Secure software development: a prescriptive framework

Abstract

As software development becomes more complex, security issues have an ever greater influence on software quality. Insecure software harms an organisation's reputation, increases costs and delays other development efforts. There is an urgent need for a change, to create a culture that factors in software security from the very beginning. A prescriptive framework, proposed by Dr Raees Khan, would equip software developers with easy-to-follow security guidelines in each phase while incorporating security during development. As software development becomes more complex, distributed and concurrent, security issues have an ever greater influence on software quality. 1 Insecure software harms an organisation's reputation with customers, partners and investors; it increases costs, as companies are forced to repair unreliable applications; and it delays other development efforts as limited resources are assigned to address current software deficiencies. Vulnerable software can be invaded and modified to cause damage to previously healthy software, and infected software can replicate itself and be carried across networks to cause damage in other systems.