10 Principles to Ensure Strong Cybersecurity in Agile Development
In today's high-paced business world, organizations strive to stay at the forefront, leading to the adoption of agile development approaches by 80% or more of these entities. However, this swift development cadence can inadvertently expose vulnerabilities, making it a goldmine for cyber criminals, especially when security measures in the software lifecycle are overlooked.
So, what's the solution? How do organizations bolster their agile practices with robust security? Below are ten foundational principles recommended by the ISF to navigate this challenge.
1. Define Roles and Responsibilities
Senior leaders at the helm of agile projects must delineate clear roles and responsibilities for security. This encompasses formal and informal communication channels, project management necessities like escalation protocols, obligatory meetings, and status reporting. Such measures solidify security within agile frameworks, encouraging a symbiotic relationship between business IT and security teams.
2. Invest in Skills and Training
Security isn't a one-person show; every developer has a part to play. Empower your development team with the right tools - coaching, mentoring, and upskilling. Utilize platforms such as OWASP, CWE, BSIMM, SAFECode, and CERT to bolster their security proficiency.
3. Apply an Information Risk-Management Process
Embedding security from the outset is cost-effective and efficient. Adopt processes that help mitigate information risk across the entire development spectrum. Leadership plays a pivotal role in orchestrating this by establishing risk ownership and decision-making parameters.
4. Specify Security Requirements in Developer's Format
Translating security requirements using developer-friendly tools (user stories, wireframes, etc.) can catalyze their understanding and implementation. This also facilitates integrating security measures into the product backlog and other productivity tools.
5. Conduct Threat Modeling
Regular threat modeling is imperative to understand an application's security milieu. It aids in highlighting design vulnerabilities, prioritizing threats, and devising proactive mitigation strategies.
6. Employ Secure Programming Techniques
Encourage developers to adopt secure programming practices like pair programming, CI/CD, peer review, and test-driven development. These techniques enhance code quality, reduce vulnerabilities, and are instrumental for developers working with emerging technologies or complex integrations.
7. Perform Independent Security Reviews
External reviews, both static and dynamic, instill confidence in stakeholders about the application's security robustness.
8. Automate Security Testing
In the agile realm, manual testing for every iteration is unrealistic. Automation aids in consistent and methodical security checks. However, remember, not everything is automatable; manual checks, especially for logic flaws, remain irreplaceable.
9. Include Security in Acceptance Criteria
An established set of security acceptance criteria assures stakeholders of the software's security integrity. Such criteria aid in reducing technical debt, confirming the adherence to security standards, and ensuring any design alterations are flagged and approved.
10. Evaluate Security Performance
Monitoring and assessing security metrics against KPIs is pivotal. Such metrics provide a lens into the application's security landscape, offering insights that can be invaluable for decision-making.
In essence, if your development strategy is agile, your security approach should mirror that agility. Collaboration and commitment across all tiers (be it developers, project managers, or executive teams) are quintessential. Only with iterative and swift security processes in tandem with development can organizations truly deliver fortified applications and effectuate ground-level transformations.
Disclaimer this article was writen by AI for demo purposes only.