Recently, the concept of “Shift Left Security” has gained widespread attention. It emphasizes integrating security measures early in the development lifecycle—embedding security into the development process from the start. While this approach helps catch vulnerabilities early, it’s not the end of the story. Enter Shift Down Security, a complementary approach that reinforces security during the deployment and runtime stages by incorporating it into developer platforms. This ensures that security is maintained across the entire application lifecycle, from initial coding to real-time execution in production environments without overloading developers.

What is Shift Down Security?

Shift-Down Security is an innovative solution that involves seamlessly embedding security measures into developer workflows and platforms. This approach empowers developers, facilitates proactive risk mitigation, and establishes a competitive advantage through swift and secure innovation. Shift-Down builds upon the principles of Shift-Left while addressing its limitations. It emphasizes leveraging the capabilities of cloud platforms, tools, and automation to integrate security controls and processes seamlessly throughout the development lifecycle.

Shift-Down leverages cloud-native tools, processes, and design philosophies to transform security into a core enabler of business agility and innovation. By embedding security measures into the cloud platform, Shift-Down enhances proactive risk mitigation.

How Shift Down Security Complements Shift Left Security

Shift Left Security is invaluable for preventing vulnerabilities from entering the codebase, but not all risks can be caught early. Complex applications running in cloud-native environments often face security challenges that emerge during deployment, such as misconfigurations, dependency risks, or runtime anomalies. Additionally, with the evergrowing popularity of Infrastructure-as-code, identifying misconfigurations early can result in cost savings.

Shift Down Security steps in to mitigate these risks by adding an extra layer of protection during and after the code is deployed. It complements Shift Left Security by:

• Ensuring runtime security: Even with rigorous Shift Left practices, unanticipated security issues can arise at deployment and runtime. Shift Down addresses these through continuous monitoring and runtime protection using policy-as-code.
• Closing the loop on infrastructure security: While Shift Left focuses on securing the application code, Shift Down provides coverage for cloud infrastructure, networking, and runtime environments, ensuring that any drift from the secure state is addressed.
• Mitigating late-emerging vulnerabilities: Vulnerabilities in third-party libraries or dependencies may surface after deployment. Shift Down practices ensure these are detected in real-time and responded to immediately.

The Role of Shift Down Security for Platform Engineering Teams

Platform engineering teams are responsible for building and maintaining internal developer platforms (IDPs), which abstract away infrastructure complexities and streamline development workflows. Shift Down Security is particularly beneficial for these teams as they focus on automating deployment and operations.

By incorporating Shift Down practices, platform engineers can:

• Automate security policy enforcement: Security policies can be applied dynamically during deployment, ensuring consistent protection across all environments.
• Enhance observability and response: Continuous monitoring and alerting give platform teams better visibility into security incidents and enable early and automated responses to threats.
• Optimize security without developer friction: Shift Down ensures that developers can focus on building features, while platform teams handle runtime and infrastructure security behind the scenes.

Shift Down Security vs. CNAPP: A Holistic Approach

Many organizations rely on Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPPs) for securing cloud-native workloads. While CNAPP solutions are comprehensive, they primarily focus on identifying risks during runtime. Shift Down Security goes further by focusing on **preventive security and operational resilience**.

Key advantages of Shift Down Security over CNAPP include:

• Preventing misconfigurations: Shift Down Security emphasizes active policy enforcement during deployment and runtime, ensuring misconfigurations are identified and corrected before they lead to security breaches. This dynamic approach helps prevent configuration drift and ensures consistent security standards across all environments.
• Continuous compliance enforcement: It ensures ongoing policy enforcement and adherence to security standards after the code has gone live.
• Operational resilience: With a Shift Down approach, platform teams can dynamically adapt to changing runtime conditions, ensuring their environments remain secure despite evolving threats.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Shift Down Security complements Shift Left by extending security into the deployment and runtime phases, providing continuous protection and incident response capabilities. For platform engineering teams building internal developer platforms, it offers a powerful way to enhance security without disrupting developer workflows. Combining Shift Down Security with tools like CNAPP creates a holistic, layered security strategy for cloud-native environments.

If you are interested in learning more about how Shift Down security, download the whitepaper: Shift Down Security: A New Paradigm for Platform Engineering Success