Companies in every industry and of every size use various software to run their operations, manage their finances, sell products, and improve communications, to name a few uses. For this reason, they may come to rely on your program, which is why you cannot afford a security breach or weakness that could affect their loyalty.
You must devise a strategy to identify and eliminate potential risks to improve the software's dependability. Continue reading for advice on how to reduce software development vulnerabilities.
Create Clear Design and Security Guidelines
Before your team starts the development process, you must set clear design and security guidelines for them to follow. For instance, it should outline laws and regulations, the company's objectives, internal policies, and the risk management strategy. It will support how software engineers must write, text, analyze, and review code.
Also, encourage your team to follow a specific coding standard, such as:
- Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
- SEI CERT C Coding Standard
- OWASP Secure Coding Practices
Following a coding standard will make it easier for your team to identify and fix any potential vulnerabilities.
Embrace Database Observability
Database observability can measure the database change ecosystem's performance, allowing your team to perform essential maintenance, improvements, or investigations. It is similar to a vehicle's check engine light, as it will notify you of any changes that require your attention, such as suspicious activity or performance issues. It will save your analysts time and energy, as they can immediately review the dashboard and take steps to fix or avoid a potential problem.
Be Cautious of Third-Party Software
It is common for software companies to use third-party components to power their programs, as it might speed up deployment or reduce overheads. However, you must be cautious when working with another company, as they could pose a threat to your software's security and reliability. For this reason, you should request a vendor code sign to confirm the code hasn't been corrupted or altered. It will provide peace of mind that the third-party company is safe and trustworthy.
Assess Security Risks
Clear some time in your employees' busy schedules to discuss the potential security risks a software program may encounter during production and deployment and the best ways to mitigate them. Prevention is better than cure for software security, which is why you must embark on attack modeling, threat modeling, and attack surface modeling to assess the security risk.
Also, your team must rigorously assess one or more high-risk areas during the development process. If available, they should review past software's vulnerability reports and statistics, which could help them pinpoint a potential threat.
Hackers are constantly developing their techniques to infiltrate and attack various software. For this reason, you must have a firm understanding of a program's vulnerabilities during the development process, and monitor the software for potential risks once it is in use. It will help your team enhance security and fix any new and emerging problems that might pose a threat to the software's performance and dependability.