How To Secure Your Custom Software Development Pipeline

There are several steps to secure your custom software development. Every year, businesses lose millions of businesses during catastrophic security breaches, cyberattacks, and phishing scams. Few companies can manage that financial hit along with customer loss and reputation damage. Even worse, these major security threats often leave companies at a higher risk of a lawsuit. As a developer yourself, you need to be well-versed in high-level software security measures needed to protect your organization’s tech infrastructure. This way, you can protect enterprise systems from unauthorized access and inspire stakeholder confidence throughout your organization. Read on to discover how to secure your custom software development.

Document Security Policies

First, document a comprehensive security policy to protect your custom software development pipeline. Ensure all team members read, comprehend, and sign the policies before working on your software project.  In the documentation, identify development risks, emphasize patching requirements, and discuss strategies to mitigate potential vulnerabilities. Afterward, you can organize these protocols into a formalized process and share the documentation with new hires. This way, the entire development team is up-to-date on software development security protocols and defense mechanisms. Certainly, document a structured, well-defined security policy to protect your custom software development and delivery pipeline.

Invest In Secure Development Tools

In addition, invest in secure development tools, programming resources, and supporting technologies to defend your software engineering pipeline. There’s a wide range of solutions you can use to promote software security and defense. For example, many developers use a Docker registry by JFrog to securely manage development, perform vulnerability analyses, and conduct artifact flow control. This allows you to share Docker images across your business with fine-grained access control. Leveraging this functionality, you’ll be able to automate core development processes, bolster strong collaboration, and optimize pipeline security. Plus, you can use this universal solution to optimize end-to-end software builds. Surely, invest in secure development tools and programming technologies to secure your custom software pipeline.

Validate Data Inputs

Next, validate data inputs to promote security throughout your custom software pipeline. Data input validation requires you to regularly screen outside data. Of course, this is highly effective in preventing injection attacks, compromised systems, and memory leaks. In addition, you’ll need to inspect server data, communicate with teams, and run security inspections as well. Moreover, dedicate time to review inputted data like uploaded files, parameters, and cookies. Plus, consider creating a whitelist approval process to inspect, verify, and validate data inputs prior to upload. These protocols will deem the data safe before it can be consumed. As a result, you can prevent improperly formed and dangerous data from entering your software. Certainly, validate data inputs to protect your custom software development pipeline.

Implement Vulnerability Scans

Implementing vulnerability scans is another great way to protect your custom software development pipeline. Enforce frequent vulnerability tests to locate bugs, security issues, and areas of weakness within your software. These inspections will prevent potential threats like SQL injections, insecure defaults, and faulty authentication mechanisms. To save time, automate your vulnerability scans. Then, you can gauge risk severeness through instant alerts. You can also integrate automatic scanning solutions that generate security reports. As a result, you can document impacts on current artifacts and dependency builds. Definitely consider implementing vulnerability scans to secure your custom software development.

Create An Incident Response Plan

Furthermore, you should also consider the operational benefits of drafting an incident response (IR) plan. Within your IR strategy, discuss potential solutions to contain a hack, cyberattack or data breach. It should also feature techniques and mechanisms to fully eradicate software bugs, defects, and errors in the future. You should also document all your existing software recovery solutions and technologies. Moreover, your IR plan needs to include the responsibilities for code storage, analysis, and inspection. With this strategic, organized plan in place, you can highly reduce data breach issues and investigative costs. Definitely, create an incident response plan to protect your custom software development pipeline.

There are various steps you can follow to secure your custom software development pipeline. First, document security policies to ensure your employees follow consistent defense procedures. Next, invest in secure development tools, resources, and programming technologies. If this is working properly, dedicate time to validate data inputs as well. It also really helps to implement vulnerability scans that pinpoint areas of weakness. Furthermore, create a well-structured, documented incident response plan against cyber attacks. This will also help you handle business operations in the event of a threat or breach. Follow these steps to secure your custom software development.