Security Culture in Software Development

The significance of a positive security culture is more crucial than ever in times of the increasing complexity of business applications and threats. But what does this practically mean? Here are some indicators for a product-oriented development organization that I find helpful: Update: In a previous version of this post, I called the 4. indicator … Read more

Implementing Smart Security Gates in Modern Software Development

In modern software development, there is a strong emphasis on aspects like speed and productivity. At first glance, this may appear to contradict a mechanism like a security gate, which, by definition, interrupts the process. At first glance, this may contradict in contrast to a mechanism like a security gate. That’s why many seem to … Read more

Why Security Champions Are Not the Silver Bullet

Security Champions have been a proven and popular security practice over the years. We’ve learned from initiatives at companies with an AppSec leadership reputation like Netflix, AWS, Adobe, or Salesforce about the remarkable advantages of integrating this role within development teams. This approach is endorsed by industry standards and organizations like SafeCode, OWASP SAMM, and … Read more

Secure Software Lifecycle Management (SSLM)

The concept of integrating security into the software development process is not new. While I cannot definitively assert that Microsoft was the pioneer of this concept, the Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL) published by Microsoft in 2002 undoubtedly laid the foundation for what is now commonly known as a Secure Software Development Lifecycle (Secure SDLC or … Read more

Shifting Security Left by Sharing Ownership & Responsibilities

Many discussions on how to shift security left in the SDLC, or about implementing DevSecOps in particular, are primarily focused on the integration of various security scanning tools in CI/CD pipelines. Although the use of such tools is indeed an important aspect, it is actually not the most important one. Without proper processes, tools often … Read more

SSDLC Quick Wins

Securing the software (development) lifecycle of a large organization will usually take a lot of time. Especially when you have to start very much at the beginning. It’s therefore vital to focus on quick wins first — measures that are effective and easy to implement at the same time. This is not only important from a risk … Read more

Agile Threat Modeling

Combining threat modeling with an agile development methodology such as Scrum is a quite challenging topic: Creating a threat model usually requires an experienced security expert and some effort to do this. But how does this work, when a model can be outdated quickly when new threats are introduced by every new user story and … Read more

Agile Security & SecDevOps Touch Points

Agile software development has gotten more and more attention in the last couple of years. Not only internet startups or media agencies but also large companies from conservative business lines like automotive, banking, insurance, and the public sector are more and more adjusting to the agile world. Since those companies are often already very much … Read more

Create your own Web Security Standard in 60 Minutes

Security requirements for Web applications are vital because they are specifying what a team (e.g. a development team) has actually to do and what not. Many companies are however struggling with implementing such requirements for Web-based applications, at least consisting ones on an organizational level. There are many reasons for that: complexity, lack of know-how, … Read more