It’s hard to create secure software, but it is essential for protecting the data and operations of businesses. New Relic recently hosted a Twitter Space with Harry Kimpel from Snyk and Frank Dornberger from movingimage to discuss LANsense how software engineers can create an attitude of security that will produce reliable, production-ready applications.
As part of that discussion, we came up with eight ways for developers to adopt a security-minded mindset and develop more secure applications. The following tips are based on that conversation and other research into how to ensure that your company’s software is as secure as you can.
Make sure that your employees are aware of how to identify and fix security holes in their code. Make sure they are trained, including safe coding practices and ways to guard against common threats like phishing. Plan regular, cross functional gatherings to introduce new vulnerabilities and threats to your team. This gives your developers the chance to collaborate with other teams who are facing similar issues.
Create a knowledge base and a documentation of the security policies for software within your company. This allows your employees to refer back to it when they are writing code, and will ensure that everyone understands the rules.
Be aware of the security risks when using third-party libraries or components in your applications. If they’re not regularly updated there’s a significant likelihood of them having security flaws that could be exploited by cybercriminals. Use a tool that checks for dependencies and libraries in your source code in order to find any issues.