The ongoing digital transformation has significantly altered our views of technology, while also seeing a rise in the prevalence of cybercrime. The potential impact of such attacks extends to a wide range of entities, including people, organizations, and government departments alike. Thus, it is imperative to ensure security in custom software development.

Continue reading to learn more about security in custom software development to avoid unexpected events that could happen in case of cyberattacks. We provide the most used practices for enhancing operational effectiveness in managing security risks and safeguarding your program.

8 Software Security Best Practices

Let’s review some recommended practices that help you to ensure security in the software development process.

1. Make Software Security a Top Priority from Beginning to End

Security must be taken into account from the project’s early planning phases to the end. Security begins with requirements; thus, it is critical to consider what vulnerabilities may arise at each step of software development. This implies that security should constantly be considered while making modifications or adding features in the future.

The secure software development lifecycle (SDLC) is the process for creating secure applications. It considers the security threats associated with the application’s lifespan. Furthermore, it goes through each phase to ensure suitable controls are in place at each process stage.

2. Implement Training on Safety Awareness

It is essential that your software developers are aware of the competition. It is imperative that they are versed in prevalent software development attacks and understand effective preventative measures.

Conducting periodic meetings devoted to the discourse of secure development practices is an effective approach to incorporating security awareness training. These meetings can be extremely beneficial in terms of learning how to locate code vulnerabilities before their discovery by cybercriminals.

3. Employ Code Reviews to Detect Potential Security Risks

Code reviews assist developers in identifying and repairing security flaws, allowing them to avoid frequent errors. Secure design is an essential component of software development. Adopt a protective mentality while developing code to help you create the least amount of code feasible. In addition, you should test your code and write unit tests for all areas of interest.

After making any code changes, you should check to determine whether those modifications have caused any new security vulnerabilities. Furthermore, security criteria must be reviewed to verify that secure coding techniques are followed throughout the development process.

 4. Utilize Tools for Static Code Evaluation

Security flaws might often seem minor and are readily spotted by skilled professionals. Static code analysis tools are a great way to uncover software vulnerabilities and speed up the code review process. It may be incorporated into the pipeline so that whenever a new build is created, these checks are automatically done, and any possible problems are flagged. Although static code analysis techniques are not flawless, they may assist in detecting some of the most prevalent flaws that lead to software vulnerabilities, such as SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and sensitive data disclosure. Learning about SQL through a SQL tutorial can deepen understanding of vulnerabilities like SQL Injection and aid in developing more secure coding practices.

5. Use Up-to-Date Libraries and Frameworks

When building software, it is recommended to utilize up-to-date libraries or frameworks since they are less likely to include vulnerabilities than just built code bases.

Before incorporating a library or framework into their applications, developers should carefully investigate its reputation. They may utilize online tools to get specific information about each project’s community activity, release frequency, and other data, which will help them decide whether this component is safe enough for their purposes.

6. Secure Coding Rules and Requirements

The development of secure software begins with coding standards and guidelines. The establishment of secure coding guidelines and measures for an organization ought to be the result of a collaborative effort among experts, with due consideration given to established industrial standards.

By encouraging improved design principles within an organization, secure coding standards can aid in the reduction of vulnerabilities before the release of software. Furthermore, teams can ensure that they do not introduce new vulnerabilities by implementing dependable testing methods throughout the software development lifecycle by establishing a standardized set of regulations and restrictions concerning the type of code that is written.

In addition to threat modeling, software developers ought to implement this method to safeguard software. Threat modeling identifies potential risks by analyzing what could potentially fail within a given data flow in order to identify threats.

Developers should be familiar with the following concepts to formulate secure coding guidelines:

• Encryption
• Password Hashing
• SQL Injection
• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
• Sensitive Data Exposure
• Input Validation Attacks
• Buffer Overflow Attack
• Unvalidated Redirects & Forwards
• Improper Error Handling
• Application Whitelisting (aka: “Least Privilege”)
• Insufficient Logging & Monitoring

Therefore, developers should implement proper security monitoring and auditing practices, including user activity tracking, file integrity monitoring, and network activity logs.

7. ISO 27001 Certification

You should also think about having your organization ISO 27001 certified. ISO 27001 is a global information security standard that specifies the security requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and upgrading an Information Security Management System.

ISO 27001 accreditation may aid secure software development by boosting an organization’s capacity to safeguard vital business information’s confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

8. Penetration Testing

Penetration testing is an automated method of detecting possible security flaws in software. Hiring a penetration testing firm that specializes in software security allows for proper penetration tests.

Concerns regarding third-party software components must also be identified and mitigated during security testing. Furthermore, businesses should protect their code and guarantee that the products of their vendors and partners are safe as well.

Summary

To properly protect your software, we recommend adhering to the suggested practices as well as learning of the possible problems that could impact your project. Hackers may cause damage to companies and organizations by exploiting custom software vulnerabilities. Theft of sensitive data, disruption of operations, and installation of malware are a few of the most prevalent tactics by which hackers exploit these vulnerabilities.