Conduct periodic DevSecOps maturity assessment
Implementation Effort: Low – Assessing the program against a maturity framework at a set cadence is a focused, periodic review with limited coordination. User Impact: Low – Running the maturity assessment is a security and engineering-leadership activity; end users are not affected. Lifecycle Stage: Govern
Overview
Conduct a DevSecOps maturity assessment at a defined cadence to identify control drift, measure progress, and prioritize improvements.
DevSecOps maturity is not a destination; it is a continuum that shifts as the organization adopts new tools, onboards new teams, changes its technology stack, and faces evolving threats. A team that had strong scanning coverage six months ago may have since added repositories without CodeQL configuration, onboarded pipelines without secret scanning, or introduced new container workloads without image signing. Without periodic assessment, the organization's actual security posture drifts from its perceived posture.
Compare the current program against a defined maturity framework such as OWASP SAMM and the NIST Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF). Evaluate scanning coverage and effectiveness, pipeline security controls, supply chain protections, infrastructure-as-code governance, container and artifact security, identity and access management for DevOps platforms, and governance and reporting maturity. Use data from GitHub Advanced Security, Azure DevOps, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and internal metrics to identify regressions from previously achieved levels and produce an actionable improvement plan with clear ownership and timelines.
Organizations that do not assess maturity periodically cannot detect regression, cannot demonstrate progress to stakeholders, and cannot make evidence-based decisions about where to invest next. It also reinforces Assume breach by ensuring that the organization continuously identifies and closes the gaps threat actors would exploit rather than treating security program design as a one-time project.