The software behind today’s cyberattacks
The lack of security for software has a greater impact because software is increasingly integrated into critical infrastructures including transportation and healthcare facilities, as well as personal devices. Adversaries are constantly probing systems searching for weaknesses to exploit. Software that isn’t secure enough could be used to commit extortion and data breaches, in addition to other criminal activities.
The most important aspect of securing software is to prevent attacks before they happen. This requires a combination of practices that include patching software and keeping it up to date. It also means implementing secured architecture and the best practices in programming, such as using data validation, cryptography, and programming languages that safely manage memory allocations.
Today, there are many commercially available solutions (COTS) to ensure your system is safe. However, if you are building software from scratch or are a DevOps team, the goal is to integrate security into the development process so that it’s built into your application right away. This reduces the amount of work required to fix problems in production.
The benefits of designing software security outweigh the costs. Utilizing security-by-design methodologies and best practice frameworks software makers can limit the number and impact of security vulnerabilities that get into production, eliminate vulnerabilities that aren’t detected, and quickly address any useful reference new vulnerabilities that emerge. In addition, since it’s six times more costly to fix a bug in production, it’s essential to do it right the first time.