In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, securing and simplifying developer platforms is paramount for IT teams. As organizations accelerate their adoption of cloud-native architectures and modern DevOps practices, the need for robust security measures and streamlined operations has never been more critical.

In this article, we will explore the advanced capabilities of Wiz and Harness, how they work together to secure developer platforms, and the advantages of partnering with AHEAD to improve and safeguard the developer experience.

What is Shift-left Security?

Imagine you’ve just arrived at your dream vacation in the tropics and you’re ready to start your adventure. Shift-left is like putting on sunscreen before going outside to prevent getting burnt. Shifting left means taking steps to prevent the problem of sunburn, before it causes harm—rather than layering sunscreen on after you’ve already started to burn. It’s proactively moving tasks that are traditionally done later in the development process to earlier stages. This increases the likelihood that any software vulnerabilities that pose a risk to your organization’s security and compliance will be caught and rectified before they become larger, more expensive problems.

Wiz: The Basics

Wiz is a unified cloud security platform with prevention and response capabilities that enable security and development teams to build faster and more securely. In each of their 3 pillars — Wiz Code, Wiz Cloud, and Wiz Defend — a specific approach is taken to protect your cloud environment.

• Wiz Code: Unified security across code, CI/CD, and cloud environments
• Wiz Cloud: Agentless visibility and risk prioritization that proactively reduces the attack surface across your cloud environments
• Wiz Defend: Detection and response built for the cloud threat landscape; Real-time visibility enabling SecOps teams to reduce the time to detect, investigate, and contain cloud attacks

Harness: The Basics

Harness in an AI-native software delivery platform designed to help organizations improve their delivery and deployment in a simplified way. Harness brings a robust approach to DevOps modernization, the developer experience, secure software delivery, and cloud cost optimization, with the ability to support automatic rollbacks, built-in testing, real-time monitoring, and team scaling to any size. Whether your organization is looking to modernize processes, improve deployment speed, secure software delivery, or optimize cloud spend, Harness provides a powerful and scalable solution that will drive your business forward.

By leveraging Harness’ Internal Developer Portal (IDP) module to create reusable templates, AHEAD enables developers to deploy Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) applications within a few clicks and variable selections. This streamlined process dramatically reduces deployment complexity, allowing teams to focus on building and innovating rather than managing infrastructure. Once an application is created, the user gains immediate access to a comprehensive suite of features and benefits, including:

Through the integration of Wiz CLI into Harness Security Testing Orchestration (STO), Wiz IaC, Secret Detection, and Container scanners are included in the Harness Platform Step Library. Users simply have to add an execution step within the specified pipeline phase, provide Wiz authentication credentials, and execute the pipeline. Harness STO automatically de-duplicates and prioritizes vulnerabilities for security teams and developers. For each detected vulnerability, Harness STO provides prescriptive AI-generated remediation guidance so developers can rapidly remediate vulnerabilities without toil. Users can also enforce policy-as-code pipeline governance based on the OPA standard, track issues through JIRA, and manage security exemptions.

Notice the emboldened Wiz scans that are part of the shift-left security testing methodology. Wiz offers a variety of code scanning techniques and tools, including:

• Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
• Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) in Code
• Malware Scanning
• CI/CD Scanning
• Secret Scanning

Each of these scanning techniques can be used to enhance the security of your development pipeline in Harness prior to deployment. In an example below, an issue found by Wiz is shown in Harness, with AI-guided remediation available in a few easy steps:

After scanning their environment, organizations can assess and determine their level of comfort with existing security or compliance issues by leveraging issue exemption and fail-on-severity features. Issue exemption allows the organization to selectively set acceptance for certain features they deem okay. Fail-on-severity gives organizations the power to have their pipelines stop if an issue over a certain threshold of severity is found.

Final Thoughts

Together, Wiz and Harness solve a key challenge of shift-left security. Most organizations that implement application security testing earlier in their software development lifecycles do so without the tools and capabilities that would offer them faster security scans and vulnerability remediation workflows.

The integration of Wiz CLI with Harness Security Testing Orchestration is ideal for software-producing organizations seeking to deliver more secure applications at higher velocity. Wiz CLI scans are fast and deliver accurate and reliable vulnerability data. Harness STO seamlessly integrates Wiz CLI and connects developers with application security teams through intuitive workflows that facilitate rapid vulnerability remediation and effective security governance.

Securing and simplifying developer platforms without degrading velocity and developer experience is crucial for IT teams to stay competitive. By addressing security vulnerabilities, improving compliance, and enhancing operational efficiency, organizations can achieve faster time-to-market and build trust with their customers. Partnering with AHEAD consultants and engineers provides organizations with the expertise and support needed to implement robust security measures and streamline their development processes. Together with partners like Wiz and Harness, AHEAD delivers comprehensive solutions that enable organizations to achieve their security and operational goals efficiently.

Get in touch with AHEAD today to learn more.

Contributing Authors:

Madison Kemerling, Senior Associate Technical Consultant

Laura Callahan, Senior Associate Technical Consultant