Better Securing the Software Development Process

It’s absolutely imperative that developers strive to maintain secure processes and procedures during the Software Development Life Cycle to protect the private (and sometimes confidential) data used during development. Thankfully engineers are getting much better at developing software to be more secure as a product, but the process of development is oftentimes left rather vulnerable to cybersecurity threats and data breaches.

There are thousands of bright-eyed and inexperienced software developers joining the workforce around the globe every year without a full understanding of what it takes to secure development nor cybersecurity in general. Businesses in today’s modern tech world, however, need not worry about dealing with inexperienced new devs as they have access to experienced and secure outsourced software development services and teams from third-party companies.

How Can We Make the Software Development Life Cycle More Secure?

Unfortunately, disregarding security issues during the early phases of the Software Development Life Cycle is quite a common practice among software development companies and industry newbies. This obviously leaves quite a bit of room for errors and threats throughout development.

With this approach, every succeeding phase inherits the vulnerabilities of the previous phases while adding new ones along the way. As a result, there are many complex security threats accumulated at the end of the SDLC. This means companies must then spend the time, effort, and money required to fix these errors before releasing the product to the public or they will be exposed to massive data breaches, hacks, and data leaks.

One of the best ways to prevent these potentially catastrophic security flaws in a final software product is by securing the Software Development Life Cycle itself. By simply making security a priority from the very first step of the process, it becomes an integrated part of software development and results in a much more secure product than it otherwise would be.

Integrating Security Into Each Step of the SDLC

By making security a top priority throughout the duration of the Software Development Life Cycle, developers will spend less time working on fixing massive vulnerabilities later on. This not only saves time but also prevents expensive extended deadlines or massive lawsuits stemming from software products lacking the right security.

Below are the steps of the SDLC and how devs should integrate security into each step regardless of the project methodology.

1. Requirements Analysis and Gathering – The requirements gathering stage of the SDLC creates the general guide and plan for the entirety of the process, therefore devs should incorporate security in this very first stage.
   
   First, they need to figure out relevant use cases so that they can also come up with the corresponding misuse cases to foresee possible future threats. During this time, it’s also important to conduct security risk assessments and to create a risk profile specific to the industry where the software will be used (i.e. healthcare, government, etc.).
   
2. Design – During this phase, software developers should aim for minimal user privileges for normal functioning while allowing for privilege separation to create a secure environment. Authorities of the dev process should check and approve every user with access to the in-development program.
   
   It’s a good idea to use multiple security levels as well to help eliminate the threat of the failure of a single security point that could possibly compromise the entirety of the program. The actual UX/UI and graphic designers should also strive to incorporate security aspects in a way that doesn’t hinder the user experience. If security options and mechanisms are annoying or in the user’s way, they’ll likely turn them off or opt-out of using them.
3. Development – The development phase is the time in which all of the security planning is finally put into action as the actual coding begins. Through this careful previous planning, there will be far fewer vulnerabilities during and after development as well as later on during the SDLC.
4. Code Review – Although secure coding practices help alleviate a lot of the need for more formal code reviews, it’s still a good idea to use them. While a secure SDLC will help substantially decrease the number of vulnerabilities, it’s still possible that one or two will make their way into the product.
5. Testing – Regardless of the level of security during development, the testing phase is always important and should take place to ensure that no stone goes unturned. This is the time in which the developed product is put to the test to see if it can handle possible security attacks through penetration testing (also known as pentesting).
6. Production and Post-Production – Although the software may have passed all of the security tests, the process of secure development still isn’t over. Dev teams need to prepare for the worst once the product is in the hands of the general public – and the cybercriminals of the world.
   Devs must create an incident response plan for the worst-case scenario of new threats. This includes things like emergency contacts, secure servicing plans for code from third-parties, and dealing with inherited code. They should also conduct a final security review of the released product just to see if they missed any critical details along the way.

By taking these steps to make sure that the Software Development Life Cycle is as secure as absolutely possible, devs can rest easy knowing that their product and the process from which it stems from follows all the right practices regarding security.