As melhores práticas para codificação segura

Best practices for secure coding

When it comes to developing websites, applications and software in modern times, security must be at the forefront of every conversation. How can development teams and customers apply this to protect everyone involved?

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When someone hires builders to build a new building, they expect the builder to ensure the highest safety standards to avoid as many problems as possible. It's safe to say that if that same person walked into their new home and saw a cracked foundation and no door, they would have a little more than a little trouble with the builders.

In the same vein, customers expect their companies or software development teams to ensure that their code for a new project complies with the most rigorous cybersecurity practices available to protect their business. Secure coding standards help ensure that developers follow robust practices for preventing vulnerabilities. The ultimate goal is to make it difficult for hackers to access sensitive data, install ransomware, and wreak havoc with cyber threats.

What are secure coding standards and practices?

Secure coding standards are the coding practices, decisions, and techniques used by developers throughout the software, application, and website development lifecycle. Its goal is quite simple: to ensure that developers write and use code that helps protect both the software owner and its users by minimizing security vulnerabilities.

There is typically more than one way to perform any given development task, which also means varying levels of complexity for the tasks. This also means that some solutions are safer than others. Secure coding standards help developers and development teams choose the most secure approach possible, even if it's not the fastest path.

While companies and business owners know the value of rapid development and want to minimize time to market, they must also remain aware of these safe practices for the sake of their livelihoods. The news is the best place for business owners to see the value of these practices in real time, as many companies suffer from data breaches and cyberattacks due to less secure code. Many never recover from them.

Best practices for secure coding

In response to the slew of devastating cyberattacks and the ongoing development of methods for such attacks, the Open Web Application Security Project (or OWASP for short) has produced a set of guidelines or “best practices” for secure coding in the modern world. These guidelines help developers keep the software development lifecycle as secure as possible while preparing for the threats that await them once they are put into production.

Some of the key practices for secure coding include:

  • Password Management – ​​Passwords are definitely a weak access point for hackers. Low-complexity passwords take a terribly short time to crack, and secure ones take some time, but are still viable. Fortunately, organizations in recent years have realized that this is an insecure area of ​​their technologies and have instituted multi-factor or two-factor authentication.
    Companies must ensure that everyone involved in development (and beyond) applies best practices for choosing complex, appropriately sized passwords to best resist an attack. For developers, this means having users choose the most secure passwords to use with their products, disabling password entry after multiple incorrect attempts, and never storing passwords in plain text.
  • Security by design – The “security by design” approach to coding makes security the top priority during development, rather than some sort of afterthought once development begins. Sometimes companies choose other priorities, such as optimizing for development speed, over security. They typically pay for it in some way later, due to a data breach or hack.
    The security-by-design approach helps reduce the future cost of technical debt while mitigating risks before they happen. Throughout the Software Development Lifecycle, developers should take the time to perform source code reviews and implement security automation whenever possible.
  • Access control – By making the default response a denial of sensitive data, companies help prevent future data breaches. This access control includes restricting access to only those who truly need it and limiting sensitive data privileges to those who have access. Additionally, developers should also not allow business functions to dictate access. Managers often have less technical training but more access, which is dangerous.
  • Validate data input – Developers must ensure that their forms collect only supported data formats per form field and validate all input fields for length, range, character sets, expected data types, and character encoding. By filtering out dangerous blacklist characters such as parentheses and special characters, they help prevent hackers from finding a way to access data. Developers have the ability to handle this in a few different ways. This includes encoding data to ensure proper handling of special characters, using regular expressions to ensure data uses the expected character, and parameterizing database queries to prevent database theft, cleansing, or modification.
  • System Configuration, Patching, and Vulnerability Management – ​​While this is not exactly a “development” aspect of software and application development, each member of the development team must clean their systems of any unnecessary components. They should also take the time to update all of their tools, software, and platforms with the latest versions and patches. Outdated software paves the way for hackers due to vulnerabilities and bugs.
    On the other hand, they must also ensure the release of patches and versions for the software that development teams develop on their own. This helps protect the integrity and reputation of the company, as well as the private data of end users. Creating and releasing regular updates is one of the most important secure coding practices out there.

While this is not a comprehensive list of all secure coding best practices, these are important factors that help prevent businesses from falling victim to digital criminals and cyberthreats. By adhering to them, in addition to the full list of OWASP recommendations, development teams have the tools they need to protect their code, end-user information, and their company.

Source: BairesDev

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