Application and software security are crucial in an age where the threat of cybersecurity attacks is on the rise. With these threats likely to cost businesses a sizable chunk of their revenues, many businesses are starting to take their security seriously. This includes securing all their software and applications. Such security should start from when the software and apps are being developed, to when they are deployed and ultimately used in a professional setting. Understanding this, here are four ways to ensure your software’s security.
Have a Security Mindset
Software security is not something you can concentrate on when the software is just about to be released; it is something you should be thinking about throughout the product’s development lifecycle. This means you need to start thinking about it when putting together the software’s requirements.
It should be in the conversation when talking about the functionality and features you will add to the software. By catching any vulnerabilities, risks, and potential software misuse as early as possible, you will ensure security is baked into the final product.
Do a Threat Analysis
A threat analysis is a systemic process that helps identify the most critical parts of software, and whose breach would be a catastrophe. For example, a developer building software for a business needs to understand that any system that stores transactional data should be highly protected.
Some developers deploy their software to a small cluster once it is done and employ chaos engineering principles to test it. Chaos engineering involves introducing deliberate failures to see how the software responds.
It can also expose areas that have a higher level of risk so you can prioritize these risks according to how catastrophic they would be if someone took advantage of them. While chaos engineering is often done when software is deployed, other threat analyses can be done at any development stage to catch issues as early as possible.
Implement a Deployment Gate
A deployment gate is crucial during development and when adding new features to software. A deployment gate ensures that only code that has been thoroughly tested and passed those tests should be deployed.
The criteria for what passes the gate depends on the type of software being deployed. It can be an automated code review or a passing grade from a penetration test.
Even when the deployed code has few to no vulnerabilities, developers can introduce them when pushing new features to software. This can happen in cases where the incremental code is not tested thoroughly to see how it works as a function of the whole.
An additional deployment gate can stop this from happening.
Train Your Staff
People are typically the weakest link in environments that require high security. This also includes software development because developers who are not trained in the latest secure software development practices are less likely to develop secure software.
Software security is crucial, and developers have to keep security in mind when developing and deploying software. Using numerous security analysis tools, having testing strategies in place, and ensuring developers are well-trained can help businesses get the secure software they need.