Application Development and Secure Coding Policy
- Stella
- Nick Daly
Introduction:
Purpose: The purpose of this policy is to establish the standards for secure application development and coding practices in order to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the company's information systems and data, while also allowing for an agile development process.
Scope: This policy applies to all software development projects, including in-house development and development by third-party suppliers, and to all employees and contractors involved in the development and testing of software.
Secure Development Process:
Requirements Gathering: The development team must gather and document software requirements in accordance with industry best practices, including security requirements. The development team must analyze information security risks and consider these risks when documenting requirements.
Design: The development team must design software with security in mind and must incorporate industry best practices for secure architecture and design patterns. The design process must consider the security requirements identified during the requirements gathering phase.
Implementation: The development team must implement software in accordance with secure coding standards, including the use of secure coding practices, error handling, and input validation.
Testing: The development team must test software using industry best practices for security testing. This includes, but is not limited to, threat modeling, and code review. The goal of security testing is to identify and remediate security vulnerabilities prior to deployment.
Deployment: The development team must deploy software in accordance with industry best practices for secure configuration and patch management. This includes, but is not limited to, the use of secure configurations, timely application of patches and updates, and the use of firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and other security technologies.
Secure Coding Standards:
Access Control: The development team must implement appropriate access controls to ensure that only authorized individuals can access sensitive data, including identification, authentication, and authorization procedures.
Data Encryption: The development team must encrypt sensitive data in transit and at rest to protect it from unauthorized access, in accordance with the company's encryption policy.
Error Handling: The development team must implement appropriate error handling procedures to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information or system information in the event of an error.
Input Validation: The development team must validate user input to prevent attacks such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection.
Security Logging: The development team must implement security logging to provide a record of security-related events, including successful and unsuccessful attempts to access sensitive data.
Responsibility:
Development Team: The software development team is responsible for ensuring that software is developed in accordance with this policy, including secure coding standards and secure development practices.
Management: Management is responsible for ensuring that the development team has the resources and training required to comply with this policy.
Quality Assurance: The quality assurance team is responsible for conducting security testing of software to identify and remediate security vulnerabilities prior to deployment.
Compliance:
Audits: The company may conduct regular audits of software development projects to ensure compliance with this policy.
Remediation:
The development team must take remedial action to address any non-compliance issues identified during an audit.