If your agency has already implemented some form of application security, you’re already ahead of the curve. But your program may still have room for improvement.

To help you take your application security (AppSec) program to the next level, we’ve put together this list of best practices from DLT partner, Veracode.

1. Shift Left

As government officials begin investigation of the Equifax breach that exposed the sensitive information of 143 million people, what does the breach mean for agencies themselves? After all, the U.S. government stores far more sensitive data than the private sector, and often stores it on older, more vulnerable systems.

Cyberattacks on the application layer are becoming more commonplace than attacks on servers, according to a survey of IT professionals by DLT partner, Veracode. The problem is that traditional security methods are largely ineffective against these application layer attacks. But despite this increase, it’s important to maintain perspective.

Although still in its infancy in the public sector, making the shift to DevOps methodologies is starting to catch on with many government agencies, including the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the EPA, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

As you may know, with DevOps, IT tasks and application deployment that would normally take months or years, now take weeks.

But Rome wasn’t built in a day.