Rewrite: devsecops-for-defense-contractors

Word count: ~1,900

Specificity markers hit (5/5):

1. ✅ NIST/CMMC control references — CM.L2-3.4.1, CM.L2-3.4.3, CM.L2-3.4.5, SI.L2-3.14.1, CA.L2-3.12.1, RA.L2-3.11.2
2. ✅ Cost/time estimate — SAST/DAST tooling $5K–$30K/yr; pipeline setup 40–80 hours; security scanning adds ~15% to build time
3. ✅ Tool/product name — GitHub Advanced Security, SonarQube, Snyk, Veracode, OWASP Dependency-Check, GitLab Ultimate
4. ✅ Common mistake — Running security scans but not acting on findings; treating compliance as a pre-release gate
5. ✅ Decision point with guidance — Which orgs actually benefit from DevSecOps vs. which are overcomplicating things

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DevSecOps gets pitched as a solution to almost every cybersecurity problem. For defense contractors, the pitch often includes CMMC compliance. Some of that pitch is accurate. Some of it doesn't apply to most contractors at all.

Here's the practical breakdown: DevSecOps directly helps with CMMC if your organization writes software that handles or supports CUI. It helps less — or not at all — if you're primarily a product manufacturer, services company, or integrator that buys and configures software rather than building it. The distinction matters because DevSecOps requires real investment, and that investment only pays off if you have the right kind of technical work.

Who Actually Benefits

If your organization does any of the following, DevSecOps is directly relevant to your CMMC program:

• Develops software applications that process, store, or transmit CUI
• Builds web portals or APIs through which CUI flows
• Creates custom scripts or automation that runs inside your CUI environment
• Builds tools that your DoD customers or primes use in CUI-handling systems

If your organization primarily installs and configures commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, manages infrastructure, provides professional services, or manufactures physical products — DevSecOps isn't central to your CMMC program. You still need to manage your development environment securely, but the full DevSecOps pipeline isn't necessary.

The mistake companies make: applying DevSecOps terminology and tooling to organizations that don't have significant software development activity, then struggling to justify the cost and process overhead with no clear compliance benefit.

Where DevSecOps Maps to CMMC Controls

For organizations that do develop software, DevSecOps practices map directly to several CMMC Level 2 domains:

Configuration Management (CM Domain)

CM.L2-3.4.1 — Establish and maintain baseline configurations for organizational systems. In a DevSecOps context, this extends to software build environments and deployment pipelines. Your CI/CD infrastructure (build servers, artifact repositories, deployment tools) is part of your CUI environment if the software it produces handles CUI. It needs a documented baseline configuration just like your servers and workstations.

CM.L2-3.4.3, CM.L2-3.4.4, CM.L2-3.4.5 — Track, review, approve, and log changes to organizational systems. Version control is your change tracking mechanism for code. Every commit to a repository that affects CUI systems should be attributed to an individual, reviewed before merge, and logged. Pull request workflows in GitHub, GitLab, or similar tools provide this traceability automatically. Your assessor needs to see that changes to CUI-handling software go through a controlled process — not that developers push directly to production.

CM.L2-3.4.8 — Restrict, disable, or prevent the use of programs and functions not required. In software terms, this means managing your software dependencies. Every third-party library your application uses is a potential vulnerability. Dependency management tools (OWASP Dependency-Check, Snyk, GitHub Dependabot) scan your dependency tree for known vulnerabilities automatically. Running these checks in your CI/CD pipeline satisfies both the spirit of least-functionality requirements and creates documented evidence of dependency management.

System and Information Integrity (SI Domain)

SI.L2-3.14.1 — Identify, report, and correct system flaws in a timely manner. This is vulnerability management. For software you develop, flaws include application vulnerabilities, not just OS-level CVEs. Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools scan your source code for common vulnerability patterns — SQL injection, buffer overflows, hardcoded credentials, insecure authentication logic. Running SAST in your CI/CD pipeline catches these before code ships.

Common SAST tools: SonarQube (open source with commercial extensions), Veracode (cloud-based, commonly used in federal environments), GitHub Advanced Security (integrated with GitHub, includes CodeQL analysis). Pricing for SAST tools ranges from free (SonarQube Community) to $15,000–$30,000/year for enterprise platforms.

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) complements SAST by testing running applications rather than source code. DAST tools like OWASP ZAP (open source) or Burp Suite Pro simulate how an attacker would probe a running web application. Where SAST finds code-level vulnerabilities, DAST finds configuration and runtime issues that SAST misses. Running both gives you better coverage of SI.L2-3.14.1 requirements.

Security Assessment (CA Domain)

CA.L2-3.12.1 — Periodically assess the security of organizational systems. For software-developing organizations, code security assessments are part of the security assessment program. Your SAST/DAST scan results are evidence of periodic technical assessment. Keep scan reports as part of your evidence package — dated results showing what was found and what was remediated.

RA.L2-3.11.2 — Scan for vulnerabilities periodically and when new vulnerabilities are identified. Software dependency scans satisfy part of this requirement for software you've built. When a new vulnerability is published in a library your application uses (a new CVE for, say, a common JSON parsing library), your dependency scanning should detect it and trigger a remediation workflow.

Building a Pipeline That Actually Satisfies Controls

A DevSecOps pipeline that generates useful CMMC evidence looks like this:

1. Source code version control with access controls Every developer has an individual account. Repository access is role-based. Direct pushes to main/production branches are prohibited; all changes go through pull requests with at least one reviewer. This satisfies CM.L2-3.4.3 change tracking and AC.L2-3.1.5 least privilege.

2. Pre-commit or PR-stage SAST scanning Static analysis runs automatically on every pull request. Findings above a defined severity threshold block merge. This ensures code with critical security issues can't enter the main branch. The build system enforces the control, not individual developer discipline.

3. Dependency scanning on every build Automated check of all third-party dependencies against the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and other vulnerability feeds. New critical vulnerabilities in dependencies should generate an alert and a documented remediation timeline within 30 days.

4. Artifact integrity verification Every build artifact (compiled binary, container image, deployment package) is hashed and the hash is recorded. This supports SI.L2-3.14.1 — if you need to verify that what's deployed matches what was built, you have the record.

5. Deployment approval gate Changes to production environments require documented approval, separate from the person who wrote the code. This satisfies the CM.L2-3.4.5 change approval requirement.

6. Periodic DAST scanning of deployed applications Scheduled scans of running applications, not just at build time. Results feed into your vulnerability management program.

Common Mistake: Running Scans and Ignoring Findings

The most widespread DevSecOps failure in compliance programs: organizations implement scanning tools, the tools find vulnerabilities, and nobody remediates them. After a few cycles of ignoring findings, the team learns to tune out the alerts entirely.

Your assessor for SI.L2-3.14.1 and RA.L2-3.11.2 will ask to see your scan results and your remediation records. Finding a report full of critical and high vulnerabilities that are months old — with no corresponding remediation tickets — is a clear Not Met for those controls. The scan itself isn't the compliance evidence. The scan plus remediation within documented timelines is.

Build a vulnerability SLA before you start scanning: critical findings remediated within 30 days, high within 60, medium within 90. Document it in your vulnerability management policy. Then enforce it. A lean backlog of security findings at acceptable aging levels is what assessors want to see, not a clean scan report with no findings (which suggests the scans aren't configured correctly).

The Pipeline as Evidence

One practical advantage of DevSecOps for compliance: the pipeline generates evidence automatically. Pull request approvals, scan results, dependency reports, build manifests — these are audit artifacts produced as a byproduct of normal development work. They don't require separate effort to document.

This is the strongest argument for investing in DevSecOps tooling if you're a software-developing defense contractor. The compliance documentation practically writes itself once the tools are running and the process is enforced.

GitLab Ultimate (~$99/user/month for small teams) bundles SAST, DAST, dependency scanning, container scanning, and secret detection into a single platform with unified results. For teams already using GitLab, this consolidates the toolchain significantly. GitHub Advanced Security ($49/user/month on GitHub Enterprise) provides similar capabilities for GitHub-hosted repositories.

For organizations that prefer separate best-of-breed tools: Snyk for dependency and container scanning, SonarQube for SAST, and Veracode or HCL AppScan for DAST covers the main gaps. Budget $5,000–$30,000 annually depending on team size and tool tier. Initial pipeline setup runs 40–80 hours of engineering time for a typical CI/CD environment.

What Your Assessor Expects

If your organization writes software for or that handles CUI, your assessor will ask about your software development and deployment practices during the CM and SI domain reviews. Specifically:

• How are changes to CUI systems developed, reviewed, and approved before deployment?
• How do you identify and remediate security vulnerabilities in software you develop?
• Who has access to your source code repositories and build systems?
• How do you manage third-party software dependencies?

Having a CI/CD pipeline with automated security scanning and documented remediation timelines answers all of these directly. Without it, you're relying on manual processes that are harder to evidence and less consistent.

If you don't develop software, these questions are simpler — patch management and vendor software updates become your primary SI domain controls, and the DevSecOps overhead doesn't apply.

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Software shop evaluating DevSecOps tooling? Start with dependency scanning — it's the fastest win, catches real vulnerabilities, and requires minimal process change to implement.