Defensive Coding: Key Security Practices in Software Development

We live in a world where information has become extremely important. Digitalization quickly expanded to all human domains, including banking, healthcare, commerce, construction, logistics, generating loads of data. As the volume of data continuously grows over the years and is projected to increase, it becomes a valuable resource that some individuals are enticed to abuse.

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Coding professionals must think about software development security while building apps and implement software development security best practices to provide hacker-proof, reliable products that will keep users' data safe. Let's discuss the ways you can improve data security during all stages of the development process.

Key Takeaways

• The annual cost of cybercrime in the United States was estimated to be 452,3 billion dollars in 2024, underscoring the urgent need for secure software development and continuous testing as a high priority for developers.
• Software development security best practices include implementing a secure software development lifecycle, code review, access control, regular testing, security education and training for a team.
• The main benefits of software development security include increased compliance, reduced risks and costs, early issue detection, boosting customer trust, and bringing businesses a competitive advantage.
• Secure software development requires a team of experienced professionals. NEKLO is a trusted software development partner that is ready to proceed with custom web and mobile appdevelopment.

What Is Software Development Security?

Software development security is a set of measures to keep data and the app safe. It is better to consider it a complex process, not just one with some rules and regulations but also a comprehensive approach that touches every part of the development process and each team member.

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Software development security best practices are dedicated to several directions:

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1. Protection from hacker attacks: SQL injections, malware, DDoS attacks, DNS tunneling — hackers can try to breach the security in numerous ways. Using software development security guidelines helps to foresee these challenges and leaves no room for malicious cyber activities.
2. Minimize vulnerabilities: Each code has some weak spots, and it is wise to discover and acknowledge them before intruders do. Forewarned is forearmed — once you discover the point of vulnerability, you can fix it, assuring no one will take advantage of it.
3. Protect users: Attackers hunt forusers' data to use it in financial frauds. App data breaches can lead to various consequences, from spam messaging to identity theft, meaning someone will get access to a person's bank account, healthcare insurance, and more. For companies, it means reputational and revenue losses and decreased trust.

The introduction of a Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDL) is not just a good practice; it's a necessity in today's digital landscape. It's the best way to introduce security to the project and ensure the benefits of quality development.

Why is Secure Software Development Important?

There is no better way to describe the importance of software development security than to show actual security threats in facts and figures.

Cybersecurity crimes in numbers

• In 2023, over 353 million US individuals were affected by data compromises, such as data breaches, leakage, and exposure.
• The top five industries affected by cyber-attacks are healthcare, finances, manufacturing and utilities, professional services, and education.
• In 2022, the US suffered 480,000 cyber attacks. It is estimated that the total cost of cybercrime will reach $1,3 trillion in 2027.
• The biggest concerns about cyber attacks' impact on companies include reputational damage, significant downtime, and losing current customers.
• The most common cyber attacks in the US are phishing, ransomware, malware, and unsecured cloud environments.

The latest data breach cases

1. March 2024: AT&T, one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world, has reported a significant data breach that exposed the personal information of over 73 million current and former customers. The data leaked included social security numbers, names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, and emails. The company faced a lawsuit alleging that it had failed to implement adequate cybersecurity measures.
2. June 2024: Truist Bank, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, confirmed that its systems were breached in a cyberattack in October 2023. The stolen data includes details about 65,000 account holders, such as names, bank account numbers, transaction history, and balances. The lawsuit was filed against the company, accusing it of negligence and inadequate security measures.
3. April 2024: Kaiser Permanente, a US healthcare insurance provider, reported about the data leakage of 13.4 million current and former patients. The exposed data included names, IP addresses, and search terms. Luckily, sensitive information such as social security and credit card numbers remained safe.

Reasons for Security Measures Disregard

Knowing the importance of data safety these days, many companies pay little attention to comprehensive security in software development. That is why.

• Low prioritization: When thinking about project release, things such as faster time to market, robust features, usability, and performance often come to mind. Some basic security measures might be taken, but somehow, they are seldom the top priority.
• Lack of development team education: the other case for security measures overlook hides in the lack of developer awareness about the potential threats. The development team must follow the latest security technology advancements.
• Disconnection between development and security teams: If you have separate development and security teams, the lack of communication between them might lead to unidentified and unaddressed vulnerabilities.
• Lack of resources: sometimes, the developers have too much work to do and too little time or other resources to finish the job before the release. Surprisingly, security measures and vulnerability testing are the ones to sacrifice.

Software Development Security Best Practices

Here are ten security approaches that considerably contribute to software development security. Enhance resilience against attacks, minimize the attack surface, and create a rock-solid security foundation for your apps.

1. Implement security practices from the very beginning

We'll start by launching a comprehensive security approach to software development. It means that security considerations should begin with the project's planning stage and continue throughout the development. Introducing a Secure Software Development Lifecycle is a good practice to follow to identify and tackle vulnerabilities and security risks, building a safe and secure application.

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The secure software development lifecycle features security requirements gathering in parallel with functional requirements, risk assessments during the design stage, and security testing, which goes along with the development. The goal is to deliver quality, secure software at low cost in the shortest possible time.

2. Review access control and permissions

Robust access controls safeguard the software system by restricting access to authorized users only. This is achieved through user authentication, authorization mechanisms, and role-based access control (RBAC) implementation.

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Regular review and update of access, user identity verification, and access request workflow improves software development security. The good practice is using the least privilege principle, which means giving users the minimum access required to fulfill their tasks. As some workers come and some leave or shift from position to position, regular access reviews are necessary to keep up with these changes.

3. Apply secure coding practices

Secure coding practices are a set of techniques developers use when creating software. They help create applications resistant to attacks, protect sensitive data, and are implemented throughout the entire development lifecycle.

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Authentication and authorization

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Authentication and authorization control access to applications and data. They work hand-in-hand to ensure a secure software environment. Common authentication and authorization techniques include strong passwords, encryption rules, and multi-factor authentication. Additionally, session management techniques, such as session tokens, timeouts, and unique session IDs, will boost security in agile software development. Working together, these measures can reduce the vulnerable areas an attacker can target.

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Input validation

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Input validation is a critical security measure in software development. It protects the software against attacks, maintains data integrity, and improves user experience. The best practices for implementing input validation include:

• Measures to prevent SQL injections, XSS attacks, and command injections must be applied.
• Using parameterized or prepared statements and database access libraries that support them.
• Implementation of whitelisting approach: instead of blocking all bad characters, define a list of allowed characters for a more secure approach.
• Server-side validation means not relying solely on client-side (JavaScript) validation. Malicious users can bypass this. Validate again on the server before processing data.

Configuration management

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Secure configuration defends systems and applications from potential vulnerabilities. Strong configuration management safeguards software deployments by enforcing secure settings. This includes managing access controls, network configurations, and other security parameters to minimize the chance of unauthorized access.

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What can you do to ensure secure configuration?

• Check default settings for security compliance
• Remove unnecessary services and functionalities
• Conduct regular audits of the environments

Secure communication

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Safe communication is pivotal when data is transmitted between different users via networks. The two pillars of secure communication are actively used to prevent data leakage during transmission: encryption protocols HTTPS and SSL/TLS. They establish a secure connection between the client and the server. Secure communication protocols should also be established for the development team, enabling secure data transmission from/between developers, applications, components, and services.

4. Use only established frameworks and tools

Software development security relies heavily on frameworks, libraries, and tools the team uses. Leveraging popular, well-maintained libraries and frameworks strengthens software security. These established components have likely undergone rigorous testing and benefit from active community oversight, reducing the risk of hidden vulnerabilities compared to custom code.

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However, due diligence is still crucial. Research a library's reputation – online tools can reveal community activity, release frequency, and security history – to ensure it aligns with your project's security requirements.

5. Conduct code review

Code review means checking the initial application code for vulnerabilities. Initial code must be examined systematically to detect security issues early on, preventing future attacks. The main objective of code review is to find out whether it complies with the best software development security practices and standards. It also boosts a culture of security in the development team. Continuous code review enables developers to stay aware of the security implications of their code.

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The code review procedure goes as follows:

• Defining review objectives
• Conducting code review
• Reporting identified vulnerabilities
• Vulnerability fixing and follow-up

Overall, secure code review helps to find and fix defects at every stage of the development process, allowing for fewer bugs to come into production. It decreases the time developers spend on patching vulnerabilities discovered in later stages, improves team collaboration, and increases ROI through a faster and more secure development process.

6. Do regular security testing

Now, we'll thoroughly discuss software security testing. Security tests should be both automated and manual. Automated security tools are a helpful way to find and fix software vulnerabilities.

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Today, Microsoft leads in software security development procedures, and its Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) Practices is one of the most famous documents on the topic. What does it say about testing? Here are the main approaches to the software security development testing process.

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1. Static Analysis Security Testing (SAST) involves analyzing source code before compilation. The team defines the frequency of SAST to balance productivity with security coverage.
2. Dynamic analysis security testing (DAST) involves testing a fully compiled, end-executing program; it is typically conducted via a special tool replicating the attacker's actions.
3. Red/blue team exercises: while one security expert team simulates real-world attacks, the other identifies and addresses the security breaches.
4. Penetration testing: security professionals simulate hackers' actions to detect vulnerabilities in code, system configuration, and other application parts.
5. Continuous security testing and measurement: ongoing security testing checks and scanning of third-party libraries for security weaknesses and bad coding practices.
6. Triggered/cadence-based security testing means conducting testing regularly. It implies the development of a testing schedule.
7. Bug bounty program: setting up monetary rewards for ethical hackers who find bugs and system weaknesses.

You can choose several approaches suitable for your project and resources or combine several approaches for better security results.

7. Introduce team education and training

The developers and other team members must know what they are up against, i.e., types of attacks and common software vulnerabilities, and remember examples of recently identified security threats. That is where more than one training course a year is needed. Introducing continuous and comprehensive security awareness training will help developers avoid mistakes from the beginning of the development process. Learning from other people's mistakes is easier than fixing your own.

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Additional ways to stay informed about software security developments:

• Dedicated security blogs
• Security advisories
• Specialized mailing lists
• Security experts pages

8. Adhere to security problems modeling

Every tool and framework used in the software development process presumably has some vulnerabilities worth considering. The team should discuss these potential pitfalls early on before beginning development. Defining a threat model helps to foresee future risks and possible threats in a given security environment.

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For example, in a simple messaging web application, we can expect authorization and authentication issues (which are pretty common) and potential security breaches connected with a client-server architecture. To address these, we use unit and regression testing for each area of concern, providing a robust defense against possible security threats.

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After modeling security issues, it is time to elaborate software development security policy. The policy document contains a set of standards, security requirements, guidelines, and procedures that define an app's development and ensure a high-security level at every stage.

9. Timely update your software

Outdated software is a great source of vulnerabilities, and hackers know this well — many attacks exploit such weak points. Keeping all tools and systems up-to-date is one of the software development security best practices that are effective and relatively easy. Frequent patching remains a critical defense against software vulnerabilities.

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A good point is to use a software composition analysis tool to make software monitoring easier and keep everything updated. Such tools track open-source, third-party, and custom component dependencies and help manage software supply chain risks.

10. Check software and handle errors

Continuous security monitoring allows real-time detection, response, and recovery from attacks, preventing long-term consequences and possible damage. The approach includes monitoring system logs, network traffic, and user behavior. By centralizing and structuring logs and other data, security teams gain powerful tools for threat detection, investigation, threat hunting, and building security intelligence.

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Security monitoring tools continuously analyze system activity and network traffic and log data for indicators of compromise (IOCs) or other suspicious behavior. Their types are:

• Security Information and Event Management
• Log management tools
• Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems
• Vulnerability scanners

Incident handling addresses the issues identified during the monitoring. Develop an Incident Response Plan (IRP) with your product security incident response team to effectively respond to evolving threats. The IRP should define escalation for emergencies and protocols for handling inherited and third-party code security issues.

Coding Standards for Software Development Security

Secure coding standards provide developers with a roadmap for writing code that minimizes vulnerabilities. They function like a safety net during development, helping create more secure and robust software. The main standards are:

• CERT Secure Coding Standards
• OWASP Coding Standards Project
• CWE Coding Standards

These standards include programming language guidelines, lists of software weaknesses categorized by type, language-specific coding rules, and secure coding practices. The specific standards a development team adopts will depend on the programming languages used, project requirements, and organizational security policies.

Conclusion

Software development security best practices include secure coding, continuous testing, team education and training, using authoritative frameworks and libraries, error logging and handling, and more.

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Software development security should be applied as a comprehensive approach encompassing every development stage. Secure Software Development Lifecycle enables building reliable, safe, and breaching-proof software.

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Are you considering application development but worried about security? Contact NEKLO to learn more about our security practices during the software development process.