Shift Left Security

Shift Left means integrating security from the start of development rather than treating it as a final gate before release.

Traditional vs. Shift Left

Traditional	Shift Left
Security review before release	Security integrated from design
Separate security team gates	Developers own security
Expensive late-stage fixes	Cheap early-stage fixes
Delayed releases for security	Security enables velocity

Shift Left practices

• Threat modeling: Identify risks during design.
• Secure coding training: Educate developers on vulnerabilities.
• IDE security plugins: Real-time feedback while coding.
• Pre-commit hooks: Scan code before it's committed.
• SAST in CI: Static analysis on every pull request.
• Dependency scanning: Check libraries continuously.

Cost of fixing vulnerabilities

• Design phase: 1x (baseline cost)
• Development: 6x
• Testing: 15x
• Production: 100x

Implementation roadmap

1. Quick wins: Add SAST and SCA to CI/CD pipeline.
2. Developer enablement: IDE plugins, security training.
3. Design integration: Threat modeling for new features.
4. Culture shift: Security champions in each team.
5. Metrics: Track mean time to remediation (MTTR).

Common challenges

• Developer resistance (perceived slowdown).
• Too many false positives causing alert fatigue.
• Lack of security expertise on development teams.
• Legacy systems without modern CI/CD.

Success metrics

• Percentage of vulnerabilities found pre-production.
• Mean time to remediate (MTTR) for vulnerabilities.
• Developer security training completion rates.
• Reduction in production security incidents.