Shift Left Security recognizes that security should not be the last approach when an application moves through the different stages of design, development, deployment, and testing. Security is seen as a final element that wraps applications at the end of the application lifecycle before it’s released to end users. Shift Left Security shifts the angle and changes this by prioritizing security measures first throughout the application development lifecycle. It enables tighter integration of security protocols during development and pushes security features and releases to be implemented early on. Privacy considerations regarding the storage of personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive data are also addressed.
By tackling challenges at the forefront and remediating core vulnerabilities, developers provide a better user experience and worry less about emerging threats. In this blog, we will cover the shift left in security and walk readers through the basics below.
What is Shift Left Security?
Organizations lose money yearly by not addressing security vulnerabilities during the application development lifecycle. It introduces new security risks and gives developers a list of issues to remediate, which can quickly escalate. Developers need ongoing support with designing security measures and need to work closely with security teams.
Shift left security moves security to the left and shifts it to the earliest phases of development. Hackers can exploit uniqueness as a path to exploit vulnerabilities in systems and re-identify sensitive data using other contextual information. Any outliers can be leaked via a prediction API and shift left security models can generate synthetic data to represent real scenarios for different use cases.
Why Shift Left Security?
Shift-left security assesses potential application issues during the initial phases of development and makes it more affordable to address them. By detecting and fixing problems in software design from the very start, organizations can streamline deliveries and enhance customer satisfaction rates. DevOps is gaining momentum, and organizations are progressively implementing distributed microservices worldwide.
Shift-left security is a part of the DevSecOps culture and allows developers to do their jobs securely without relying on extra tools or adding more work. It integrates the best practices into the developer’s toolchains and implements continuous integration pipelines to run automated vulnerability tests.
Difference between Shift Left and Shift Right Security
Shift left testing involves testing applications during the early stages of the development pipeline and moves security to the left. It detects bugs and vulnerabilities and isolates threats before they get magnified while designing the application and later become an issue.
Developers run tests before pushing individual units to version control and prioritize application performance, end-to-end automation, and TDD and BDD-driven tests.
Shift right security is the other end, pushing security to the far right. It involves testing applications after they have been released to end users. Teams can monitor APIs and gain insights into usability and resource usage based on the software’s operation. It also allows developers to optimize or add new features by continuously refining improvements and pushing security boundaries. Shift right security also monitors how much actual traffic and user requests applications can handle, which is an aspect that cannot be tested in pre-production environments.
Types of Shift Left Security
Standard tools used to equip Shift-left Security are – compliance scans, dependency scans, container scans, dynamic application security testing (DAST), and static application security testing (SAST).
The four main types of shift left security are:
- Traditional Shift Left Testing
- Incremental Shift Left Testing
- Agile/DevOps Shift Left Security
- Model-based Shift Left Security
1. Traditional Shift Left Testing
Traditional shift left testing emphasizes testing from the bottom up and focuses on running integration and unit tests.
2. Incremental Shift Left Testing
Incremental shift-left security follows the waterfall development cycle, dividing complex projects into smaller increments. It also shifts operational tests and development testing to the left for enterprises.
3. Agile/DevOps Shift Left Security
Agile/DevOps shift-left security takes a test-driven development approach and is a widespread and ongoing testing strategy. It blocks out essential requirements and does not include operational testing for its phases.
4. Model-based Shift Left Security
Unlike the other three types of shift left testing, model-based shift left security focuses on uncovering code defects. It eliminates delays in architecture performance, prevents executable components downtimes, and more.
Steps for Implementing Shift Left Security
Here is how organizations can implement shift left security into their business workflows:
- 1. Define the Strategy
- 2. Create Shift Left Software Development Documentation
- 3. Train Development Teams
1. Define the Strategy
Organizations create a one-page document that defines shift left security initiatives. It details its objectives, people, tools, and processes. The documentation must include who gets total ownership and how roles are assigned to security teams. It will also track key performance indicators and critical shift-left security metrics.
2. Create Shift Left Software Development Documentation
Good shift-left security accounts for current software development processes. Identifying the organization’s operations, management methodologies, CI/C D tools, and how to code artifacts transition from initial development to production is essential. The documentation will list current security measures and explain their effectiveness in order of ranking.
3. Train Development Teams
Train development teams to handle code securely and implement the best cyber hygiene practices on the cloud. Developers can gain high awareness of security measures by undergoing relevant training and improving their understanding of emerging cyber threats across cloud environments. It reduces operational expenses, mitigates risks, and minimizes the likelihood of future data breaches since they’re better equipped to handle them.
What are the Benefits of Shift Left Security?
Here are the benefits of shift left security:
- Shift left security discovers vulnerabilities in the early stages of the application development lifecycle. It identifies potential security risks and corrects those issues.
- Shift left security strengthens overall cloud security posture for organizations and reduces running costs. It ensures optimal delivery timelines and streamlines security integrations, thus achieving success rates.
- With optimized security processes comes increased reliability and performance. Shift-left security approaches can improve business revenue and enhance collaboration with third parties and external agents on various projects.
What are the Best Practices for Shift Left Security?
The following is a list of the best practices for shift left security in organizations:
- Define Security Policies
Defining security policies can improve shift-left security by automatically enforcing boundaries and securing critical information. It makes DevSecOps processes more efficient, agile, scalable, and fast.
- Incorporate Visibility in the Culture
A primary objective of shift left security is to ensure that code stays secure during and after release. Security teams require continuous visibility into application security to do this, and they can instantly remediate issues as needed by releasing the latest updates.
- Add Automation
Automation can speed up shift-left security workflows, identify vulnerabilities, and apply potential fixes. It can also address external threats to cloud applications and systems and reduce the time to market for software development and deployment.
- Implement Security Fixes During Code Creation
Developers can be aware of the best coding practices by implementing shift-left security fixes during code creation. It spots errors early and gives feedback as soon as possible for the best performance and results.
- Assess How Software Is Made
Understanding how software is made can help address gaps in shift-left security measures. It involves reexamining the SDLC and determining which tools are relevant to codebases.
Conclusion
The type of Shift Left Security solution a business owner chooses for their organization will depend on their budget and requirements. Good shift left security tackles the most critical vulnerabilities and ensures continuous compliance at scale for enterprises. Companies can also detect false positives in real time, reduce alert fatigue, and speed up the time of releases by incorporating these cutting-edge solutions.
Shift Left Security is not seen as a last resort but rather is a proactive approach to enhancing application security. Organizations are seeking ways to significantly reduce concerns associated with cloud-native app development and incorporating Shift Left Security is a great way to reduce time between releases. Continuous testing also means that DevOps teams save a great deal of time, money, and seamlessly add the latest features to app that greatly improve user experiences.
Shift Left Security FAQs
Shift Left Security moves security checks to the earliest stages of software development. Instead of waiting until testing or deployment, developers define security requirements during planning, use secure coding practices, and run automated scans in CI/CD pipelines.
This way, vulnerabilities are caught in code reviews or build stages, cutting down costly fixes later and making security everyone’s responsibility from day one.
Waiting until release to find flaws leads to expensive rework, delayed launches, and greater breach risk. By shifting security left, you catch coding errors and misconfigurations during development when they’re cheapest to fix.
Early testing also keeps teams aligned on security goals, reduces last-minute surprises, and builds safer applications from the ground up, so you’re not scrambling to patch live systems.
Start by adding security requirements in design documents and training developers on coding best practices. Integrate SAST, DAST, and secrets scanning into your CI/CD pipeline so every commit runs checks. Use IAST tools in test environments for deeper insight.
Encourage devs to review security findings alongside functional bugs, and hold regular threat-modeling sessions during feature planning.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools scan source code for SQL injection, XSS, and hard-coded secrets. Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) simulates attacks against running builds. Interactive AppSec Testing (IAST) blends both by monitoring code at runtime.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) spots vulnerable open-source libraries. Secrets detection tools flag exposed credentials before they reach repositories
Shift Left Security can find insecure coding patterns like injection flaws, cross-site scripting, broken authentication, and exposed secrets. It also flags outdated or vulnerable libraries in open-source dependencies.
Automated scans spot misconfigured infrastructure-as-code, missing encryption, and hard-coded credentials before they slip into production, reducing the attack surface from day one .
It lowers supply chain risk by scanning dependencies through Software Composition Analysis to flag malicious or outdated packages. Integrating security earlier means you audit third-party libraries before they’re built in.
While it can’t stop every tampered component, catching risky code in CI/CD and enforcing strict version controls makes hidden backdoors far harder to slip through
You spend less time and money fixing bugs since issues are found early. Releases ship faster with fewer late-stage errors, and teams learn security skills over time. Applications start with stronger security posture, reducing live patching and incident response burdens. Overall, shifting left brings smoother workflows and fewer emergency fixes down the road.
Measure the percentage of vulnerabilities caught pre-merge versus post-release, aiming to boost early detection. Track mean time to remediate (MTTR) for code-stage findings. Watch false positive rates to tune scanners and keep devs engaged. Also monitor the number of vulnerable open-source components blocked at build time versus those found later.
A Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) bundles code security, infrastructure posture checks, and vulnerability scanning under one roof. It embeds SAST, SCA, and IaC security into toolchains, offering a unified view of pre-production risks.
CNAPPs streamline policy enforcement and vulnerability management, so you shift left without juggling separate point tools or dashboards .