Holding on to Compliance While Adopting DevSecOps: An SLR

Abstract

The software industry has witnessed a growing interest in DevSecOps due to the premises of integrating security in the software development lifecycle. However, security compliance cannot be disregarded, given the importance of adherence to regulations, laws, industry standards, and frameworks. This study aims to provide an overview of compliance aspects in the context of DevSecOps and explore how compliance is ensured. Furthermore, this study reveals the trends of compliance according to the extant literature and identifies potential directions for further research in this context. Therefore, we carried out a systematic literature review on the integration of compliance aspects in DevSecOps, which rigorously followed the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and Charters. We found 934 articles related to the topic by searching five bibliographic databases (163) and Google Scholar (771). Through a rigorous selection process, we selected 15 papers as primary studies. Then, we identified the compliance aspects of DevSecOps and grouped them into three main categories: compliance initiation, compliance management, and compliance technicalities. We observed a low number of studies; therefore, we encourage further efforts into the exploration of compliance aspects, their automated integration, and the development of metrics to evaluate such a process in the context of DevSecOps.