Today, we’re thrilled to introduce Upwind Shift Left – a major new capability in the Upwind platform that brings the power of runtime intelligence to CI/CD pipelines, transforming how teams secure their software at every step. By marrying real-world runtime context with build-time best practices, this next-generation solution redefines shift left for modern cloud security.
What is Upwind Shift Left?
Industry adoption of shift left rose to prominence thanks to the idea that organizations could implement completely secure build strategies, scanning and fixing misconfigurations before pushing code into live production environments. While an excellent idea in theory, in practice it is impossible to catch 100% of misconfigurations prior to deployment, leading to vulnerabilities in runtime cloud environments. Not only that – shift left tools and best practices often leave security teams with thousands of non-prioritized alerts that they have to sift through, causing production delays and organizational friction.
Upwind Shift Left solves this problem by incorporating cloud infrastructure and applications runtime context—such as actual app usage patterns, internet exposure, actual ports being in use, application endpoints (APIs) exposure, the existence of sensitive data, and any real indication of exploitation —directly into build-time security assessments. By doing so, teams can easily identify and prioritize vulnerabilities during build time, reducing risks before software reaches production without creating any noise and unnecessary work for developers.
Upwind is already a leader in runtime prioritization, evaluating vulnerabilities and misconfigurations based on actual risk in production environments. With Upwind Shift Left, you can now leverage these powerful runtime insights to guide deployments with greater confidence, focusing on the critical issues that truly matter and reducing risk without compromising agility.
Redefine Your Build-Time Practices with Upwind Shift Left
Upwind Shift Left integrates directly into developers’ build pipelines (Jenkins, CircleCI, GitHub Actions and more), providing seamless analysis of new builds and ensuring a clear view of any changes in security posture.
This new capability fits seamlessly within the Upwind platform – providing detailed findings for each new build and highlighting newly introduced vulnerabilities or the resolution of existing ones. By leveraging real-world context from your production environment – like active internet traffic and identity access patterns – Upwind empowers your development team to make informed decisions regarding when to hold or push forward with new deployments.
After scanning images in new deployments, Upwind Shift Left provides one of three assessments based on “what if” scenarios run using runtime context. These assessments will recommend one of the following actions:
- Proceed with Deployment: No new vulnerabilities were added.
- Deploy with Caution: Additional vulnerabilities have been identified, but based on our prioritization logic, the CVEs are not critical and do not necessarily require immediate action. Non-critical issues lack high-risk parameters like active internet traffic, package usage, or known exploits
- Do Not Deploy: An increased number of vulnerabilities, compared to the previous image version, have been identified and classified as critical and requiring immediate attention.
With this risk context, including runtime-specific factors like internet ingress and exploit availability, you can make informed decisions about deployment and stop critical vulnerabilities from ever reaching production.
As organizations accelerate with agile and continuous deployment, integrating proactive security into the CI/CD pipeline becomes essential. Upwind Shift Left brings needed context and clarity to development teams, providing runtime insights into each build’s security posture and empowering teams to proactively resolve critical vulnerabilities that could impact production.
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Upwind Shift Left transforms security into an enabler of faster, safer releases, protecting both your development process and your customers.
Ready to secure your CI/CD pipeline with confidence? Schedule a demo today to see how Upwind Shift Left empowers development teams with smarter, runtime-informed security.
