Continuous software security through security prioritisation meetings

Abstract

Software security needs to be a continuous endeavour in current software development practices. Frequent software updates, paired with an ongoing flow of security breaches, requires software companies to address software security throughout development and post deployment. Prescriptive software security approaches do not match well with agile software development and its emphasis on self-management. Agile approaches are however in favour of meetings as a coordination and problem-solving strategy. This article investigates the role of regular security meetings centred on making security priorities and decisions for achieving continuous software security. Through technical action research and an observational case study, we studied variations of such meetings in three companies. We found that such meetings can reach key stakeholders, make security more visible, and contribute to ongoing security prioritisation. Thus, security meetings are a promising approach, especially for small and medium sized development companies with basic yet immature security competence. Future research should investigate further the role of such meetings and how best to organise them for different contexts and needs. For this we outline implications for research and practice, e.g., related to participants and how to organise the discussions and prioritisations in the meeting.