Posted by: Praveen Joshi
May 20, 2022
A secure development lifecycle where security practices run simultaneously will all the phases of the development process including the design and development. It involves preparing for the potential security risks that might come further in the process or after the development.
of the IT companies are shifting their focus towards SDLC
is the projected growth in the employment of Developers between 2018 and 2028
plus recognized SDLC models are in use at present
is the compound annual growth rate of the software development market.
The application software constitutes a major portion of a company’s whole working infrastructure. It can make or break the whole working module of the business. This makes it compulsory to focus on security right from the very beginning of the development lifecycle.
Approaching a secure SDLC involves holding on to the security measures throughout different phases of development. The major challenge is to create a balance between customer demands and security. Your approach must fulfill the same.
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To approach a Secure Dev. lifecycle, you need to capture industry-standard security activities to implement. You might encounter a lot of roadblocks if you lack a standard approach.
Instead of fixing the old codes and designs, developers must focus on the future. Developing new secure codes will help them avoid previous security mistakes.
Each phase of the software development life cycle comes with a different security challenge. Let’s have a look at them in detail…
In this phase, developers collect the list of functional requirements to implement in the product from all the stakeholders. The advisable security protocol for this phase is the assessment of potential risks that might haunt the final product’s functioning. For instance, the function is to verify the contact information. It is important to assess that the user is only seeing his/her information and not others’
Here, the application gets its structural outlook that includes UI and basic functionalities. This phase decides what the final product would have and what it would not. Secure-by-design is the security trait any application or software can have. The security concern in this phase is also structural. Suppose you design a page to retrieve a user’s name, age, DOB, and other related data. The concern is to make sure that it retrieves the data of the said person only. It must not provide any privilege or access to someone else’s data.
The phase where the application is given life. Writing codes and implementing algorithms to carry out functions are the processes of this phase. Code obfuscation and misconfigurations are key security risks in this phase. Following secure coding guidelines and frequent code analysis can help to avoid mistakes.
This phase involves the testing of all the implementations within the project developers worked upon. The first part of this phase is all about matching the final product with the initial requirements of the stakeholders. After that, the application is tested on various parameters including the security assessment. The only concern in this phase is that no area should be left for testing. This might lead to security gaps in the final product.
A secure development lifecycle does not end even after the release of the application. The product might be susceptible to various threats after release that you did not count on while developing. These security threats come from unknown sources you cannot prepare for in advance. Regular testing and assessment will take are during this phase.
Stagewise best practices for a secure SDLC are listed below:
Key benefits of a secure development lifecycle are:
