Learning DevSecOps

Chapter 2. Foundational Knowledge in 25 Pages or Less

During the latter part of my career, I have taught on the beautiful campus of University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. The computing program at UWSP enables students to pursue degrees in multiple subjects and emphases. The classroom experience demonstrated the need for students to gain exposure to topics outside of their major or emphasis. For example, students within a development-focused major found value from experience with command-line tools and traditionally operations-focused areas like DNS. Likewise, students within networking and server tracks were helped by learning programmatic techniques for scripting.

If there is a common technological skill that all DevSecOps practitioners need to be familiar with, it’s working in a shell or terminal, also known as a command-line environment. Whether creating scripts and configuration files, running commands, or troubleshooting errors in logfiles, the command line is central to becoming adept at DevSecOps and even in your specific role as a developer, security admin, or operator. Command-line skills are a differentiator toward going to the next level with DevSecOps.

This chapter provides a high-level overview of many of the subjects that many organizations encounter while working toward and with DevSecOps practices and processes. If I polled 100 people with some computing experience, there would be at least 101 different responses for subject matter coverage. With that in mind, ...