DevSecOps Maturity Framework

Most organizations know they need to integrate security into their software delivery process, but traditional DevOps maturity models stop at delivery speed and automation. Fewer organizations know how to measure where they stand on security — or what to improve next. The result is a patchwork of tools and practices with no clear picture of overall DevOps and DevSecOps maturity — and no roadmap for getting better.

The NextLink DevSecOps Maturity Framework provides that roadmap. Built from hundreds of real-world assessments across engineering organizations of every size, this framework evaluates 43 distinct practices across 6 pillars — Culture & Collaboration, Automation, Infrastructure, Observability, Security, and Compliance & Governance. Each practice is measured against 5 maturity levels, giving engineering leaders a concrete, actionable view of their DevSecOps posture and a clear path forward.

This page is the central reference for the framework. It covers every practice area in depth, with links to detailed guides as they become available.

Key Takeaways

• A DevSecOps maturity model extends traditional DevOps maturity assessments by measuring how deeply security is embedded across your entire software delivery lifecycle — not just your toolchain.
• The NextLink framework evaluates 43 practices across 6 pillars, providing broader coverage than models focused solely on CI/CD or application security.
• Five maturity levels — Practiced, Defined, Managed, Measured, and Optimized — give teams a structured progression path from initial adoption to continuous improvement.
• Culture and collaboration practices are foundational — organizations that skip them rarely sustain gains in automation or security.
• Maturity is not a score to maximize. The goal is to reach the right level for your organization's risk profile, compliance requirements, and business objectives.
• Assessment should be ongoing. A single point-in-time evaluation becomes stale as teams, tools, and threats evolve.
• The framework uses 584 assessment questions across all 43 practices to build a detailed, evidence-based picture of organizational maturity.

What Is a DevOps and DevSecOps Maturity Model?

A DevOps maturity model is a structured framework that evaluates how effectively an organization delivers software through automation, collaboration, and continuous improvement. A DevSecOps maturity model builds on this foundation by adding security as a core dimension — evaluating how deeply security practices are integrated into every stage of development and deployment. Unlike a simple checklist, a maturity model measures depth and consistency — whether practices are ad hoc experiments or fully embedded, measured, and continuously improved.

Maturity models like the OWASP DSOMM and Carnegie Mellon's DevSecOps Capability Maturity Model provide valuable frameworks for specific dimensions of DevSecOps. The NextLink DevSecOps Maturity Framework builds on these foundations by evaluating 43 practices across 6 interconnected pillars, reflecting the reality that DevSecOps maturity requires progress across culture, process, and technology simultaneously.

Where many DevOps maturity models focus narrowly on CI/CD pipelines or application security testing, this framework recognizes that sustainable DevSecOps maturity depends equally on cultural practices (how teams share knowledge and collaborate), infrastructure practices (how environments are provisioned and managed), and observability (whether teams can actually see what their systems are doing). An organization with world-class pipeline automation but no documentation, no incident response process, and no compliance strategy is not mature — it is fragile.

The 5 DevOps Maturity Levels

Every practice in the framework is evaluated against five maturity levels. These levels apply to both DevOps and DevSecOps practices — they are cumulative, and each builds on the capabilities established in the level below it. Understanding where your organization falls on this spectrum is the first step toward a meaningful DevOps maturity assessment.

Level 1: Practiced

Some team members are experimenting with these practices, but they are not yet integrated into the organization. The focus is on building awareness and gaining initial experience. At this level, practices are often driven by individual initiative rather than organizational mandate.

What this looks like in practice: A developer on your team has set up a basic CI pipeline for their project, but other teams are still deploying manually. Security scans happen when someone remembers to run them. There is no standard process — what gets done depends on who is doing it.

Level 2: Defined

A basic implementation is in place. Processes have been defined and are being used, but there is limited management or oversight. Documentation and training may be minimal. The focus is on establishing a foundation that the organization can build on.

What this looks like in practice: Your team has written down how CI/CD should work, and most projects follow the pattern. There is a wiki page describing the branching strategy. Security tools are installed but not consistently configured across projects. New team members can find documentation, but it may be outdated or incomplete.

Level 3: Managed

Practices are implemented at a program level. Tooling, personnel, and policies have been established to manage them consistently. The focus shifts to standardizing processes, improving collaboration between teams, and ensuring practices are followed across the organization — not just by individual teams.

What this looks like in practice: Every project uses the same CI/CD pipeline structure. SAST and DAST scans run automatically on every pull request. Infrastructure is provisioned through IaC templates. There is a dedicated platform team supporting these practices. Access control policies are enforced through automation, not trust. New team members go through a structured onboarding that covers the DevSecOps workflow.

Level 4: Measured

Metrics are gathered and processes are in place to ensure practices meet specified standards and defined thresholds. The focus is on continuous monitoring and data-driven improvement. Organizations at this level can quantify the effectiveness of their DevSecOps practices.

What this looks like in practice: You track deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and mean time to recovery (the DORA metrics). Security vulnerability counts are measured per sprint. You know how long your CI pipeline takes and have set performance thresholds. Dashboards show the health of your practices, and teams review them regularly. Decisions about where to invest are driven by data, not intuition.

Level 5: Optimized

Practices are at a high level of maturity. Results are analyzed and changes are made based on data to optimize the program. The focus is on continuous improvement and driving innovation. Organizations at this level are not just following best practices — they are defining them.

What this looks like in practice: Your team experiments with new approaches (chaos engineering, AI-assisted code review, automated compliance evidence generation) and measures the impact. Pipeline improvements are driven by bottleneck analysis. Security practices evolve based on threat intelligence trends. The organization contributes back to the DevSecOps community through open-source tools, conference talks, or published frameworks.

The 6 Pillars of DevSecOps Maturity

The framework organizes 43 practices into six pillars. Each pillar represents a critical dimension of DevSecOps maturity, and sustainable improvement requires progress across all six — not just the ones that are easiest to automate. The pillars are intentionally ordered: Culture provides the foundation, Automation accelerates delivery, Infrastructure provides the platform, Observability provides visibility, Security provides protection, and Compliance provides assurance.

Culture and Collaboration

Culture shapes how teams approach security, share knowledge, and collaborate across disciplines. It is the foundation that every other pillar depends on. Organizations that invest in cultural practices — cross-functional teams, documentation, knowledge sharing — build the organizational muscle needed to sustain DevSecOps practices at scale. Without cultural alignment, even the best tools and automation will fail to deliver results.

Team Makeup

In traditional environments, teams are siloed by function — development, QA, security, and operations work independently and hand off between stages. DevSecOps restructures teams to include representation from across the development lifecycle, bringing development, automation, quality assurance, security, infrastructure, and operations together into a unified team. The right team makeup gives you the best opportunity to fulfill your DevSecOps objectives. Cross-functional teams reduce handoff delays, improve communication, and ensure that security considerations surface early — not at the end of a sprint when fixes are expensive.

Documentation

Effective documentation in a DevSecOps environment goes beyond code comments. It encompasses standards and best practices, toolchain guides, automation runbooks, workflows, style conventions, and decision records — any written communication that supports collaboration and consistency across teams. Robust documentation speeds up project onboarding and knowledge transfer, reducing the time it takes for new team members to become productive. It also provides an auditable trail of decisions and configurations that supports compliance requirements.

Knowledge Transfer

Knowledge transfer ensures that critical information — from tool configurations to organizational conventions — flows continuously between team members. It provides redundancy so that team availability fluctuations do not disrupt delivery, and it empowers supporting departments to contribute to DevSecOps objectives. An efficient knowledge transfer strategy starts with defining what knowledge needs to be shared, identifying the best formats (pairing sessions, recorded demos, written guides), and creating regular cadences for sharing. Organizations that neglect knowledge transfer create single points of failure where critical expertise lives in one person's head.

Code Reviews

Code reviews serve as both a quality gate and a knowledge-sharing mechanism. Beyond catching bugs before they reach QA, the review process gives team members visibility into codebase changes and creates natural opportunities for training and mentorship between reviewers and authors. Effective code reviews go beyond confirming the absence of bugs — they evaluate code clarity, adherence to standards, security implications, and architectural consistency. When done well, they are one of the highest-leverage practices for improving code quality and team capability simultaneously.

Training

A structured training program ensures teams are proficient in the tools, processes, and security practices the organization relies on. Effective training reduces development cycles while improving product quality and security posture. Training should cover not just technical skills (how to use your CI/CD platform, how to read SAST results) but also organizational processes (how to respond to incidents, how to request access changes). The best DevSecOps training programs are continuous, not one-time events — they evolve as tools and practices change.

Separation of Duties

Separation of duties prevents any single user from introducing change without oversight. In DevSecOps, this principle is applied through automation, configuration, and peer-reviewed workflows — ensuring that the person writing the code is not the same person approving and promoting it. This reduces the risks associated with insider threats and enforces peer review as an additional quality control. For many regulated industries, separation of duties is not optional — it is a compliance requirement that must be demonstrably enforced.

Change Management

DevSecOps change management makes traditional processes — change tickets, approvals, scheduling — more efficient and nimble while maintaining security and compliance. The goal is speed without sacrificing the controls that protect production environments. Mature change management practices leverage automation to generate change records, capture approval evidence, and enforce deployment windows — turning what was once a manual, meeting-heavy process into an auditable, pipeline-integrated workflow.

Automation

Automation is the engine of DevSecOps. It enables efficient vulnerability detection, accelerates remediation, and ensures that security practices are applied consistently — not just when someone remembers to run them. Mature automation means security testing, deployment, and compliance verification happen automatically on every commit. Without automation, DevSecOps practices do not scale.

CI/CD

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment form the backbone of automated software delivery. A mature CI/CD pipeline handles versioning, testing, artifact creation, publishing, and deployment automatically on every code commit — enabling organizations to ship more frequently while reducing the cost and risk of each release. To get the most out of CI/CD, use similar stages and structures for each project so developers can follow the workflow regardless of which project they are on. CI/CD also dramatically improves QA and helps organizations meet compliance frameworks by providing a complete, auditable record of every build and deployment.

Automated Testing

Test automation validates software against expected specifications using unit tests, component tests, integration tests, end-to-end tests, and security tests. Mature organizations run automated tests early and often, catching defects before they reach production and freeing engineers to focus on building rather than manually verifying. In an environment optimized for automated testing, infrastructure is built to support testing as early as possible in the development lifecycle. Automating security tests alongside functional tests ensures vulnerabilities are caught at the same stage as bugs — not weeks later in a separate security review.

Release Planning

Release planning coordinates the integration, testing, and deployment of software updates across cross-functional teams. In a mature DevSecOps organization, release planning incorporates security at every stage, defines clear objectives and milestones, and ensures that risk assessment is part of every release decision. A well-structured release plan promotes efficient communication, faster delivery of secure software, and shared ownership of project outcomes. It emphasizes a proactive approach to security rather than a last-minute gate.

Approval Actions

Approval actions ensure that changes are reviewed, tested, and authorized before reaching production. For many organizations, automated approval gates are also a compliance requirement — providing auditable evidence that proper controls were followed for every deployment. Including approval actions prominently in the CI/CD pipeline gives teams increased confidence in the quality of code being deployed. Mature implementations automate as much of the approval workflow as possible while preserving human review where judgment is required.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure provides the foundation for development, testing, and deployment. Mature infrastructure practices treat infrastructure as code, enforce access controls programmatically, and ensure that environments are reproducible, scalable, and recoverable. This pillar covers 11 practices — the most of any pillar — reflecting the breadth of modern infrastructure concerns in cloud-native and hybrid environments.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

IaC replaces manual infrastructure provisioning with code-defined, version-controlled configurations. This enables automated, consistent deployments while providing a complete audit trail of every infrastructure change — reducing drift, errors, and the risk of configuration-related outages. Using version control systems like Git is essential for managing and tracking changes to infrastructure code, ensuring that changes can be easily audited and that teams can collaborate effectively. By following IaC standards, organizations manage their infrastructure more effectively, reduce the risk of errors and outages, and deploy systems more efficiently.

Infrastructure Access Control Standards

Modern infrastructure management — immutable infrastructure, cattle-not-pets, role-based access control — demands updated access control standards. Mature organizations enforce these standards programmatically, ensuring that access is granted based on roles and revoked automatically when no longer needed. With the adoption of cloud-native infrastructure patterns, organizations need program-level standards for who can access what, under what conditions, and with what level of oversight. Infrastructure access control is a critical component of DevOps security — having best practices in place ensures the integrity of the infrastructure that everything else depends on.

Incident Response

Incident response in DevSecOps combines automated detection with coordinated human response. Mature capabilities gather and analyze data for security implications and performance degradation in real time, enabling teams to identify, contain, and resolve incidents before they impact end users. Incident response is often integrated with Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) tools or SIEM platforms. Developing robust yet nimble incident response practices helps organizations quickly identify whether an issue is a performance problem, a security event, or a configuration error — and respond appropriately to each.

Git Branching Strategy

A well-defined branching strategy governs how code moves from individual contributors to deployed branches. It isolates incomplete work, creates clear quality checkpoints, and supports multiple versions of a codebase simultaneously — all critical capabilities for teams shipping frequently. Common strategies like GitFlow, GitHub Flow, and trunk-based development each have trade-offs. The strategy has the best chance of succeeding when the team has input and is in agreement on the approach, rather than having it imposed top-down.

Versioning and Naming

Consistent versioning and naming conventions for branches, pull requests, tags, and releases bring clarity to complex environments. Engineers can quickly identify what code version is deployed where, and artifacts are traceable from commit to production. When implemented consistently, team members should be able to quickly understand the general function of a branch, the purpose of a pull request, or the contents of a release — without having to read the code. Versioning standards also apply to artifacts generated for release purposes, ensuring traceability across the entire delivery pipeline.

Quality Assurance (QA)

QA in DevSecOps goes beyond manual testing. It encompasses automated testing, linting, security scanning, performance testing, and integration testing — any exercise that builds confidence that software functions as expected. Solid quality assurance helps software become more reliable, secure, and performant. Lowering communication barriers between the DevSecOps team and QA supports productive collaboration. Just as DevSecOps strives to eliminate silos, effective QA eliminates the "throw it over the wall" mentality between development and testing.

Feature Flags

Feature flags decouple deployment from release, allowing teams to ship code behind toggles and activate features independently. This simplifies branching strategies, enables targeted rollouts to specific user segments, and provides a safety valve for quickly disabling problematic features. Implementing feature flags requires centralizing flag management and having a single source of truth for all flags. You can use feature flags to turn a feature on or off for individual users, a segment of users, or all users — allowing you to provide a customized experience and test changes safely before full rollout.

GitOps

GitOps uses Git as the single source of truth for declarative infrastructure and application configuration. Changes to the Git repository automatically trigger deployments, providing a transparent history of all system changes and enabling easy rollback when issues arise. By storing all configuration files, application code, and infrastructure definitions in Git, GitOps ensures all systems are aligned and consistent. It enables collaboration among multiple teams while maintaining a clear audit trail — every change is a commit, every deployment is traceable.

Infrastructure Scalability

Scalable infrastructure adapts efficiently to varying workloads through horizontal scaling, vertical scaling, elasticity, and load balancing. Mature organizations optimize resource allocation dynamically, minimizing costs while maintaining performance under changing demand. Effective scalable infrastructure employs modular design principles and automation, simplifying maintenance and management. This approach helps minimize operational costs and prevents overprovisioning or underutilizing resources — a discipline sometimes called "right-sizing."

Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery ensures critical systems and data can be restored after a disruption. In DevSecOps, this means recovery plans are tested regularly, automated where possible, and integrated into the overall resilience strategy — not treated as an afterthought. The first step is performing a risk assessment to identify potential threats, then developing a disaster recovery plan that outlines procedures for backup, restoration, and communication. Organizations that only document their DR plan without testing it regularly discover the gaps at the worst possible time.

Configuration Management

Configuration management tracks and controls changes to software and infrastructure configurations. Mature practices ensure all configurations are consistent, secure, auditable, and compliant — preventing the configuration drift that causes outages and security vulnerabilities. Effective configuration management requires a comprehensive understanding of the various software and infrastructure components involved in the delivery process. It plays a critical role in ensuring that all components are secure and compliant with relevant regulations and policies.

Observability

Observability is the practice of collecting and analyzing data from complex systems to ensure their security and reliability. Without observability, teams are flying blind — unable to detect threats, diagnose performance issues, or make data-driven decisions about where to invest next. This pillar covers the six monitoring and logging capabilities that give teams visibility into what their systems are actually doing. Observability helps teams make data-driven decisions and continuously improve their systems to meet the needs of their users.

Security Event Monitoring

Security event monitoring (SEM) continuously analyzes security-related events across an organization's infrastructure — log data from network devices, servers, applications, and security tools. The goal is to detect and respond to potential security threats in a timely manner, minimize their impact, and prevent future incidents. Mature SEM integrates into the delivery pipeline with real-time automation, detecting unauthorized access attempts, intrusions, and data breaches before they escalate. When a security event is detected, automated response processes can isolate affected systems, mitigate the incident, and notify the appropriate teams.

Application Error Monitoring

Application error monitoring tracks failures and exceptions across all deployment environments — development, QA, staging, and production. It provides the visibility needed to identify root causes quickly and resolve bugs before they impact users at scale. To be most effective, monitoring should track all deployment environments so that when errors are identified, it is clear which environment the error occurred in and what conditions triggered it. Error monitoring can be done through log analysis, synthetic transactions, and real-user monitoring — each providing a different lens on application health.

Application Performance Monitoring

APM tracks the health and performance of deployed applications, providing traceability into bottlenecks across application, database, caching, and third-party service layers. While infrastructure monitoring tells you that a database is running out of CPU, APM identifies which specific requests and queries are consuming the resources. In sophisticated implementations, APM identifies performance issues across complex microservice architectures where many services interact. A good rollout strategy starts with minimal coverage on critical services and expands incrementally.

Infrastructure Monitoring

Infrastructure monitoring continuously tracks the health of backend components — cluster nodes, containers, hosts, operating systems, and databases. It enables right-sizing decisions that balance cost and performance, and prevents prolonged outages by identifying root causes quickly. Infrastructure monitoring tools typically rely on agents installed on application hosts that gather data while the monitoring platform performs analysis and sends alerts. This data can also be used to make better decisions about resource allocation in current and future projects.

Cloud Event Monitoring

Cloud event monitoring analyzes activities within cloud environments — user logins, policy changes, data movement, API requests, and configuration changes. It provides a clear timeline of changes that can be used to resolve issues and detect potential security events in cloud infrastructure. Cloud event data should be sent to a centralized log management system — for example, to your SIEM for consumption and correlation by the security operations center. Monitoring for unexpected changes helps identify whether a performance issue or outage was caused by a configuration change, a policy update, or a security event.

Log Management

Log management centralizes the collection, aggregation, analysis, and storage of log data from across systems, applications, and infrastructure. DevSecOps tools, applications, and environments generate a significant amount of logs. Logs provide valuable insight, but those insights can quickly become lost if logs are not properly managed. Centralized log management enables role-based access controls for log access, eliminates the need for direct server access, and provides a secure storage location with a clear audit trail. Enhanced log management strategies also help organizations meet compliance controls around long-term data storage while using cost-efficient storage methods.

Security

Security is the pillar that gives DevSecOps its name — the integration of security practices into every stage of development and deployment. This pillar covers 13 practices spanning application security testing, access control, secrets management, container security, and risk management. Mature organizations do not bolt security on at the end; they embed it from the first line of code. Security involves identifying potential vulnerabilities, implementing controls, and continuously monitoring and testing systems to ensure their security and compliance.

Microservices

Microservices architecture breaks applications into small, independent, loosely coupled components that can be developed, deployed, and secured independently. This limits the attack surface of any single component and increases overall system resilience — the failure of one service does not cascade to the entire application. Microservices enable teams to work on different components simultaneously, accelerating development. Each microservice can be scaled independently based on demand for its specific functionality. Best practices focus on creating well-structured, resilient architectures where each service has clearly defined boundaries and communicates through well-documented APIs.

Secure Coding Practices

Secure coding practices protect against vulnerabilities like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and buffer overflows from the development phase forward. By integrating security standards into the coding process itself, organizations catch and fix vulnerabilities before they reach testing or production. This involves using secure coding standards, following best practices for input validation, output encoding, error handling, and access control. Implementing secure coding practices throughout the lifecycle — from design to deployment — helps identify and remediate vulnerabilities early, when they are cheapest to fix.

Access Control

Access control defines who can access data, systems, and resources, at what level, and through what mechanisms. Mature access control implements least-privilege principles, role-based access, and automated provisioning and deprovisioning through Identity and Access Management (IAM) programs. The goal is to empower engineers and those supporting the DevSecOps program while protecting program security. Building an effective IAM program starts with implementing least privilege, regularly reviewing access grants, and automating access lifecycle management so that permissions are revoked when they are no longer needed.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

SAST scans source code before compilation to identify security vulnerabilities. Because it does not require a running application, SAST can run early in development and as an automated job in CI/CD pipelines — catching issues at the lowest cost to fix. SAST analyzes configurations, semantics, dataflow, control flow, and code structures. It is language-dependent, meaning SAST tools are specific to particular programming languages. SAST handles security scanning at the source code level and can be done early and often, meaning vulnerabilities are found efficiently before they make it into production.

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

DAST tests running applications for exploitable vulnerabilities through both passive and active attacks, authenticated and unauthenticated. It identifies security vulnerabilities, configuration errors, and issues that only manifest at runtime. Using DAST earlier in the development lifecycle gives a good indication of how well the application performs and where weaknesses may be present. SAST and DAST are most effective when used in tandem — SAST catches code-level issues before deployment, DAST catches runtime issues after deployment.

Cloud Security

Cloud security covers the technologies, configurations, controls, and policies that protect organizational assets in the cloud. A common misconception is that cloud security is solely the responsibility of the cloud provider. In reality, the shared responsibility model means the provider secures the physical infrastructure, while the customer is responsible for identity and access management, unauthorized access monitoring, data encryption, and regulatory compliance. Creating an inventory of assets stored in the cloud helps organizations understand what resources and tooling are required. IaC tooling can be leveraged to enforce security configurations consistently across cloud environments.

Pipeline Security

Development pipelines access sensitive information — credentials, configurations, proprietary code — that must be protected. If compromised, this information could be used to exploit the system. Pipeline security addresses build server design, secret management tooling, log strategies, and access controls to prevent the pipeline itself from becoming an attack vector. The development pipeline is the workhorse of a DevSecOps program — it has to access a variety of sensitive data that should be protected with the same rigor applied to production systems.

Secrets Management

Secrets management securely stores, distributes, and revokes sensitive credentials — passwords, API keys, certificates, and tokens. These secrets need to be protected from unauthorized access, as they could be used by attackers to gain access to systems and compromise data. Mature practices use centralized secrets management systems with encryption, access controls, and automated lifecycle workflows from creation to deletion. This includes implementing automated rotation policies and ensuring that secrets are never hardcoded in source code or stored in plain text.

Containerization

Containers package applications into lightweight, portable units that run consistently across environments. From a security perspective, containers enable immutable infrastructure where security measures — firewalls, access controls, vulnerability scanning — are embedded in the image itself and updated automatically. When building a container strategy, start with a minimal base image and only add necessary dependencies to keep the container small and efficient. This reduces the attack surface and makes it easier to scan for vulnerabilities. Containers can be configured to automatically update, ensuring applications always run on the latest secure versions of underlying software.

Risk Management

Risk management identifies potential security risks at every development stage and implements controls to mitigate them. It encompasses four key activities: risk assessment (identifying potential risks and their likelihood), risk mitigation (implementing controls to reduce likelihood or impact), risk monitoring (continuous monitoring to identify new risks), and risk response (plans to minimize impact when risks materialize). The goal is to ensure that security is proactive rather than reactive. Start with a risk assessment to identify and prioritize potential vulnerabilities, then implement controls proportional to the risk level.

Dependency Scanning

Dependency scanning reviews a project's third-party packages for known vulnerabilities and outdated versions. Vulnerable or malicious packages can jeopardize application security, customer environments, and compliance posture — making continuous scanning throughout the development workflow essential. Dependency scanning is most effective when it runs continuously, not just at release time. Ensure packages are kept up to date and that your team has a clear process for responding to newly disclosed vulnerabilities in dependencies you use.

Fuzz Testing

Fuzz testing feeds invalid, unexpected, or random input to applications to find coding errors and security vulnerabilities that other testing techniques miss. In DevSecOps, fuzz testing plays a critical role because it can identify vulnerabilities that might be missed by SAST, DAST, or manual testing alone. Since it involves generating random or unexpected input, it surfaces edge cases and boundary conditions that deterministic tests do not cover. When implementing fuzz testing, define clear goals including the target systems and the types of vulnerabilities you are trying to detect.

Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST)

IAST uses instrumentation to observe and analyze application behavior while it runs, detecting vulnerabilities that static and dynamic analysis alone may miss. By analyzing application behavior in real time, IAST identifies security issues in context — understanding not just that a vulnerability exists, but how it can be triggered and what data it exposes. In mature organizations, IAST is integrated into the CI/CD pipeline to identify issues automatically during development and testing, allowing developers to address vulnerabilities as they write code rather than weeks later.

Compliance and Governance

Compliance and governance ensure that software development and deployment meet legal, regulatory, and business requirements. This pillar is often treated as an afterthought — something handled by a separate team after the fact. In mature organizations, compliance is integrated into the development pipeline, with automated testing and evidence generation that makes audits straightforward rather than disruptive. It involves establishing standards, guidelines, and frameworks to ensure that software is developed and deployed in a secure, reliable, and compliant manner.

Compliance

Compliance in DevSecOps means integrating regulatory and legal requirements — HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2, FedRAMP, CMMC — directly into the development pipeline. Requirements vary depending on the industry and region in which software is developed and deployed. Automated compliance testing catches issues early, and the pipeline itself generates the evidence needed to demonstrate adherence to required standards. Non-compliance can cause legal and financial liabilities, reputational damage, and loss of customer trust — making it essential to bake compliance into the process rather than bolting it on at the end.

Audits

Audits provide independent review of security controls and processes across the software development lifecycle. They help identify potential security risks, vulnerabilities, and compliance issues, allowing teams to address them proactively. Audits also ensure that security practices are aligned with industry standards and regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR. In DevSecOps, audits are integrated into the overall security process using automated tools that provide real-time insights — making audits a continuous practice rather than a periodic disruption that pulls engineers away from delivery.

Assessing Your DevOps and DevSecOps Maturity

A DevOps maturity assessment evaluates your organization's current state across all six pillars and identifies the gaps with the highest impact. The NextLink framework uses 584 assessment questions spanning all 43 practices to build a detailed, evidence-based picture of where you stand — not where you hope you are.

An effective assessment follows four steps:

1. Evaluate current state. For each practice, determine your current maturity level based on observable evidence — not aspirations. Are practices documented? Followed consistently? Measured? Optimized based on data? Be honest: an assessment only has value if it reflects reality.
2. Identify target state. Not every practice needs to reach Level 5. Your target maturity should reflect your organization's risk profile, compliance requirements, and business objectives. A startup building an internal tool has different needs than a healthcare company processing patient data. A defense contractor has different compliance obligations than an e-commerce platform.
3. Prioritize improvements. Focus on the practices where the gap between current and target state creates the most risk or missed opportunity. Culture and automation improvements often unlock progress across other pillars — for example, investing in documentation and CI/CD pipelines makes it significantly easier to implement and enforce security testing, infrastructure standards, and compliance controls downstream.
4. Reassess regularly. A maturity assessment is not a one-time exercise. Teams change, tools evolve, threats shift, and compliance requirements update. Organizations that treat assessment as an ongoing practice — quarterly or semi-annually — maintain momentum and catch regressions early. Those that assess once and file the report tend to drift back toward their starting point.

Common Assessment Patterns

After conducting hundreds of assessments, several patterns emerge consistently:

• Automation outpaces culture. Organizations often invest heavily in CI/CD and security tooling without building the cultural practices (documentation, training, knowledge transfer) needed to sustain them. The tools get implemented but not adopted consistently.
• Observability is the most neglected pillar. Teams invest in building and deploying software but underinvest in the ability to see what it is doing in production. When incidents occur, the lack of monitoring and log management extends resolution times dramatically.
• Compliance is reactive. Most organizations treat compliance as something to address before an audit rather than embedding it into the development process. This leads to scrambles, manual evidence gathering, and gaps that create risk.
• Infrastructure maturity varies widely within the same organization. One team may be fully IaC-driven with GitOps, while another is still provisioning servers manually. Program-level standardization (Level 3) is where most organizations see the biggest gains.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the pillars of DevSecOps?

The six pillars of DevSecOps maturity are Culture & Collaboration, Automation, Infrastructure, Observability, Security, and Compliance & Governance. Each pillar represents a critical dimension that must mature together for an organization to achieve sustainable DevSecOps practices. While many frameworks focus on three or four dimensions, the six-pillar model reflects the reality that areas like observability, infrastructure management, and cultural practices are just as critical as security tooling and CI/CD automation.

How long does it take to improve DevSecOps maturity?

Moving from Level 1 to Level 3 typically takes 6-18 months depending on organizational size, existing practices, and investment level. The transition from Level 3 to Level 4 (introducing metrics and measurement) often takes longer because it requires cultural shifts in how teams use data to make decisions. Most organizations see the biggest return on investment in the move from Level 1-2 to Level 3, where practices become standardized across the organization rather than dependent on individual teams.

What is the difference between DevOps and DevSecOps maturity?

A DevOps maturity model typically evaluates delivery speed, automation, and collaboration. A DevSecOps maturity model extends this to include security practices at every stage — application security testing, secrets management, access control, compliance automation, and security monitoring. DevSecOps maturity means security is not a gate at the end but a practice embedded throughout. The NextLink framework bridges both by evaluating infrastructure and automation practices alongside security and compliance.

Do we need to reach Level 5 in every practice?

No. Level 5 (Optimized) represents continuous, data-driven improvement and innovation — a level of investment that is not justified for every practice in every organization. Your target maturity should be based on your risk profile, regulatory requirements, and business context. For most organizations, Level 3 (Managed) across all practices is a strong foundation, with Level 4-5 targeted at the practices most critical to your business.

Can this framework be used as a DevOps maturity assessment?

Yes. The framework covers all the dimensions of a traditional DevOps maturity model — CI/CD, automation, infrastructure, collaboration, and observability — and extends them with security and compliance practices. Organizations that are primarily focused on DevOps maturity can use the framework to assess their delivery practices, then expand their assessment to include security dimensions as their program matures.

Next Steps

Understanding where your organization stands on the DevOps and DevSecOps maturity spectrum is the first step toward building a more secure, efficient software delivery practice. Whether you are just beginning to integrate security into your pipelines or looking to optimize an established program, the framework provides a structured path forward.

NextLink Labs helps engineering organizations assess their DevSecOps maturity and build a prioritized roadmap for improvement. Our assessments use this framework to evaluate all 43 practices across all six pillars, identify the highest-impact gaps, and deliver a concrete implementation plan tailored to your organization's risk profile and objectives — not a generic report.

Talk to our team about a DevSecOps maturity assessment to find out where you stand and what to improve next.