THE AUTHOR:
Digital security is a significant concern within the IT community and business leaders. Cyber attacks can cause immense financial and digital architectural damage. Therefore, software development should take a zero-tolerance approach to security-related bugs.
When we bring up security measures in project development, it implies a vast field for reflection. According to a Statista chart, in 2022, many companies expect an increase in cyber attacks, especially cloud services and software updates. We also see ransomware, software and hardware supply chain attacks, business email compromises, crypto mining, etc., as high threats.
Project Security Measures and Types
1. Hardware Security
Hardware security is a security measure that a cloud provider (AWS) is responsible for. The provider’s responsibility is to secure physical access to hardware, continuously detecting component attacks such as Meltdown and external or internal threats.
2. Hardware Availability
It’s the provider’s responsibility to deliver hardware and its seamless virtualization. Detect workloads and non-secure configurations in time so that engineers can perform remediation.
3. Operating System Security
A secure operating system must provide confidentiality, availability, and integrity. An operating system is considered safe if it allows for means to protect against major classes of threats. In addition, a secure OS must contain safeguards against accidental or deliberate failure of the OS. Cloud providers (AWS) are responsible for OS security updates and OS security default software.
4. Operating System Availability
As in the previous paragraphs, the Cloud provider is responsible for Operating System Availability. The main task is to ensure that the system for software development projects runs stably in real-time. In addition, allow the IT infrastructure to function even if one of the components fails.
5. Clock Synchronization
The DevOps team needs all systems to share a standard time using a synchronized time service protocol (NTP). Coordinating disparate clocks on different devices helps admins track an incident in real-time. In addition, the response speed is essential for attack protection or timely reaction.
6. DevOps Flow Configuration Security
DevOps protects container and microservices components of Kubernetes, Docker, and use AWS services for continuance.
7. Network Security
Network security, port protection, private/public network configuration, and VPN are critical. With tools provided by the cloud provider, increased network reliability, effective security management, and protection against constantly evolving threats and new attack methods are handled by DevOps again.
8. Communication Channel Security
Communication channels are secured through the use of SSLs for all communications on the public network. Tools and certificates are delivered by the cloud provider, while the company’s DevOps have to make configurations.
9. Code-level Security
When it comes to Auto code review in CI/CD flow, a company’s technical lead usually assumes responsibility on a par with DevOps. Their responsibilities include checking for continuous integration, code delivery and deployment, and finding bugs on time.
10. Keys and Storage Security
The cloud provider provides DevOps with certificates and tools to use the key manager and store data, secret credentials, and keys in septal storage.
11. Deploy Security
Deployment security testing is significant. DevOps usually performs automated security testing and check all human access to them.
12. DDos and Flood Security
Installing front-end Nginx and banning ICMP and UDP protocols can significantly ease the life of the service. The protection can be provided by a hosting provider, carrier, or cloud provider, which will be distributed, autonomous, and automated. The IТ-infrastructure must fully comply with the volumes needed.
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13. Application Security
Application security is done by detecting, fixing, and preventing vulnerabilities that could be a loophole for intruders. Security measures such as authentication, authorization, protection against physical attack, countering identity matching, protection against fishing, etc., are the responsibility of the development team together with the provider of the tools used.
14. Credentials Protection
The development team should only store the password in salt and hash format to protect the application as a security measure; encrypt the password and then store it in a database. Since the hash function is irreversible, it’s impossible to see the user’s password even if someone opens the database. If the password is encrypted, the table lookup method will not work.
15. User Session Protection
There are various methods of session management. In client-server-type systems, improper protection will lead to vulnerable accounts to unauthorized access. The development team should use server-side tokens with valid private network storage. Storing the creation date of the token and tracking changes is also a security measure.
16. User/Administrator Permission System Security
The User/Admin System’s security is accomplished by allocating required accesses, rights, and abilities. Electronic access control uses the power of computers to solve problems related to restrictions. Conditional “mechanical locks and keys” impose protection measures. The electronic system determines whether users or admins can access the protected area based on authorization granted.
17. Services Permission System Security
The team must use private network access for internal services only as a digital security measure. The system access token must be used on the internal network and SSL on the private web for inter-service communication. Only the roles requested for each service should be allowed.
18. Data Security
Data security measures are at the forefront of every project development. They imply a set of data security methods that developers take to protect against unauthorized access, integrity violations, and loss. Developers store sensitive data in a separate repository; encryption is used for this purpose.
19. Backup Systems
Data protection involves backing up data. There are three parties involved: the software development services, the client team, and the cloud provider. A backup will allow recovery in case of loss or breaches. Therefore, protecting data from hardware failures, human errors, viruses and cyber-attacks becomes extremely important. As a recommendation, data should be stored for seven years. Asymmetric cryptography helps to encrypt the data. In addition, it’s better to keep the data on at least two sources: the cloud and the client`s source.
20. Logging System
Keep a security log to keep software development projects’ systems secure from unauthorized access. Developers can track information related to the security of a computer system. It’s recommended to collect and store these logs and use a notification system based on them.
21. Production environment protection
Protecting the development environment depends on the combined efforts of the developers and the client. Therefore, confidentiality developers must strictly maintain and grant access only to designated individuals on the client-side so that information does not fall into the public domain or malicious hands.
22. Social Engineering
Developers should create project protection at the User Experience level. Users must be informed about risks like criminal schemes; fishing as an example. It’s necessary to educate them on links from unknown or suspicious sources in emails, and to double-check domains before entering data.
23. Human Resources
These are project security measures implemented by developers and the client. Developers should use restricted access to project data so that unauthorized persons do not have access to production data. The client needs to sign an NDA with the developer, and the developer should sign an NDA with the employees working on the project to prevent the dissemination of sensitive information to unauthorized persons.
If you have concerns about the security of your project, contact us now at info@computools.com.
Computools was selected through an RFP process. They were shortlisted and selected from between 5 other suppliers. Computools has worked thoroughly and timely to solve all security issues and launch as agreed. Their expertise is impressive.