear benefits for organizations building software:

  • Tighter development loops: Integrating developers, operators, and security teams shortens delivery cycles and enables quicker access to feedback from all stakeholders.
  • Fewer errors and incidents: Security vulnerabilities will be detected earlier in the delivery process, letting you fix them before they cause an incident.
  • Simpler collaboration: Everyone can use the same tools and processes, making collaborating on changes and maintaining consistent workflows easier.
  • Improved scalability and flexibility: DevSecOps scales with you as you grow, enabling continual security governance as you add more teams, projects, and infrastructure.

DevSecOps tools let you align the priorities of all software delivery stakeholders without sacrificing throughput. Now, let’s examine some of the top solutions across the ecosystem.

Top DevSecOps tools

This list includes several tool types across various key use cases. Many more options are available, too, so if you don’t find what you need, it’s worth reaching out in your community to discover other choices. We’re focusing on tools and platforms that support developers and operators in achieving their aims while ensuring security is accommodated from day one.

The best DevSecOps tools include:

  1. Spacelift
  2. GitLab
  3. Open Policy Agent
  4. Kubernetes
  5. Ansible
  6. Puppet
  7. Prometheus + Grafana
  8. Elastic Stack
  9. Snyk
  10. Spectral
  11. Trivy
  12. Cloudflare
  13. Semgrep
  14. Falco
  15. Cosign
  16. Calico
  17. SonarQube
  18. New Relic
  19. Checkov
  20. Hashicorp Vault
  21. OWASP ZAP

1. Spacelift

Spacelift is an IaC orchestration platform. It consolidates all your infrastructure management tools in one place, including Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi, Ansible, and more.

Unlike regular IaC, Spacelift is automated, collaborative, and easy to govern. It supports self-service developer access, secure multi-tenancy, and centralized policy enforcement to keep your infrastructure protected. Spacelift empowers everyone to interact with DevOps infrastructure efficiently while maintaining security requirements.

Price: Free tier available; Paid subscription for additional features

Website: https://spacelift.io

Use case example: How to improve your infrastructure orchestration with Spacelift

Key features

  • Multi-IaC workflow
  • Stack dependencies: You can create dependencies between stacks and pass outputs from one to another to build an environment promotion pipeline more easily.
  • Unlimited policies and integrations: Spacelift allows you to implement any type of guardrails and integrate with any tool you want. You can control the number of approvals you need for a run, which resources can be created, which parameters those resources can have, what happens when a pull request is open, and where to send your notifications data.
  • High flexibility: You can customize what happens before and after runner phases, bring your own image, and even modify the default workflow commands.
  • Self-service infrastructure via Blueprints: You can define infrastructure templates that are easily deployed. These templates can have policies/integrations/contexts/drift detection embedded inside them for reliable deployment.
  • Drift detection & remediation: Ensure the reliability of your infrastructure by detecting and remediating drift.
  • Security features: What Makes Spacelift Secure?

2. GitLab

GitLab is billed as an all-in-one DevSecOps solution. It’s best known for its core Git repository hosting and CI/CD features, but the full enterprise platform offers many advanced capabilities for security, compliance, and governance teams.

With GitLab, you can host your code, manage your deployments, and configure security framework controls all in one place. The platform supports the entire software delivery lifecycle, from initial requirements planning through to operations governance and business value analysis.

Price: Free tier available; paid plans for enhanced features

Website: https://about.gitlab.com/ 

Use case example: How to Manage Terraform State with GitLab

Key features of GitLab in the DevSecOps space

  • Security scanning: GitLab provides built-in Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) to detect vulnerabilities in code and running applications. Additionally, dependency scanning detects security risks in third-party libraries.
  • Secret detection: Automatically scans repositories for hardcoded secrets, API keys, and credentials to prevent leaks before deployment.
  • Compliance management: Provides compliance pipelines, audit logs, and security policies to ensure governance and regulatory adherence in CI/CD workflows.
  • Container and Kubernetes security: Features Container Scanning to detect vulnerabilities in Docker images and integrates with Kubernetes for security policy enforcement and runtime protection.
  • Threat insights and security dashboard: Provides a centralized security dashboard for tracking vulnerabilities across projects, with issue tracking and remediation workflows.

3. Open Policy Agent (OPA)

Open Policy Agent (OPA) is an open-source DevSecOps tool that makes writing declarative governance policies as code easy. You can evaluate your policies against different inputs to check whether the input is compliant.

Adopting OPA in your workflows allows developers and operators to work flexibly within guardrails set by security teams. For instance, you can use OPA policies to detect and prevent misconfigured IaC resources that could cause data breaches.

Price: Free (Open-source)

Website: https://www.openpolicyagent.org 

Use case example: How to Use Open Policy Agent (OPA) with Terraform

Key features of OPA in the DevSecOps space

  • Policy-as-Code: OPA enables organizations to define security and compliance policies using Rego, a declarative policy language, ensuring consistency and automation across infrastructure and applications.
  • Kubernetes admission control: Integrates with Kubernetes (Gatekeeper) to enforce security policies on workloads, such as restricting privileged containers or enforcing network policies.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) security: Enforces security policies in Terraform, CloudFormation, and other IaC tools, preventing misconfigurations and vulnerabilities before deployment.
  • API and microservices authorization: Provides fine-grained access control for APIs and microservices, enabling dynamic authorization decisions based on request context and security policies.
  • Centralized policy enforcement: Allows organizations to centrally manage and enforce security policies across diverse environments, including cloud, containers, and CI/CD pipelines.

4. Kubernetes

devsecops tools kubernetes

Kubernetes is the leading container orchestration solution. It automates the process of deploying and scaling containerized apps.

Kubernetes is most useful to operations teams juggling large microservices architectures in production, but it can also help developers efficiently test software in realistic environments. 

Moreover, Kubernetes includes robust security capabilities and is compatible with many third-party scan tools. Operating workloads in Kubernetes helps security practitioners to centrally manage risks because everything runs in one platform, using declarative configuration sources.

Price: Free (Open-source)

Website: https://kubernetes.io/ 

Use case example: How to Create, Use, and Manage Kubernetes Secrets

Key features of Kubernetes in the DevSecOps space

  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Restricts access to Kubernetes resources using granular role-based permissions, ensuring only authorized users and services can perform specific actions.
  • Pod Security Standards (PSS) and policies: Defines security constraints for pod configurations, such as blocking privileged containers, enforcing read-only file systems, and limiting network access.
  • Network policies: Controls ingress and egress traffic between pods, enforcing zero-trust networking by restricting communication to only necessary services.
  • Secrets management: Stores and manages sensitive data (API keys, credentials, TLS certificates) securely, preventing exposure in container images or environment variables.
  • Audit logging and monitoring: Provides detailed audit logs of all Kubernetes API activities, integrating with security monitoring tools to detect anomalous behavior and potential threats.

5. Ansible

devsecops tools ansible

Ansible is an open-source automated configuration management tool. It lets you declaratively administer your IT infrastructure, such as by installing packages, running tasks, and configuring services. This eliminates manual tasks for operators and allows security teams to remotely patch vulnerabilities and fix misconfigurations. Ansible is often used after an IaC tool to prepare provisioned resources for real-world use.

Price: Free (Open-source)

Website: https://www.ansible.com/ 

Use case example: Management & Automation Examples with Ansible

Key features of Ansible in the DevSecOps space

  • Automated security patching: Ansible automates patch management by applying security updates across servers, containers, and applications, reducing vulnerabilities.
  • Compliance as code: Defines and enforces security compliance policies (e.g., CIS benchmarks, NIST standards) through Ansible Playbooks, ensuring systems remain hardened.
  • Secrets management integration: Works with HashiCorp Vault, CyberArk, and AWS Secrets Manager to securely handle API keys, passwords, and certificates in automation workflows.
  • IaC security: Ensures secure configuration management for cloud and on-premises environments, preventing misconfigurations that could lead to security risks.
  • Automated incident response: Enables real-time security remediation by integrating with SIEM tools (e.g., Splunk, ELK) to automatically detect and respond to security incidents.

6. Puppet

Puppet is an open-source automation solution with a broadly similar purpose to Ansible. Unlike Ansible, Puppet is usually deployed as an agent that runs on each of your machines. It manages your environments and proactively ensures they match the desired state you’ve configured. This helps prevent configuration drift, ensuring infrastructure remains stable and compliance policies are continually enforced.

Price: Free (Open-source) + Commercial version Puppet Enterprise

Website: https://www.puppet.com/

Key features of Puppet in the DevSecOps space

  • Configuration compliance and enforcement: Ensures that systems remain in a secure state by enforcing security configurations, such as disabling unused services, managing firewall rules, and applying OS hardening policies.
  • Policy-as-Code: Uses Puppet’s declarative language to define security policies, enabling automated compliance enforcement across infrastructure and reducing misconfigurations.
  • Automated patch management: Identifies and remediates vulnerabilities by automating OS and application patching, ensuring systems remain up-to-date and secure.
  • Secrets management integration: Works with HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, and other secret stores to securely manage and distribute credentials, API keys, and certificates.
  • Security auditing and reporting: Provides detailed audit logs, compliance reports, and real-time insights into infrastructure security posture, helping organizations detect and respond to security risks.

7. Prometheus & Grafana

Together, Prometheus and Grafana form a powerful observability solution for monitoring real-time metrics, logs, and traces emitted by your apps and infrastructure. 

Prometheus is typically used to collect and store the data, while Grafana enables you to visualize it on customizable dashboards. You can also configure alerts when key metrics change, ensuring operations and security teams are kept informed of potential problems as they happen.

devsecops tools grafana

Websites: https://prometheus.io and https://grafana.com

Use case example:  Prometheus Monitoring for Kubernetes Cluster

Key features of Prometheus & Grafana in the DevSecOps space

  • Real-time security monitoring: Prometheus collects metrics from applications, containers, and infrastructure, enabling real-time detection of security anomalies, such as unauthorized access attempts or resource spikes.
  • Alerting and incident response: Integrates with Alertmanager to trigger alerts based on security-related events, such as suspicious traffic patterns, failed authentication attempts, or system breaches.
  • Kubernetes security observability: Monitors Kubernetes clusters, network traffic, and container behaviors to detect policy violations, misconfigurations, and potential threats.
  • Log and metrics correlation: Grafana visualizes logs, traces, and metrics from Prometheus and other sources, enabling threat hunting and forensic analysis of security incidents.
  • Service mesh and API security monitoring: Integrates with Istio, Linkerd, and Envoy to observe API traffic, detect anomalies, and enforce security policies in microservices environments.
  • Compliance and audit reporting: Generates dashboards and reports to monitor compliance with security standards (e.g., CIS, NIST, ISO 27001) and detect deviations in system behavior.

8. Elastic Stack

devsecops tools Elastic Stack

The Elastic Stack (ELK) combines Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Logstash to create a highly scalable data analysis and visualization solution.

ELK is especially adept at processing large volumes of log data. It automates the process of extracting key insights, such as requests originating from a particular source. Adding ELK to your workflows lets you derive more value from your logs, giving developers easy access to vital debugging information while supporting operations and security teams in discovering optimization opportunities.

Price: Free and open-source under the Basic license; paid plans available for advanced features and support

Website: https://www.elastic.co/elastic-stack 

Key features of Elastic Stack (ELK) in the DevSecOps space

  • Security log analysis and SIEM: Elastic Security provides real-time log monitoring, threat detection, and SIEM capabilities, helping teams detect and respond to security incidents efficiently.
  • Anomaly detection with machine learning: Uses ML-powered behavioral analytics to identify unusual patterns, insider threats, and potential security breaches in logs and system activity.
  • Audit logging and compliance monitoring: Collects and analyzes audit logs from applications, infrastructure, and CI/CD pipelines to ensure compliance with security policies and regulations.
  • Threat intelligence integration: Enriches security data by correlating logs with known threat intelligence feeds, improving detection of malicious activities and attacks.
  • Real-time alerting and incident response: Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Alerting plugins to trigger automated alerts, integrate with SIEM, SOAR, or ITSM tools, and enable fast incident response.

9. Snyk

Snyk provides a suite of open-source DevSecOps tools for securing the software delivery lifecycle. It can scan code for vulnerabilities, hunt for CVEs in container images, and detect risky IaC misconfigurations.

Snyk is a unified solution that enables developers, operations managers, and security teams to align around one platform, improving toolchain consistency. Snyk’s AppRisk feature also supports security at scale, including automatic discovery of software assets and policy-based risk prioritization.

Price: Free tier available; Paid subscription for additional features

Website: https://snyk.io 

Key features of Snyk in the DevSecOps space

  • Vulnerability scanning for code, containers, and dependencies: Detects security vulnerabilities in open-source dependencies, container images, and proprietary code, integrating seamlessly into CI/CD pipelines.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) security: Scans Terraform, Kubernetes, and CloudFormation configurations to identify misconfigurations and security risks before deployment.
  • Automated remediation and fix suggestions: Provides automated fix PRs, dependency upgrades, and security patches, enabling developers to resolve vulnerabilities quickly.
  • Security policy enforcement and compliance tracking: Ensures adherence to security best practices by applying custom security policies and tracking compliance with industry standards like NIST, CIS, and GDPR.
  • Developer-friendly integrations: Integrates with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Docker, Jenkins, and IDEs to help developers identify and fix security issues early in the software development lifecycle.

10. Spectral

devsecops tools spectral

Spectral is a Cloud Native App Protection Platform (CNAPP) that is available as part of Check Point’s CloudGuard system. It focuses on detecting and prioritizing risks found in your apps, providing the context needed to apply effective resolutions. Spectral simplifies DevSecOps workflows by letting all stakeholders see where issues are originating. It can then apply automated remediations to address the threat.

Price: Pricing details available upon request

Website: https://spectralops.io 

Key features of Spectral in the DevSecOps space

  • Secret Detection: AI-powered scanning engine detects API keys, credentials, and sensitive data leaks in codebases and logs.
  • CI/CD Integration: Automates security checks within CI/CD pipelines, ensuring vulnerabilities are caught early.
  • Software Composition Analysis (SCA): Monitors open-source dependencies for vulnerabilities, compliance issues, and license risks.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security: Scans Terraform, Kubernetes, and CloudFormation templates for misconfigurations.
  • Developer-Friendly Tools: Provides VS Code extension and CLI tools to catch security issues in real-time during development.

11. Trivy

Aqua Security’s Trivy is a popular open-source security scanning tool. It can find CVEs, outdated dependencies, misconfigurations, and inadvertently hardcoded secrets within targets including filesystems, Git repositories, container images and Kubernetes manifests.

Trivy is designed to be easy to run as part of regular development workflows. It helps DevOps teams efficiently catch new problems in source files and IaC configs. Security teams can also use it to check conformity and generate SBOMs that list all active dependencies.

Price: Free (Open source)

Website: https://aquasecurity.github.io/trivy

Key features of Trivy in the DevSecOps space

  • Vulnerability scanning: Detects known vulnerabilities (CVEs) in container images, OS packages, and application dependencies.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) security: Scans Terraform, Kubernetes manifests, and Helm charts for misconfigurations and security risks.
  • Secret scanning: Identifies hardcoded credentials, API keys, and sensitive information in repositories.
  • SBOM generation: Generates Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) for dependency tracking and supply chain security.
  • CI/CD integration: Works with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, and other pipelines for automated security checks.

12. Cloudflare

Cloudflare is a popular cloud security platform that offers a full range of risk posture management and app protection solutions.

Cloudflare is often used to simultaneously secure apps and optimize performance using its CDN and DNS caching features. It enables operators to provision more reliable infrastructure at scale, but gives security teams granular options for hardening apps at the cloud and network level.

Price: Free tier available; Paid subscription for additional features

Website: https://www.cloudflare.com 

Key features of Cloudflare in the DevSecOps space

  • Web Application Firewall (WAF): Protects applications from SQL injection, XSS, and other web threats with automated rule sets.
  • Bot management: Detects and mitigates malicious bots and automated attacks, reducing risks like credential stuffing and DDoS.
  • Zero trust security: Enforces least-privilege access with identity-based security controls for users, applications, and networks.
  • API security: Protects APIs with rate limiting, authentication, and automated anomaly detection to prevent abuse.
  • DDoS protection: Provides always-on, scalable defense against volumetric and application-layer attacks with real-time traffic analysis.

13. Semgrep

Semgrep is a static analysis tool for finding bugs in code. It supports over 30 languages and can be used in the terminal, as an IDE plugin, and within CI/CD pipelines.

Semgrep is easily extensible with custom policies, letting you ensure that all code meets required standards. For instance, security teams could configure Semgrep rules that cause your CI/CD pipelines to fail when vulnerabilities are found in new code. This keeps live environments protected while providing immediate feedback to developers.

Price: Free Community Edition; Paid subscription for additional features

Website: https://semgrep.dev/ 

Key features of Semgrep in the DevSecOps space

  • Static Code Analysis (SAST): Detects security vulnerabilities, code smells, and misconfigurations across multiple programming languages.
  • Customizable rules: Custom security rules can be written in an easy-to-read syntax for organization-specific policies.
  • CI/CD integration: Seamlessly integrates with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, and Jenkins to automate security checks in pipelines.
  • Secrets detection: Identifies hardcoded credentials, API keys, and tokens in repositories before they are exposed.
  • Shift-left security: Provides instant feedback to developers in IDEs and PRs, helping fix issues early in the development process.

14. Falco

Falco is a cloud-native security tool originally created by Sysdig and now a graduated project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It delivers real-time protection for your environments. It monitors Linux kernel activity to spot abnormal behavior, enabling you to respond to new threats as they appear.

You can use it with on-premises hosts, cloud environments, containers, and Kubernetes clusters. It’s most commonly found in security and operations teams managing sensitive environments at scale, but any team could benefit from Falco’s dynamic protection.

Price: Free (Open source)

Website: https://falco.org 

Key features of Falco in the DevSecOps space

  • Runtime threat detection: Monitors Kubernetes, containers, and cloud workloads for suspicious activities and policy violations.
  • Customizable security rules: Allows defining custom detection rules to identify security threats specific to an organization’s environment.
  • Real-time event monitoring: Continuously analyzes system calls to detect unauthorized access, privilege escalations, or file modifications.
  • Container and Kubernetes security: Detects malicious behavior in pods, nodes, and containers, ensuring compliance with security policies.
  • Integration with SIEM and incident response: Works with Splunk, Elasticsearch, and Prometheus for alerting, logging, and automated security responses.

15. Cosign

Cosign is a modern tool for signing container images and software binaries. It boosts DevSecOps supply chain security by letting software users verify that artifacts were created by their real maintainers.

Cosign gives developers and security teams visibility into asset tampering. You can take immediate action to mitigate these critical threats, such as by cancelling the deployment of a container image when its author’s signature doesn’t match. Not only does this support continual compliance, but it’s increasingly a requirement when operating in regulated environments.

Price: Free (Open source)

Website: https://github.com/sigstore/cosign 

Key features of Cosign in the DevSecOps space

  • Container image signing: Enables cryptographic signing of container images, ensuring authenticity and integrity before deployment.
  • Keyless signing with sigstore: Supports keyless signing using OpenID Connect (OIDC), eliminating the need for manual key management.
  • Supply chain security: Verifies image provenance and ensures that only trusted artifacts are deployed in Kubernetes and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Integration with CI/CD pipelines: Works with GitHub Actions, GitLab, and Kubernetes Admission Controllers for automated security enforcement.
  • Artifact and SBOM signing: Signs Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs), binaries, and other artifacts, strengthening software supply chain security.

16. Calico

Calico is a cloud-native container networking layer with a strong emphasis on security. It’s one of the most popular networking stacks used with Kubernetes.

Calico allows you to securely connect services while enforcing granular traffic policies and access controls. It extends the native network policy features available in Kubernetes to add more precision and flexibility. Operations teams benefit from reliable high performance networking between containerized microservices, whereas security teams can use Calico’s powerful controls to prevent unauthorized communications.

Price: Free (Open source)

Website: https://github.com/projectcalico/calico 

Key features of Calico in the DevSecOps space

  • Zero-trust network security: Implements microsegmentation and least-privilege access by controlling pod-to-pod and service-to-service communication.
  • Network policies and enforcement: Uses Kubernetes Network Policies and Global Network Policies to enforce security rules across clusters.
  • WireGuard encryption: Provides end-to-end encryption for network traffic, ensuring secure communication between workloads.
  • Runtime threat detection: Monitors network traffic and detects anomalies, threats, and unauthorized access in real time.
  • Compliance and auditing: Logs network flows, security events, and policy violations, helping with regulatory compliance and forensic investigations.

17. SonarQube

SonarQube is a popular code quality analysis tool. Besides detecting bugs and coding standards issues, it includes over 6,000 security rules for the most popular programming languages. You can extend the default ruleset to detect custom security violations too.

SonarQube’s IDE extensions let developers instantly check whether their code meets the defined security policies. SonarQube also integrates with leading Git and CI/CD platforms to display errors alongside your PRs and easily block deployment pipelines when problems are found. These capabilities ensure developers can find and fix vulnerabilities without leaving the DevOps inner loop. 

Price: Free Community Build; Paid plans priced per instance per year, based on lines of code (LOC).

Website: https://www.sonarsource.com/products/sonarqube 

Key features of SonarQube in the DevSecOps space

  • Static Application Security Testing (SAST): Detects vulnerabilities, security hotspots, and code quality issues in multiple programming languages.
  • Code quality and compliance: Enforces coding standards, best practices, and regulatory compliance (e.g., OWASP, CWE, GDPR).
  • Secrets detection: Identifies hardcoded credentials, API keys, and sensitive data to prevent security leaks.
  • CI/CD integration: Works with Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, and Azure DevOps to automate security scans.
  • Security dashboard and reports: Provides detailed security insights, vulnerability tracking, and risk analysis for better decision-making.

18. New Relic

New Relic is an automated observability solution that includes infrastructure and application performance monitoring capabilities. It provides code-level insights into what’s happening in your deployments so you can precisely trace problems—including security vulnerabilities.

New Relic enables you to consolidate DevSecOps processes in one place. It gives developers, operators, and security teams a single destination to stay informed of changing metrics and investigate errors. The platform also has an IDE extension, CodeStream, that lets developers step through logs and stack traces right alongside their work.

Price: Free (Open source)

Website: https://newrelic.com 

Key features of New Relic in the DevSecOps space

  • Application Performance Monitoring (APM): Detects performance bottlenecks, errors, and anomalies in real-time to enhance security and stability.
  • Security monitoring: Integrates vulnerability management and threat detection, helping identify security risks in applications and infrastructure.
  • Log management and analysis: Collects and analyzes security logs to detect suspicious activities, misconfigurations, and compliance issues.
  • Kubernetes and Cloud Security: Monitors Kubernetes clusters and cloud environments, ensuring security policies and best practices are followed.
  • CI/CD observability: Provides deep insights into deployments, tracking code changes, security issues, and performance impact across pipelines.

19. Checkov

Checkov is a policy-as-code engine for IaC resources. It provides a CLI that scans your Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, and Helm infrastructure configs, among others.

Unlike rival static analysis tools, Checkov actually understands the cloud resource types you use—such as Google Cloud compute instances, or AWS IAM roles. Its platform-specific knowledge means it can accurately flag misconfigurations and provide clear messages to help you fix the problem. This supports secure cloud operations at scale.

Price: Free (Open source)

Website: https://www.checkov.io 

Use case example: Checkov Features, Use Cases & Examples

Key features of Checkov in the DevSecOps space

  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) security: Scans Terraform, Kubernetes, CloudFormation, and Helm for misconfigurations and security risks.
  • Policy-as-Code Enforcement: Uses predefined and custom security policies to ensure compliance with standards like CIS, NIST, and SOC 2.
  • Secrets detection: Identifies hardcoded credentials, API keys, and sensitive data in IaC templates.
  • CI/CD integration: Integrates with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, and Azure DevOps for automated security scanning.
  • Compliance reporting and visualization: Provides detailed compliance reports and dashboards to track and remediate security issues.

20. Hashicorp Vault

Hashicorp Vault is one of the most popular secrets management solutions. It’s a repository for securely storing sensitive data such as API tokens, passwords, and certificates.

Configuring your apps to read these critical values from Vault helps prevent them from leaking. You can configure automatic rotation, expiration, and revocation options, limiting the threat if a key is accidentally exposed. 

Vault supports the needs of security teams tasked with protecting sensitive data while allowing developers, operators, and programmatic workloads to safely consume values via auditable API interactions.

Price: Free Community Edition (BSL); Paid plans for Enterprise features and support

Website: https://www.vaultproject.io 

Key features of Hashicorp Vault in the DevSecOps space

  • Secrets management: Securely stores and manages API keys, credentials, and certificates with fine-grained access control.
  • Dynamic secrets: Generates on-demand, time-bound credentials for databases, cloud providers, and other services, reducing exposure risk.
  • Identity and Access Management (IAM) integration: Supports OAuth, LDAP, Kubernetes, and cloud IAM for secure authentication and policy enforcement.
  • Encryption as a service: Provides data encryption APIs for securing sensitive information without modifying application code.
  • Audit logging and monitoring: Tracks all access and secret usage with detailed logs for compliance and threat detection.

21. ZAP

OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is an open-source web app scanning tool, now maintained by Checkmarx. It reports security vulnerabilities in your web applications, enabling you to solve them before they’re shipped to users.

ZAP inspects your app’s traffic flows by placing a proxy layer between your browser and app servers. It can actively probe for problems such as insecure server settings and session management vulnerabilities. ZAP can also conduct fuzz testing to find problems including XSS (cross-site scripting). The tool supports developers to write safer code, without needing specialist security knowledge.

Price: Free (Open source)

Website: https://www.zaproxy.org 

Key features of Hashicorp Vault in the DevSecOps space

  • Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST): Identifies runtime vulnerabilities in web applications by simulating real-world attacks.
  • Automated scanning: Performs active and passive scans to detect SQL injection, XSS, and security misconfigurations.
  • CI/CD integration: Integrates with Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI/CD to automate security testing in pipelines.
  • API security testing: Supports REST, SOAP, and GraphQL API scanning to detect vulnerabilities in web services.
  • Plug-in extensibility: Offers a flexible add-on system for custom security testing and integration with other security tools.

Key points

DevSecOps tools fulfill the requirements of developers, infrastructure operators, and security teams in one cohesive solution. They use automation to break down silos and simplify feedback loops across the software development lifecycle, improving delivery outcomes. Introducing DevSecOps tools into your workflows makes it easier to properly secure your software without affecting development throughput.

It’s best to choose platforms that support all three roles simultaneously, as seen in Spacelift’s ability to implement robust DevSecOps processes for IaC and infrastructure management. Spacelift enables developers to self-serve new infrastructure using templates provided by operations teams. At the same time, the platform continually enforces security and governance policies that prevent misconfigurations and unauthorized access.

See Spacelift in action by booking a free demo. You can also check out our guides to the top IaC scanning tools or most popular DevOps monitoring platforms if you’re looking for more DevSecOps inspiration.

The best DevOps tool

Spacelift is a DevOps tool focused on flexibility and user experience. It works with multiple infrastructure tools (Terraform, OpenTofu, CloudFormation, Pulumi, Ansible, etc.) and supports self-hosted on-prem workers, workflow customization, drift detection, policies, and more.

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