How to Secure the Software Development Life Cycle?
What is SDLC?
Software development life cycle (SDLC) is a framework for building an application from inception to decommissioning. Over the years, multiple SDLC models have emerged. Starting from the waterfall and iterative, Agile, Test-Driven Development, Continuous Integration, or any number of other practices during the course of releasing new software mainly aimed to increase the speed and frequency of deployment. In general, whatever methodology is used, SDLC can always be broken down into a few different phases: planning, defining, designing, building, testing, and deployment and maintenance.
Security Aspect of SDLC
As a matter of fact, some organizations define application security as a part of the quality assurance or the testing phase. However, this approach was a mess as it might result in many undetected vulnerabilities and improper handling of customers’ private data. An increased number of data breaches caused by cybersecurity attacks means a more expensive software development lifecycle. The later that vulnerabilities are found when developing software, the longer and more costly they are to fix.
The Systems Sciences Institute at IBM reported that it cost six times more to fix a bug found during implementation than one identified during design. Furthermore, according to IBM, the cost to fix bugs found during the testing phase could be 15 times more than the cost of repairing those seen during the design phase.
Therefore, it is far better, faster and cheaper, to integrate security testing across the SDLC to help discover and reduce vulnerabilities as early as possible and effectively build security. Security assurance activities include architecture analysis during design, code review during coding and build, and penetration testing before release.
There are plenty of benefits of entangling security measures during SDLC. Primarily, you and all stakeholders involved in the process can be more sure that the software is more secure, as security is a constant concern. Besides, you can detect design flaws early, before they are coded into existence. More importantly, it would reduce the costs and overall intrinsic business risks for your organization.
Secure SDLC Models Available
Many secure SDLC models are in use, but one of the best known is the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (MS SDL), which outlines 12 practices organizations can adopt to increase their software security. And earlier this year, NIST published the final version of its Secure Software Development Framework, which focuses on security-related processes that organizations can integrate into their existing SDLC.
Steps of Securing SDLC
In general, an application’s security measures should add security throughout the SDLC process and are the steps of governance, design, implementation, verification, and operations. Let us break down briefly each of the steps.
Secure Governance
In this phase, you prepare the ground rules and build a process and training plan. For example, when a hacker is trying to find a simple sequel injection to break into an account of an organization’s data, the part of an organization software’s new governance process is to train developers and avoid this vulnerability by code the sequel statement securely.
Secure Design
While designing software, a designer must have identified potential attacks and defines appropriate security requirements in architecture to protect the services and data at the core of the web login application. For example, add a lockout feature to stop potential hackers from forcing their way by brute-force password entry attempts.
Secure Implementation
During implementation, the team built software in a standardized, repeatable manner to caught, recorded, analyzed, and patched the open-source vulnerabilities in the process. They then upgrade it to the latest versions of open-source software whose previous versions contained critical and high-priority vulnerabilities.
Secure Verification
A software development team must have had their scanners running during the verification phase to fix vulnerabilities in their software before deploying it. The team must run several tests and selected suitable static and dynamic application security testing tools. It is advisable to use code scanning tools for static analysis, dynamic analysis, and interactive application security testing.
Secure Operations
During the operations phase, the software development team must have established a security response plan and put in place additional protections such as the web application firewall (WAF).
Towards a More Secure Environment
Traditional methods of protecting the software by checking for bugs in development are no longer effective. As the tech industry has progressed, so have the forms of threats. Ensuring security measures on each phase of the software development method is crucial before deploying and maintaining software. It includes answering questions about security behaviors at all stages, adjusting team culture and procedures to account for a security-oriented approach, incorporating automatic verification into the deploy phase, and various other techniques that, when combined, result in a secure SDLC process.
Eventually, secure SDLC helps you transfer security threats to the left, solving the source of security vulnerabilities during the requirements process rather than going back to the maintenance phase. You should be assured that the application will be much safer due to concentrating on security at any development phase.
These are a little glimpse of Secure SDLC story. We can provide you more information about the digital product and its peripherals. Just go visit our website at Glovory.com or send us an email at info@glovory.com and say hello to us. We are Glovory, your infinite digital partner! 😎
