Here are slides for my presentation, “DevOps Is Automation, DevSecOps Is People”. It’s about exercising communication skills, establishing empathy, and considering threat models that consider people.

Communication skills are a part of inserting security into the DevOps process. Empathy is about understanding not only the engineering constraints that DevOps teams face, but also the population of users who will be using an application. We have references for technical flaws and weaknesses like the OWASP Top 10 and the related ASVS. We don’t have as many easy references for the people aspect of security.

Apps are built through collaboration and they’re built for people to use. Security should work as an enabler for DevOps teams to create more secure apps. Part of that security comes from acknowledging that the people who use apps aren’t a monolithic population with static threat models. Threat models should still reference the OWASP Top 10 and STRIDE. Those provide good ways to reason through technical issues in order to build technical controls. But those threat models also need to consider social dimensions of security, such as privacy, abuse, and whether the user experience influences good security behaviors or addresses threats facing those who use the app.

Part of the presentation shows how role-playing games are frameworks for groups to build shared stories, which is relevant to building secure apps. That sense of collaboration, which still involves conflict, is a great way to exercise the skills necessary to work with DevOps teams and has metaphors for understanding how different users face different threats. In an RPG, everyone gets to roll dice. In appsec, everyone should have security that addresses their needs. Collaborative approaches avoid the unproductive attempts to blame devs or users and instead focus on meaningful solutions.