Shift Left is a practice intended to find and prevent defects early in the software development process. The idea is to improve quality and reduce cost by testing as early in the lifecycle.
Traditional Software Development Lifecycle
In the traditional software development model or software development lifecycle (SDLC), requirements are kept on the left side of the plan, and the delivery and testing requirements are on the right side. Testing is often left towards the end of the process when finding and resolving “built-in” vulnerabilities can cost as much as 10 times more than it would have done had the testing been fully integrated into the build process.
Security Engineering integrated in the Software Development Lifecycle
In a Shift Left approach, testing is performed during the early stages by moving to the left in the project lifecycle. Developers need to focus on quality from the beginning, instead of waiting for errors & bugs to be discovered late in the software development lifecycle. Shifting left enables project teams to test, provide feedback, and review changes & progress daily.
