Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) is an approach to software development that emphasizes the value of security at every phase of product development.
What is Secure Software Development Lifecycle?
Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) is a collection of best practices focused on adding security to software development.
By taking a security first approach from requirement gathering through to product release, this approach considers the possibility of security vulnerabilities throughout the software development process. In other software development approaches, security is not considered until the Quality Assurance process begins.
By focusing on security throughout the development cycle, the risk of releasing software with security vulnerabilities is greatly reduced.
The Benefits of Secure Software Development Lifecycle
Everyone, both our employees and our customers, benefit from integrating security checks into the software development process as early as possible.
A few benefits of SSDLC:
- Keeps releases on time: SSDLC helps development teams accurately plan release dates, and catches/addresses issues before they negatively impact the release timeline.
- Expert ownership: Security issues in the code are identified and corrected by the product experts, not debugged after the fact.
- Overall quality increase: Developer ownership of security and functionality increases the overall quality of solutions. By the time an application is deployed to production, it’s less likely to require bug fixes.
Once each of the steps in the secure software development lifecycle is established and tested, they are automated. Automation ensures that no steps are overlooked or forgotten, a common occurrence in manual development cycles. When running QA on code manually, a single pivotal line can be forgotten. Not so with an automated process; it runs automatically, step-by-step for maximum efficiency.
Why Does CYDEF Rely on Secure Software Development Lifecycle?
The team at CYDEF believes that software and cloud-based services should be secure by default. Instead of providing a lengthy list of security options for users to turn on at their discretion, we believe that the security options that keep your business safe online should be turned on by default.
Seatbelts are no longer optional in cars. So why should security functionality be optional in software? It simply makes more sense to offer cybersecurity as a default.
We take the same approach to the software development lifecycle. We chose to consider security at every phase of the development lifecycle so we’re not surprised by bugs and security vulnerabilities when solutions are in use on our client’s devices.
How Does this Impact Small Business Owners?
Cyber attackers are on the lookout for software vulnerabilities. They invest as much time conducting their ‘investigations’ as an average business owner puts into their research and due diligence.
If software developers focus on making secure software throughout the development process, small businesses will be using more secure applications. That’s because the software developers, like CYDEF, are asking in depth questions about security behaviors from the requirements gathering stage, then building team practices that account for a security, and implementing automated verification into the process.
While you may not know that a secure software development lifecycle has been use, your business will be more secure when the approach is used.
