Traditionally, testing has been relegated to the later stages of software development life cycles. However, the modern software development landscape demands more efficient and effective approaches. Shift Left involves moving the testing stage earlier in the development process, enabling early detection of issues and leading to higher-quality software.

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The goal of Shift Left as an approach to software development is to move towards a more efficient software development process. Essentially, Shift Left advocates for moving testing activities earlier in the development life cycle which aims to identify and address any issues earlier in the process.

By identifying and addressing issues early on, Shift Left can reduce the cost of fixing bugs and issues that would otherwise be detected only later on in the development life cycle. While Shift Left is a valuable approach, it’s important to understand that it’s not the only solution. Shift-right practices, such as continuous monitoring, feedback loops, and incident response planning, also play a crucial role in ensuring software quality and security.

In this blog, we’ll delve deeper into Shift left testing, exploring its benefits, best practices, and how it can be effectively implemented in your development process.

Shift Left: A Strategic Approach to Security

While testing, both from a QA perspective and security perspective, is traditionally viewed as a “late-stage” step in the development life cycle, the Shift left approach prioritises integrating security testing and analysis earlier in the development life cycle, rather than as a stand-alone, final step.

While Shift left approaches focus on integrating security testing early in the development life cycle, how is this carried out in practice?

Key characteristics of Shift left include Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), security as code, threat modelling, and automated security testing.

These approaches, when implemented effectively, can lead to more secure software by identifying and addressing errors earlier. We’ll outline these characteristics through this blog.

Shift Left: Integrating Security from the Start

Shift left flips the traditional Shift Right model on its head by integrating testing and security practices throughout the development process.

This means:

1. Secure coding practices: Training developers to write code with security in mind from the outset.
2. Continuous testing: Integrating testing at every stage, from unit tests to integration tests.
3. Early threat modelling: Identifying potential bugs during the design phase

Applicability and implementability

The Shift Left approach calls for early quality assurance by integrating testing and quality checks throughout the development life cycle which offers several benefits. These include early defect detection, improved product quality, reduced time to market, and increased customer satisfaction. While Shift left is generally applicable to most projects, its implementation can vary depending on several factors.

Project constraints such as tight deadlines or limited resources can make it challenging to fully embrace Shift Left. In these cases, organisations might need to prioritise certain testing activities over others. Team culture also plays a crucial role; teams that are resistant to change or unfamiliar with testing practices may require additional training or support to successfully implement Shift Left.

The nature of the project itself can also influence Shift Left implementation. Projects with highly dynamic requirements might benefit from more flexible and adaptive testing approaches, such as exploratory testing or ad-hoc testing, additionally, more structured methods like unit and integration testing also stand to benefit from Shift left testing.

By understanding these factors, organisations can tailor their Shift Left practices to their specific needs and maximise the benefits of this approach in combination with other processes.

Shift Left in a Live Environment

In live environments, where defects can have a more immediate and severe impact on users and operations, the importance of shift left becomes even more pronounced.

By incorporating testing early in the development process, organisations can identify and address issues before they reach production, reducing the risk of downtime, security vulnerabilities, and performance problems. This proactive approach helps to ensure a more stable, reliable, and efficient live environment, ultimately enhancing the overall user experience.

Shift left in a live environment can be a critical strategy for ensuring software quality and minimising risks. By proactively identifying and addressing defects early in the development cycle, organisations can significantly reduce the likelihood of issues impacting production systems.

Now that we’ve established the importance of shift left in live environments, let’s explore some of the specific strategies and techniques that organisations can implement to achieve this goal.

Shift Left in Action: Approaches to Implementation

There are a number of ways to implement shift left testing, each with its own nuances. However, we will only cover them at a high level in this article.

• Traditional Shift Left: While it is a step in the right direction, it often involves a linear approach where security testing is conducted as a separate phase, with limited integration into other development activities and a potential focus on specific security activities rather than a comprehensive approach.
• Incremental Shift Left: Focuses on gradually introducing testing practices into each stage of development.
• Agile/DevOps Shift Left: Seamlessly integrates security testing into the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline.
• Model-Based Shift Left: Utilises models and simulations to identify potential security risks early on.

As you can tell from each of these variations in the implementation of a Shift Left approach, there are various methods of implementation depending on the type of environment under consideration.

Benefits of the Shift Left Approach

Some of the benefits of Shift Left include: improved code quality, development efficiency, platform security, and ultimately, customer trust. By integrating testing earlier in the software development life cycle, organisations can identify and address vulnerabilities sooner, reducing the risk of software issues and failure, as well as security incidents. The approach can also help streamline development processes, prevent the need for rework, and improve product reliability.

In addition to these improvements, the shift left approach can help to improve security standards of software. By integrating testing earlier in the development life cycle, and prioritising security in this testing process, organisations can ensure that their software is kept secure with each iteration. Additionally, Shift Left may contribute to cost savings efforts by preventing costly fixes that may be required if issues are only detected later in the development cycle. By addressing issues early on, organisations can create more effective and streamlined workflows, ultimately leading to a stronger security, reliability, and greater customer satisfaction.

Here are some examples of the benefits of this approach.

1. Reduced Costs: As discussed, identifying and rectifying vulnerabilities early in the development process can be significantly more cost-effective than addressing them later.

This is because fixing issues in a nearly completed product often requires extensive rework, potentially involving changes to foundational code, design, and infrastructure, which will have extensive lead times to address.

2. Improved Quality: Building testing into a product from the ground up leads to a more robust and resilient system. When testing is a core consideration throughout the development process, developers are more likely to implement best practices, avoid common vulnerabilities, and create a product that is more performant and efficient.

By including security as a front and centre consideration when implementing earlier testing, this not only enhances how secure the software may be, but improves the overall quality of the software, its reliability, and ultimately user experience.

3. Faster Time to Market: Early detection of issues prevents delays caused by late-stage fixes or rework. When testing is integrated earlier and even throughout the development process, bugs can be identified and addressed promptly, reducing the likelihood of time-consuming rework.

This allows organisations to bring their products to market more quickly, gaining a competitive advantage and responding effectively to changing market demands.

4. Increased Customer Trust: Demonstrating a commitment to reliability and consistency strengthens your reputation and builds confidence among your users. As organisations, it is crucial to show customers that you are taking proactive steps to protect their information and ensure a safe and reliable user experience.

With the amount of software people utilise in their day to day lives, the expectations of software are greater than ever. As a result of this reliability, and maintaining customer trust is of great importance.

5. Faster UAT Testing and Early Identification of Issues: When security is integrated into the development process, it becomes easier to identify and address potential issues during unit and integration testing. This allows for faster and more efficient UAT testing, as fewer critical security flaws are likely to be discovered during this stage.

Through earlier identification and dealing with any critical issues or flaws, remedies may be implemented earlier on in a project’s life cycle helping to solve issues while there is time to do so.

6. Increased Review Steps and Decreased Instances of Human Error: Incorporating review checks into the development process often involves additional review steps, such as security code reviews, functional testing, usability testing, and vulnerability assessments. These extra layers of scrutiny help to identify and prevent human errors that could lead to security vulnerabilities.

By following established security best practices and guidelines such as these organisations can minimise the risk of introducing flaws into their software upon releases and updates.

Challenges of Shift Left Approach

While shift left offers a number of advantages, it’s important to be aware of potential challenges. As implied throughout this article, there is no one solution for all software development environments and finding a way to streamline an organisation’s processes is nuanced.

• Increased Complexity: Integrating testing, tooling, and processes throughout the development process can add complexity, especially for teams unfamiliar with the approach.However, by investing in proper training and adopting clear guidelines, teams can effectively manage this complexity and reap the benefits of earlier detection and remediation.
• Collaboration and Communication: Effective collaboration and communication between development, testing, and security teams are crucial for successful Shift left implementation. This can be challenging, especially in larger organisations with siloed teams.By fostering a culture of collaboration and providing opportunities for cross-functional teams to work together, organisations can overcome these barriers and improve overall efficiency.
• Skill Requirements: Shift left requires not only developers with secure coding skills and security professionals who can collaborate effectively with development teams, but also organisations to learn how to implement testing processes early on and across the different stages of development.By investing in training and development programs, organisations can equip their teams with the necessary skills to successfully implement shift left.
• Culture Shift: Embracing the shift left may require a cultural shift within the organisation, emphasising collaboration and shared responsibility in both detection and solving of issues.However, by fostering a culture of continuous improvement and empowering teams to take ownership of their work, organisations can create a positive environment that supports Shift left principles.
• Infrastructure and Tooling: For an effective Shift left approach, the appropriate tools and infrastructure is required alongside the points mentioned above.By carefully selecting and implementing appropriate tools, organisations can streamline their development processes and enhance efficiency. For instance, employing a cloud-based testing platform can eliminate the need for managing physical test environments, while a well-chosen test automation framework can reduce the time and effort required to create and maintain test scripts.
• Risk of Over-Testing: It’s crucial to strike the right balance and avoid unnecessary testing that can hinder development. Excessive testing can lead to wasted resources and delays in delivering value to customers.By establishing clear testing guidelines and leveraging risk-based testing approaches, organisations can ensure that their testing efforts are focused on the most critical areas. This may involve prioritising tests, test coverage analysis, and test automation optimisation.
• Over-Reliance on Automation: While automation is essential, it should not replace human expertise and code reviews. Automated tests can be effective at detecting certain types of defects, but they may not be able to identify all issues, especially those that are subtle or unexpected.

By combining automated testing with manual reviews, organisations can achieve a more comprehensive and effective testing approach. Human testers can bring their domain knowledge and experience to the table, helping to identify issues that automated tests may miss. Additionally, code reviews can assist in catching defects early in the development process and ensuring that code is written to high-quality standards.

Finding the Right Balance: Shift Left and Shift Right

Shift left doesn’t completely eliminate the need for shift right testing, as a final assessment and evaluation of the code after it has reached production remains an important step of the software development life cycle. Even with rigorous testing throughout development, it’s still important to test the software and conduct security assessments in production environments to ensure that the software remains secure in real-world conditions and should any new vulnerabilities be identified, that they are addressed quickly.

Shift left is not just a testing methodology; it’s a mindset shift.

Shift Left is about building a culture of testing into an organisation and recognising that testing and security are everyone’s responsibility. By embracing the Shift Left, you can create software that is not only functional and innovative but also secure and resilient.

Onwards,

Panashe Goteka

Team Mobile Guardian