Your devs are pushing new features fast. Campaigns change weekly. APIs talk to payment systems, mobile apps, and third parties. DevSecOps helps you bake security into that whole flow (code, deploy, and run) so everything’s covered before traffic spikes hit.
It’s not a separate task. It’s just how your pipeline works – fast, safe, and ready for anything the holiday rush throws at it.
When holiday traffic takes off, risk goes up exponentially – not just from volume, but from increasingly smart, motivated attackers.
For example:
➜ AI driven bad bot traffic now accounts for nearly 570,000 attacks per day on retail sites. (E-Commerce Times)
➜ Phishing attempts spike, with “Black Friday” themed scams jumping 692%. (Darktrace)
➜ Ransomware incidents doubled, accounting for 26% of holiday season attacks – up from 13% previously. (RH-ISAC)
➜ 80% of retailers were hit by cyberattacks in 2024, with over half saying holidays are their riskiest period. (Fast Company)
➜ Cequence estimates £2 million per hour in potential losses during December, with malicious transactions flagged in 34% of eCommerce activity – a 138% year-over-year increase. (SJUK)
Even major chains like Marks & Spencer, Co op, and Harrods recently suffered outages. The company said the cyberattack in April stopped it from processing online orders, left store shelves empty, and cost it about 300 million pounds ($407 million). (BBC)
| Bot Attacks & Business Logic Abuse | Promo scraping, account takeovers, discount fraud, cart sniping | • 52% of retailers feel more vulnerable during holidays • 1 in 3 attacks exploit business logic flaws |
| Ransomware Spikes | Locking systems during off-hours or low-staff holidays | • 26% of retail holiday threats were ransomware • Ransomware doubled YoY during peak shopping |
| Web App & Payment Data Exploits | Skimming checkout pages, formjacking, API exploits | • 70% of card breaches involve web apps • 37% of retail breaches = card data theft • 49% spike in incidents during sales periods |
| Phishing & Brand Impersonation | Fake merchant sites, employee scams, and supplier email compromise | • 50%+ of breaches start with phishing • 284% increase in fake stores • 545% surge in holiday hiring scams |
| Bot & Scraper Traffic | Inventory scraping, promo sniping, and automated checkouts | • 244% increase in online retail traffic during Black Friday week • Higher bot and Magecart activity reported during holidays |
DevSecOps removes the traditional bottlenecks and replaces them with automated, developer-native checks that run behind the scenes, so your flow stays uninterrupted.
Here’s how it works at each layer:
When your devs push code, DevSecOps tools scan it right away.
➡️ Missed a secrets file? You’ll catch it before the pull request even merges.
➡️ Used a vulnerable library in a checkout module? That gets flagged instantly.
➡️ Infrastructure as Code updates for the CDN? Scanned and policy-checked before deployment.
All this happens within GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket, as part of the same flow your team already uses.
When you’re prepping a release (maybe a new homepage layout or a discount engine for Black Friday), DevSecOps helps:
➡️ Automated DAST tools to scan your app the way real users and attackers would
➡️ SBOM generation, so you know exactly what’s getting deployed
➡️ Policy-as-code rules that prevent anything misconfigured from hitting production
Once you’re live, DevSecOps keeps watching.
➡️ APIs misbehaving? You’ll get flagged when something starts acting weird.
➡️ A malicious bot swarm starts hitting your PDPs? Your WAF updates automatically based on Git-based rules.
➡️ Someone trying to exploit a forgotten microservice? You’ll catch it before the damage spreads.
For most retail teams, the entry point looks like this:
✔️ Secrets scanning right inside GitHub or GitLab pipelines
✔️ Infrastructure-as-code analysis for Terraform or AWS CDK
✔️ Light-touch dynamic scans on staging URLs for API endpoints or checkout logic
Each of these steps takes a couple of hours to wire in, but pays off big when traffic surges.
If you’re planning holiday rollouts, you don’t need to pause delivery to get started. The right DevSecOps moves fit into your sprint rhythm and scale with your velocity.
We help retailers adopt exactly this kind of “no disruption” model – starting with what’s easiest to automate, then expanding based on what’s most exposed in your stack.
DevSecOps costs are directly tied to how fast you ship, how critical your platform is, and how many layers you want to secure.
You’re looking at:
➜ Tooling for static code, container, and API scanning
➜ Time to integrate those tools into your pipelines
➜ Coaching or enablement so devs actually use them right
Talking about ROI, it often shows up in places like incident cost savings, developer hours reclaimed, or checkout drop prevention due to faster MTTR.
Treat this window as your security tuning sprint. You’re already planning promos, UATs, and code freezes; this is the time to clean up risk debt and automate decision points.
Here’s a breakdown:
→ Map out what’s shipping during the season: new APIs, microsites, offers
→ Run lightweight threat modeling on those flows (especially if payment or loyalty is involved)
→ Set up secrets scanning and rotation hooks in your CI/CD
→ Add IaC scanners to catch storage misconfigs or exposed endpoints
→ Scan staging environments for logic-based threats that bots could exploit
This is exactly where we support most of our retail clients: tightening controls without slowing product. It’s a tactical approach that works with your sprint cycles.
Yes. DevSecOps secures APIs using pre-production fuzzing, schema validation, and real-time traffic monitoring, which prevents abuse or leakage without slowing down responses.
Absolutely. DevSecOps frameworks are designed for composable architectures. It integrates across frontend builds, backend services, edge configurations, and plugin-based platforms like Shopify or Magento.
It combines tools like GitHub Actions, Snyk, StackHawk, Trivy, Vault, and Cloudflare WAF – automated across build, deploy, and runtime stages, with guardrails baked into Git workflows and edge rules.
Basic tools catch surface-level risks. DevSecOps goes deeper and validates configs, secures containers, enforces access control, and gives your team visibility across the entire application lifecycle.
With the right partner and alignment, you can have core scanning and automation running in weeks, well ahead of your next holiday campaign cycle. It’s modular and grows with your stack.
1️⃣ CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment): Automated pipelines that test, build, and release your code across environments. CI/CD is what helps your team push updates frequently, and DevSecOps makes sure those updates stay secure.
2️⃣ SAST (Static Application Security Testing): Scans your source code for vulnerabilities before the app is even deployed. It catches things like hardcoded secrets or insecure logic early in the process.
3️⃣ DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing): Tests your running application (in staging or live) for issues that show up during real-world use, like input injection, broken auth, or business logic flaws.
4️⃣ IaC (Infrastructure as Code): Managing cloud and infra setups using code (like Terraform or CloudFormation), so they’re version-controlled and repeatable.
5️⃣ SBOM (Software Bill of Materials): A full inventory of all components and dependencies in your app, used for compliance and security audits.
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