Developing Secure Custom Software in a Cyber Threat Landscape

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Businesses tend to rely on various software-based solutions and digital technologies in order to achieve higher operational efficiency and performance. The custom software development is a method to tailor-made software solutions as per business’s unique and exclusive needs. Businesses can also invest in custom software development to level up their defense against the increasing cyber threats and growing security concerns. The cyber security has become the biggest concern for present day businesses and customers alike. The custom software development enable businesses to incorporate various innovative and personalized features to align the app with their needs. Similarly businesses can also incorporate advanced security measures and protective features to elevate the security of their software application.

The custom software development offers more flexibility and control in designing and development process which enable businesses to incorporate a range of security features throughout the development process. This help businesses to deal with increasingly sophisticated and ever evolving security threats. The cyber security is crucial to protect digital assets as well as any business’s reputation. If a small data breach occurs which compromises even least important internal data, even this could have done staggering damage to the business’s reputation. Because the customers will instantly loose trust if they find their favorite brand got data-breach. In this blog we will discuss how custom software development helps elevating the security and strengthen businesses against cyber threats.

Developing Secure Custom Software in a Cyber Threat Landscape

Understanding the Cyber Threats Businesses are Facing Regularly

The cyber threats businesses had to deal with are evolving, from phishing, to DDoS attacks, malwares, SQL Injection and highly sophisticated ransomware, these all are a few of most common threats. With the passage of time the techniques and tools used to perform such attacks have become highly sophisticated and advanced. Moreover there are cyber-attacks related to IoTs and in some cases there are insider attacks. The insider attacks are mostly unintentional where an employee or contractor who have access to sensitive data got attacked. Whatever the case is the cyber threats are increasing greatly and becoming more challenging day by day. Apart from these there are several other cyber threats that businesses need to handle such as cross-site scripting, identity-based attacks, and much more.

For example, where the cloud is transforming digital landscape, the security challenges are paramount due to distributed ownership, authority and various other aspects. All these threats are increasing the chances of getting compromised. Furthermore as the AI is rapidly progressing and infusing into almost every digital technology it could. The malicious actors are also seem to exploiting the AI to enhance their attacks. In such situations the custom software development can provide an extra layer of security due to its flexible approach towards structure, technology platforms and control over each and every aspects of the software development and operation. The custom software development also enable businesses to utilize proven coding practices, frameworks, platforms and software stacks to boost security.

Understanding the Cyber Threats Businesses are Facing Regularly

How Custom Software Development Help Boosting the Security of Digital Assets

The custom software development empower businesses in building software solution from ground up, where this enable businesses to incorporate innovative features, it also help building better security features. The bespoke approach always offer better flexibility and control which enable the developers to introduce more security features and build multiple layers of security to deal with the exclusive and unique challenges and vulnerabilities. Here are some key aspects of custom software development which help enhancing and improving the security of the applications:

Custom Software Development: Secure Coding

The secure coding doesn’t represent a framework or tool but in fact it is a practice and technique which complies the programmer’s decisions while creating source code and building the software applications. Although the secure coding techniques ensures that the programmer or coder minimize the possibilities of having vulnerabilities in the software program. As industry standard or best practices you can effectively implement the OWASP Secure Coding Standards or SEI CERT Coding Standards within your custom software development project. Secure coding doesn’t mean using specialized programming languages, for example, the secure coding mandates “default deny” permission approach, and it means all the permissions are denied until specified otherwise.

Here are a few crucial areas to consider and understand for secure coding:

Security by Design: The security by design refers to the two areas, one the security is the top priority during the entire software development life cycle. Second it refers to prioritizing the security over the design aspects. For example, the CSS and JS needed to be secured in case of web-based software application.
Strong Passwords: The password and login credentials are the most common area users got exploited. Therefore including two factor authentication and adopting encrypted password storing methods could greatly enhance the security. Implementing strong and long password with enabling protection on wrong attempts and two factor are essential for present day software.
Access Control: Often the developers doesn’t realize but the access control can significantly elevate or compromise the security of your software application. It is a standard to have implemented the “default deny” approach which means all the permissions will be denied until granted. This could make data protected and access to it difficult for the malicious actors.
Error Logging: The error logging and error handling are the two most effective practices to improve the software security. The errors refer to the bugs in the system and the bugs result in vulnerabilities. Hence closely monitoring the bugs, error logs and managing the errors could lead to great improvements in software and strengthening its security.
Environment Configurations: If your custom software is managed in multiple environment such as production and development or staging environment. It is crucial to align both and always keep both up-to-date. The software, frameworks, operating systems, services, and everything should be up-to-date and all the patches should be applied to date.
Threat Modeling: Threat modeling is a multi-stage process involving various techniques, tools and mainly the deeper analysis of the software. The objective of threat modeling is to identify the areas or aspect of your custom software which are more susceptible to exploitation. This will help you upgrading the software and enabling highest security measures within your application.
I/O Validation: The input/output validation is crucial for every custom software application. It is crucial to deploy encoding methods at the outputs and strict validations at the inputs throughout the custom software development lifecycle. The inputs and outputs are the two crucial areas hence need to be secure and well protected.

The secure coding practices are essential to elevate the security of your customized software applications. The software development team has to choose the right platforms, software stacks and above all the mindset to prioritize the security throughout the entire software development lifecycle.

Custom Software Development: Secure Coding

Custom Software Development: Strong Data Encryption

The data encryption is something that has become almost essential in present day. It is crucial to utilize encryption algorithms at various levels. This helps ensuring strong encryption at both stages, data in transit and data at rest. The data in transit means the data in transmitted into server and user interface/device and the data at rest means the data that is being stored at the server or at the user device. Furthermore the end-to-end encryption is also widely used in modern software development, it ensures the data/information transmitted between two terminals, devices or server and client is encrypted and only the recipient has the decryption key.

The encryption is implemented by a very sophisticated encryption algorithms and mathematical operations which generates a random encryption key and that key is so complex that it could take trillions of years for a classical computer to test all the combination to unlock it without having the right encryption key. Therefore the encryption can provide a great protection against even some advanced level cyber-attacks. There are several encryption methods and strategies which can be implemented during the custom software development lifecycle.

Custom Software Development: Strong Data Encryption

Custom Software Development: Third-Party Tools and Resources

It is a common practice in the custom software development to use the third-party tools, resources, libraries and elements to expedite the development process. However, where this speed up everything it also increase the vulnerabilities. Using third-party tools, resources, libraries and other design elements could compromise the security of your customized software application. Most of the time developers tend to find free resources online at various forums and website – which often are posted by other developers and are not properly optimized for security. This is why using such resources, libraries and tools could make your application vulnerable for cross-site scripting, malware attach, SQL injection, etc.

It is always important to carefully inspect the third-party components, codes, resources and elements. Moreover it is crucial to carefully consider the front-end and back-end related tools to ensure perfect alignment and no loophole. Both the design and algorithms should be carefully inspected before using them and after integrating them a critical review/testing should be done with security in mind. Furthermore it is important to understand the vendor of these components to ensure regular upgrades, patches and protection support by the vendor.

Custom Software Development: Third-Party Tools and Resources

Custom Software Development: Insider Threats

The insider threats are always a concern for any enterprise. Most of the times it is not attentional, sometime employees, contractors or the people who have access to the software get attacked by cyber criminals and resultantly enable them access to the sensitive data of the organization. Traditionally the employees or contractor who have access to the system either access it outside of the organizational network or either their computer got attacked by malware. These malwares can silently stay on a computer quietly transmitting data to their source from a hidden backdoor. When the cyber-criminal acquire enough information they try to access the organization’s data.

Businesses often focus on outsider cyber-threats while undermining the importance of insider threats. With the custom software development you can build various checks and controls to prevent or effectively minimize the insider threats. You can also customize your software application to further reduce the impact of an insider attack, whether attentional or unintentional. You can have multi-factor authentication, personalized profiles with limited access to data and much more. The custom software development offer more space to minimize and handle the insider threats.

Custom Software Development: Insider Threats

Conclusion

As the internet and digital solutions are integrating within modern day business landscape the need of security and number of cyber-attacks is rising. Businesses of all industries, sizes and types are in a constant pressure of dealing with the cyber-security. These day’s businesses are heavily relying on digital solutions and software application in order to effectively run their daily operations. These software solutions where boosting efficiency and productivity are also causing various security threats. These software applications are evolving day by day, the cloud computing, IoTs, AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning), and integrated information infrastructure have completely revolutionized the software solutions.

Where these software solutions are becoming more advanced and impactful the cyber-attacks are also evolving and becoming much more sophisticated and impactful. The cyber-criminals are utilizing cutting-edge technologies and state-of-the-art tools to exploit the vulnerabilities for their malicious intent. We have witnessed some large-scale world-wide cyber-attacks involving malware, ransomware, and other sophisticated attacks. This poses a serious threat as any such data breach could potentially ruin a business’s reputation and brad image. Therefore businesses are now taking interest in custom software development which provides more control and flexibility at the software development cycle and enable businesses to incorporate highly advanced security features.

The custom software development lifecycle enable businesses to adopt secure coding practices which involves prioritizing the security from the very first step up-till the end of the development lifecycle. The custom software development allow businesses to implement strict password policies, implement multi-factor logins and secure authentication. Furthermore the custom software development allow the developers to take necessary measures and build features which not only help preventing the data-breach but also help them to contain and minimize the impact and effect of the any such data-breaches.

In this blog we have discussed briefly about the cyber-threats a business is facing on daily-bases and we have also discussed how the custom software development can help businesses to make their software and application more secure and well-equipped to deal with present day cyber-threats. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want our help to build a highly secure and effective customized software application for your business or organization, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

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