Importance of Software Design Security
Software design security is a rather important concept because it focuses on the threats that may adversely impact not only the process of software functioning but the company as a whole. This is why the team has to develop an application and then test it in all possible directions in order to point out all the weak areas. Often, a security expert can be a valuable asset in terms of ensuring software design security and looking for oversights. The stakeholders should be willing to spending financial resources because in this case, the experts play the role of potential attackers that may be able to compromise the software and get access to either personal or delicate data that belongs to the members of the organization (Bischofberger & Pomberger, 2012).
In a situation like this, developers may be seen as problem-solvers that are not guided properly and may miss out on a critical aspect of security. Therefore, spending money on the staff that understands the way the system functions may be a vital benefit. If the team knows the strengths and weaknesses of the system, they will be able to engage in proactive actions and protect the software from being exploited. The safety of the application may also depend on the context of the issues that are identified throughout the process of software analysis and the level of employee expertise. This knowledge has to be disseminated among the team, and a structured approach to managing software development projects should be used (STRIDE, for example). The stakeholders should also spend money on software development security because threat modeling should be an extensive and in-depth procedure that takes into account each compartment of the developed software. In the case where the team misses the point of a significant attack vector, it will be exposed to devastating hacker attacks that will probably lead the company to bankruptcy or stagnation.
Addressing the Security of Software Design
It is safe to say that appropriate safety measures should be implemented from the very beginning of the project. This means that the process of ensuring software design security should start at the same time with the implementation of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) (Merkow & Raghavan, 2010). This kind of approach is critical because the lack of responsibility may lead to delayed project schedules and reduced employee performance. Therefore, from the inception of any software, the team should be willing to make it secure. Any fraudulent transactions made by malicious entities may lead to the loss of vital information and huge recovery costs (Mead et al., 2009). It is important to implement software design security policies at the earliest stages of SDLC because there is a need to perform a primary risk assessment if the team wants to tackle all the probable issues. Even though each application is bound by its specific requirements, the team’s responsibilities in terms of software design security should always be the same (Kruchten, 2013). This is especially true for the applications that are no publicly accessible and serve as a business-critical asset that contains huge clusters of sensitive data. More risk means more monetary expenditures, so it is only reasonable to review application design security at each stage of the SDLC (Chawla & Kaur, 2014). The quality assurance department should take time and evaluate all the probabilities of being exposed to information technology risks.
Accomplishing Software Design Security
Software design security can be accomplished throughout the stages of the software development lifecycle. The key factor that may contribute to the successful implementation of security measures is the identification of the purpose of the software being developed and the objectives that the team is aiming to achieve by means of this software. Software design security is also based on a set of specific requirements that may revolve around financial investments and long-term goals (Fernandez-Buglioni, 2013). Throughout the development stage, the application is defined and described in order to comply with the engineering objectives. Commonly, this is the most resource-intensive aspect of software design security because the overall base for the future application is developed and envisioned. At the same time, the team should carefully invest money in building a securely designed application at all the stages of SDLC.
For instance, when testing the application, the team may have either to outsource or implement a novel testing application. This will increase the overall costs of the application and put a strain on the company’s budget if the expenditures get out of managerial control. The complexity of investing money in software design security consists in the fact that software testing should be both static and dynamic in nature. Manual testing intended to identify the drawbacks may take too much time and become overly costly for the company (Fernandez-Buglioni, 2013). Nonetheless, the stakeholders are still obliged to invest money in security because it is critical to ensure that not a single hacker can be able to exploit the application. There is a way to minimize the overall amount of investments. This program is called Veracode. It allows the end-user to verify the state of security within a matter of minutes without utilizing any additional hardware, software, or members of the team. Therefore, the money should be invested in software design security throughout all the stages of software development. Otherwise, the team will be exposed to the issue of being breached.
References
Bischofberger, W. R., & Pomberger, G. (2012). Prototyping-oriented software development: Concepts and tools. New York, NY: Springer.
Chawla, D., & Kaur, M. (2014). System & web based modeling for secure software development. International Journal of Computer Technology and Applications, 5(1), 257-264.
Fernandez-Buglioni, E. (2013). Security patterns in practice: Designing secure architectures using software patterns. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Kruchten, P. (2013). Contextualizing agile software development. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, 25(4), 351-361.
Mead, N. R., Allen, J. H., Conklin, W. A., Drommi, A., Harrison, J., Ingalsbe, J.,… Shoemaker, D. (2009). Making the business case for software assurance. Web.
Merkow, M. S., & Raghavan, L. (2010). Secure and resilient software development. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.