Safe development: what is it and why is it important?
Nowadays, there are several reasons why a company could be a victim of data leaks. Perhaps it was infected by malware that spread through artificial engineering. The flaw could be faulty configuration on a cloud server. However, most incidents of this type keep occurring for a very, very simple reason: the carelessness of developers during the production of their applications and web systems.
Have you ever heard of the concept of secure development? It is a strategy that is increasingly becoming a standard in companies that work with software development. Safe development is nothing more than a set of practices, processes, and tools that aim to create a product that is safe from the beginning, taking into consideration issues regarding cybersecurity, and adopting the classic strategy of "it's better to prevent than to remedy".
Historically speaking, information security is a reactive practice, not a proactive one. Apps and systems are usually developed the fastest way possible, with no concern given to potential bugs, which are taken care of later when someone finds them. Nowadays, this is an ineffective strategy and can result in cyber exposure incidents that are somewhat prejudicial to a company's revenue and image.
Privacy-first
Historically speaking, software and app development does not follow cybersecurity standards. Aiming to release a product on the market as soon as possible (often due to pressure from management) with all possible functionalities, programmers end up making mistakes that go unnoticed but which, in the future, may become doorways for cyber criminals.
There are all kinds of possible vulnerabilities in an app or a web system: insufficient authentication instances, no encryption, parameters that allow malicious code to be injected, poor web server configuration, and so on. After development is concluded, this type of problem is normally only identified when an external actor (malicious, like a criminal; or benign, like an ethical hacker) finds a vulnerability.
Then, more headaches arise. Sometimes the product needs to be taken off the air to make the proper repairs, and any malicious agents, who may have already taken advantage of the breach to spy on its users, need to be dealt with. In times of the General Data Protection Law (LGPD), this is a risk you definitely can't afford to take.
Continuous cycle
As we said before, ideally, secure development is nothing more than a series of processes that should be adopted throughout the project development cycle, with top priority always given to security and privacy. First of all, there is the Governance stage, when all the data protection requirements and needs are defined, in light of the nature of the app or system to be developed.
In the Construction stage, according to the final product design, the team needs to "predict" potential risks and develop some defenses in advance. In the Coding stage, the important thing is to keep a strict testing schedule, performing audits and observing, right from the outset, whether the program can fall victim to some kind of attack.
Lastly, in the Testing phase, more detailed analyses are made, such as the examination of the app or final system by a red team, which will try to exploit the system from the perspective of a cyber criminal. In the Operation stage, the product is probably already available on the market and is continuously evaluated and updated to ensure that the addition of additional features does not create bottlenecks, and that no new loopholes appear.
In conclusion, secure development is giving due consideration to security and privacy in the early stages of the development of a project, building defenses inside the source code, and not just implementing security solutions when the product is ready. It is an essential strategy to reduce the incidence of cyber attacks and to ensure the privacy of its users.
