Pipeline

DevSecOps consulting

Most security tooling fails not because it misses findings, but because it produces so many that teams learn to route around it. We wire controls into the pipeline so the signal stays high enough that people keep listening.

What this covers

The work itself.

CI/CD pipeline hardening

Build and deploy paths treated as production infrastructure: scoped runner permissions, pinned and verified actions, protected branches, signed artifacts, and separation between what can build and what can deploy.

Secrets management

Getting credentials out of repositories, CI variables and container images, and into something with rotation and an audit trail. Includes finding what already leaked — history rewriting and rotation planning where it did.

Supply chain and dependencies

Automated dependency scanning (Dependabot, Trivy) wired into pull requests, automated container image patching (Copacetic), static analysis (SonarQube), and a policy for what actually blocks a merge versus what files a ticket. Unmaintained base images are the risk manual review never keeps up with — that one gets automated first.

Policy as code

Guardrails expressed as code and versioned alongside everything else, so the rules are reviewable and the same in every environment rather than living in a console someone configured two years ago.

How it runs

Engagement shape.

01

Assessment

We read the pipelines, the IaC and the branch protection rules, and map where a change actually goes from a laptop to production. Usually one to two weeks.

02

Design

A prioritised plan: what to fix now because it's exploitable, what to fix soon because it's fragile, and what to leave alone. Written down with the reasoning, not just a tool list.

03

Implementation

We build it with your team rather than beside them — the point is that they own it afterwards.

04

Handover

Runbooks, the policy repository, and a walkthrough with whoever inherits it. We stay reachable for questions after the engagement closes.

What you get

Deliverables.

Pipeline threat model and current-state assessment
Prioritised remediation plan with effort estimates
Working CI configuration, committed to your repositories
Policy-as-code ruleset with documented exceptions
Secrets inventory and rotation plan
Runbooks and a handover session

Context

Where this comes up.

The compliance driver differs by market, but the underlying work rarely does. Teams in the EU tend to arrive with NIS2 or DORA obligations and a need to show change control and supply-chain diligence. US teams more often arrive with a SOC 2 audit approaching and findings about deployment approvals and access review.

Either way the evidence auditors want — who can deploy, what was scanned, what was approved, what changed — falls out of a well-built pipeline as a by-product. Building for the audit alone tends to produce theatre; building the control properly produces the evidence anyway.

Common questions

Before you ask.

Do you replace our existing security tools?

Usually not. Most teams already own more scanning capability than they use — the problem is configuration, placement in the pipeline, and noise. We'd rather make what you have work than add a line item to your budget.

Will this slow our releases down?

It shouldn't, and if it does we've built it wrong. Controls that add minutes to every build get disabled within a quarter. The design target is that blocking checks are fast and rare, and everything else runs asynchronously.

Can you work with our CI platform?

GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Bitbucket Pipelines and Jenkins are all in regular use here. The principles port between them; the syntax is detail. If you're on something unusual, ask.

How long does a typical engagement run?

An assessment is one to two weeks. Implementation depends entirely on how much you want done and how many teams are involved — we scope that after the assessment rather than guessing up front.