Table of Contents
In today’s information age, software security isn’t just plug-and-play anymore. As technology usage and capabilities increase, more and more software security threats pop up.
It’s never been an excellent approach to overlook software security, but nowadays, it’s an expiring and obsolete idea.
Software security is not a feature you can plug in at the end of a software project anymore– it’s critical during the entire software lifecycle. Software security shouldn’t be an afterthought–it must be implemented during each phase of the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle):
- Planning
- Design
- Implementation
- Testing
- Maintenance
To build secure software, security must be carefully planned for, implemented, and tested during each phase. Every coder makes some coding mistakes unintentionally here and there, and even a tiny mistake can create significant software issues and vulnerabilities if it’s not found and fixed. Buffer overflows, format string vulnerabilities, and integer overflow are some typical examples.
The above image shows the classification of some standard software vulnerabilities. Software security shouldn’t be taken lightly; it’s risk management. So, the risk can be analyzed first and made more accessible to fix if any issue arises later.
Here are nine of the most important software security practices to consider during your next development project.
The Best Software Security Practices to Consider
Software security practices involve dealing with risks associated with the effects of errors and vulnerabilities. No software is perfect, but it must fail safely with minimal damage to confidentiality, availability, and integrity if a crash occurs.
Below are some essential security practices you should consider while developing software or applications.
Limited Privileges
Ensure that all software users are granted proper access to the system—not more, not less. Please give them the level of access needed to perform their job. Enforcing the principle of limited access reduces the attack surface and eliminates the chances of unnecessary access rights, which can cause huge problems later on. For example, for someone running SQL servers, don’t assign application users admin rights unless it is mandatory.
Code Analysis
Plan time to do code analysis—it helps detect issues early in the software development cycle. Code analysis gives developers immediate feedback regarding issues in the code that otherwise might not be noticed until much later. Keep in mind there are two different types of code analysis:
Static Code AnalysisStatic code analysis, also called static analysis, examines the code without executing it. It looks for weaknesses in the code which might lead to vulnerabilities. It can be done through manual code reviews, and automated tools are available (OWASP maintains a comprehensive list of free and paid code analysis tools at https://owasp.org/www-community/Source_Code_Analysis_Tools).
- Dynamic Code Analysis
Dynamic code analysis is another method for analyzing software and apps. Unlike static code analysis, dynamic analysis actually executes the code and analyzes its behavior while running. It’s divided into multiple steps, such as preparing input data, executing a test program, gathering all the mandatory parameters, and finally analyzing the output it gives.
Data Validation
One of the most fundamental, essential steps you can take to ensure your software’s security is implementing proper data validation, especially in user-provided data. This provides several benefits:
- Ensures proper data is provided, resulting in smooth, error-free operation.
- Blocks the input of malicious data.
Software Security Testing
Software security testing should be implemented to uncover mistakes, vulnerabilities, threats, or risks related to the software application. Security testing is used to identify all the loopholes and weaknesses in your software, which can negatively impact your software users and your brand reputation.
Usually, two types of security testing are implemented, namely:
- White Box Testing
White box testing, often called precise box testing, is when the tester thinks like a hacker and tests the software or application’s internal structure, design, and implementation. In this testing, the code is visible/accessible to the tester.
- Black Box Testing
Black box testing, also called behavioral testing, is a type of software testing method where the tester tests the software or app without having access to the code or internal workings of the software. The tester is typically given the same level of access to a typical user’s software.
In either case, the tests are done from the users’ point of view, which helps expose any issues users may encounter.
Penetration Testing
Penetration testing, sometimes called pen testing or ethical hacking, involves attempting to hack software applications, networks, or web applications to find existing vulnerabilities, threats, or other risks exploited by an attacker.
The reason behind pen testing is to find all the security vulnerabilities in the software or application being tested to be solved before publication.
Measuring Metrics
The old saying that you can’t manage what you can’t measure is true with software security, too. Specific software security metrics should be considered to ensure your initiative’s accountability, management, and visibility towards software security. For example, metrics could include the time required to solve vulnerabilities, rate of flaw creation, number of automated tests, number of tools needed or used, application block rate, etc. It’ll help you assess your security measures over the long run.
Software Patches
Software patches are usually minor adjustments to the software’s source code. They update a software component to fix an error or bug discovered after the software release.
Attackers exploit known vulnerabilities in old and out-of-date software because that’s often the easiest and fastest way to breach a system. To protect your organization and users from such attacks, you’ll want to:
- Ensure that all of your systems are kept up-to-date
- Keep dependencies used in your software up-to-date
- Release updates to your software promptly if an issue is discovered
Secure Infrastructure
Just as it’s essential to secure code and perform testing to find vulnerabilities or other issues, ensuring your infrastructure to keep your software security intact is equally important. It’s critical to build a plan for your network and used devices.
- Default passwords should be changed.
- Unnecessary features should be disabled. All used devices need to be monitored and upgraded regularly.
- A firewall and IDS (Intrusion Detection System) should be introduced as they are one of the first detection lines if an attack happens.
- Devices should be configured for log analysis. This will give insight into analyzing unauthorized access to files and databases, unapproved file changes, and baseline configurations.
Software Signing
Once your software is ready and everything is tested for publishing, it’s best to sign it using a code signing certificate from a trusted code signing certificate provider.
Software signing will help your users bypass unwanted “Unknown Publisher” warnings while assisting them to identify that it’s coming from a trusted source. If someone tries tampering, users will get a warning message.
Wrapping Up
There’s no magic potion when it comes to securing your software projects. However, you can take proper measures by using some of the best software security practices.
In this article, we’ve covered nine software security best practices followed by many organizations worldwide to keep their software development processes secure and intact. Now, it’s your turn—start applying these tips to improve your software security.
Author Bio:
Kalpesh Patel is an experienced Software Consultant with extensive experience in the security industry. Skilled in Data Analytics, PKI, Code Signing, and Software Development.