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DevSecOps & AppSec

DevSecOps Consulting and Secure Software Delivery

We help engineering organisations move security left without slowing releases down: automated checks in CI/CD, hardened pipelines, Infrastructure-as-Code policy, supply-chain integrity, and a security workflow developers do not route around.

The problem we solve

Most teams already own security tools. The problem is rarely coverage — it is that findings arrive too late, in the wrong place, at a volume nobody can triage, so the backlog grows and the gate gets bypassed under release pressure.

At the same time the pipeline itself has become a high-value target. CI runners hold cloud credentials and signing keys, build steps pull thousands of transitive dependencies, and a single over-permissioned workflow can reach production faster than any application vulnerability.

The result is a security programme that generates work rather than reducing risk, and an engineering team that experiences security as friction rather than support.

DevSecOps only works when the security control and the engineering workflow are designed together. Our consultants have built and run both sides — delivery pipelines and the security programmes that depend on them — so the controls we put in place are ones an on-call engineer can live with at 2am.

Our approach

Adapted to your environment and constraints — but the shape of the work is consistent.

  1. Assess the delivery pipeline as an attack surface

    We review how code actually reaches production — repositories, branch protection, CI/CD platform configuration, runner isolation, secrets handling, artefact registries, deployment identities and production access. This is a threat model of the delivery system, not a tool audit.

  2. Design the control plan

    We decide which checks belong where: pre-commit, pull request, build, artefact promotion, deploy and runtime. Each control gets an owner, a failure mode (warn or block), a severity threshold and an exception path, so the pipeline stays predictable.

  3. Implement and tune

    We integrate SAST, SCA, secrets scanning, IaC scanning, container image scanning and dependency policy — then tune aggressively for signal. Baselining existing debt and blocking only on new, reachable, high-severity issues is what makes a gate survivable.

  4. Harden the supply chain

    Pinned and reviewed third-party actions, least-privilege OIDC workload identity instead of long-lived cloud keys, ephemeral runners, artefact signing and provenance (SLSA-aligned), SBOM generation, and a dependency policy that covers direct and transitive risk.

  5. Embed and enable

    We define the operating model — security champions, threat-modelling triggers, service ownership for findings, and metrics that show whether risk is actually going down. Developer enablement sessions make the new workflow stick after we leave.

Expected outcomes

What changes as a result of the engagement.

  • Security findings surfaced in the pull request, where they are cheapest to fix
  • A pipeline that blocks on what matters and warns on the rest
  • Long-lived cloud credentials removed from CI in favour of short-lived OIDC
  • Secrets detected before they reach a shared branch
  • Known-vulnerable and unmaintained dependencies visible and governed
  • Signed, provenance-tracked build artefacts with SBOMs
  • Measurable reduction in mean time to remediate
  • A security workflow engineering teams accept rather than bypass

Typical deliverables

Confirmed in the proposal before work starts, and adjusted to scope.

  • DevSecOps maturity assessment with a scored current-state baseline
  • Pipeline threat model and hardening plan
  • Target-state secure SDLC reference architecture
  • Working CI/CD security integrations in your platform
  • Tool selection and rationalisation recommendation
  • Infrastructure-as-Code security policy set (policy as code)
  • Supply-chain standard — signing, provenance, SBOM, dependency policy
  • Secrets management design and remediation plan
  • Vulnerability triage, SLA and exception process
  • Security champions programme and enablement material
  • Metrics and reporting dashboard specification

What this covers

The specific capabilities available under this service. Engagements usually draw on a subset — we scope to the problem, not the catalogue.

Secure SDLC

  • Secure SDLC design and rollout
  • Threat modelling triggers and cadence
  • Secure design review process
  • Security requirements and acceptance criteria
  • Security champions programme
  • Developer security training

Pipeline security

  • CI/CD platform hardening
  • Runner and build isolation
  • OIDC-based cloud authentication
  • Branch protection and code review policy
  • Environment and deployment gating
  • Break-glass and exception handling

Automated testing

  • SAST integration and tuning
  • Software composition analysis (SCA)
  • DAST in pre-production
  • Secrets scanning and rotation
  • Container image scanning
  • Infrastructure-as-Code scanning
  • Policy as code (OPA / Conftest / Sentinel)

Supply chain

  • SBOM generation and consumption
  • Artefact signing and verification
  • Build provenance (SLSA alignment)
  • Dependency and licence policy
  • Third-party action and plugin review
  • Registry and artefact access control

Who this is for

  • VPs and directors of engineering scaling delivery without scaling risk
  • Platform and DevOps teams asked to own security controls
  • Security leaders trying to reduce friction with engineering
  • SaaS and product companies preparing for SOC 2 or ISO 27001
  • Teams whose vulnerability backlog has stopped being actionable

Recognise your situation? A 30-minute discovery call is the fastest way to find out whether this is the right engagement.

Book a security consultation

Common questions

Will this slow our release cadence?

It should not. We baseline existing findings rather than failing every build on day one, block only on new high-severity and reachable issues, and put an explicit exception path in place. Where teams do slow down, it is almost always an untuned tool — a fixable configuration problem, not an inherent cost of DevSecOps.

Do we need to replace our existing tools?

Usually not. Most organisations get more from tuning and correctly placing the tools they already own than from buying another one. Where we do recommend a change, we say why and what it replaces.

Which platforms do you work with?

GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, Argo CD and GitOps workflows, Terraform, Kubernetes, AWS and Google Cloud are the environments we work in most often.

These engagements are often scoped together — the underlying risks overlap.

DevSecOps & AppSec

Application Security

Threat modelling, secure design review, application security testing and a vulnerability management process that closes findings instead of collecting them.

Cloud Security

Kubernetes & Containers

Cluster hardening, workload isolation, admission control, image supply-chain integrity and runtime detection for EKS, GKE, AKS and self-managed Kubernetes.

AI Security

AI Security & Governance

Adopt generative AI and machine learning without opening a new class of exposure — from model and data protection to prompt injection defence and an AI governance framework your auditors and customers can follow.

Discuss your security challenges

Tell us what you are trying to secure and where it hurts. We will tell you what we would do first, whether or not you engage us.

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