Beyond Identity Secure DevOps

Business management values DevOps teams for their speed and ability to deliver code, applications, and cloud services in response to fast-changing business demand. DevOps has evolved from a developers-and-operations collaboration into a broad set of team structures owning the full software lifecycle—writing, testing, and deploying code through a continuous internal software supply chain. This acceleration, heavy automation, and reliance on cloud infrastructure increases exposure to software supply-chain risk, especially when code can be altered after an authorized developer’s clean commit. Deployment teams may be unable to determine whether production code is original or has been modified to introduce errors or vulnerabilities.

To reduce these risks, organizations are adding security controls that restrict repository and lifecycle access to authorized, authenticated identities—human or machine—often numbering in the thousands. The Beyond Identity Secure DevOps platform addresses this by verifying developer identity authenticity through unique commit-signing keys and API-based validation.

Beyond Identity (founded 2019) applies SSL/TLS-inspired cryptographic trust concepts to passwordless authentication, using a public-private key pair where the private key is generated and retained within a device’s secure enclave/TPM. Authentication is certificate-based without requiring a central certificate authority, enabling phishing-resistant MFA without passwords, one-time codes, push prompts, or secondary devices. The platform collects 25+ device and user risk signals for policy decisions and can require additional steps such as on-device biometrics.

For DevOps, the solution targets git weaknesses: SSH key theft and author spoofing via gitconfig manipulation. It binds identity to devices with cryptographic traceability, checks device posture (e.g., antivirus, firewall, disk encryption, MDM, CrowdStrike score), and validates that commits are signed by current corporate identities with matching public keys; CI/CD pipelines can be configured to abort when checks fail. Strengths include broad repo/tool support and TPM-backed key storage; challenges include limited private git server support, basic administration tools, and potential risk from multiple credentials on one device.

• DevOps commonly encompasses responsibility for writing, testing, and deploying code as part of a continuous internal software supply chain.
• Code may be deployed with errors or vulnerabilities introduced after an authorized developer originally committed clean code.
• Beyond Identity was founded in 2019.
• Beyond Identity offers three products: Secure Workforce, Secure Customers, and Secure DevOps.
• The platform generates a public-private key pair where the private key is generated and remains within a device’s secure enclave/TPM.
• Authentication requests are processed using certificate-based authentication without needing a central certificate authority.
• Beyond Identity captures more than 25 user and device risk signals from devices making login requests.
• Git loopholes highlighted include SSH key theft for remote access and author spoofing via modification of the gitconfig file.
• Secure DevOps checks can include antivirus, firewall, hard disk encryption, MDM presence, and the CrowdStrike Zero Trust assessment score.
• CI/CD pipelines can be configured to abort when identity, signature, or device posture checks fail.

• “Business management likes DevOps — they get things done.”
• “DevOps has become a catch all term for various team structures that are responsible for the writing, testing and deployment cycle of code within an organization.”
• “Those shipping code to production have no way of knowing if that code is original or has been modified with possible errors or vulnerabilities added by malicious actors.”
• “In many complex organizations these identities can be machine or human and the number of identities run into the thousands.”
• “Instead of relying on passwords and phishable factors, Beyond Identity creates a public-private key pair where the private key is generated, stored, and never leaves the secure enclave of a user’s trusted device.”
• “For the end-user, there is no password, one-time code, push notifications, or second devices required.”
• “In order to stop malware from getting introduced in the first place, you need a much tighter control on your version control system.”
• “Hackers can potentially steal the private SSH keys to gain command line access to the git remote and use the modified gitconfig file to spoof the identity of the author.”
• “Administrators can configure their CI/CD pipeline to abort if any of these checks fail.”
• “Developers do not sit in cubicles or crowded in rows anymore.”