Integrating SAST and DAST in GitHub Actions Pipelines

Integrating security into the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline ensures vulnerabilities are caught early in the development lifecycle.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Audits source code before compile. We can run scanners like Semgrep or SonarQube as a PR check:

- name: Run Semgrep
  run: semgrep ci --config=auto

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

Tests running applications from the outside. For instance, running a ZAP (OWASP Zed Attack Proxy) container scan against staging deployments before deploying to production.

Automated pipelines fail builds if high-severity issues are introduced, keeping security gates active and consistent.