There are many best practices for secure software development and software products that are safe to use. Software companies are investing more and more in security, and we have learned much from the mistakes businesses have been making for decades.

Before launching any software, or any update, security should always be a major concern. Even if you are developing software and outsourcing it to a software development company, you should learn what security practices should be followed.

This is our list of the best practices to keep software secure and avoid being a victim of a cybersecurity attack on one of your tools or products.

6 Critical best practices for secure software development

Allow only minimum privileges 

Employees can be a vulnerability in your software. But you can avoid this by allowing minimum access privileges for each user of your system.

This is one of the most essential practices for secure software development and management. As we have seen in many cases that unneeded access privileges can cause huge cyber security attacks.

For example, we have seen this year a huge data breach of Marriott Hotel Group that led to the hacking of 5.2 million guest data, only due to access of certain employees to this data when they shouldn’t have had access to it.

Keep patching and updating software and systems consistently

For many software products, software security is not a one-time process. Even if you aren’t adding more features to your software, security patches are essential to keep your software secure.

Continuous patching keeps your software secure from vulnerabilities. Whether in a code that your teams have written or in an open source code you used, or even an integration.

You also need to develop a software Bill Of Materials (BOM). It will keep you aware of the composition of your software and what components are developed by you or developed by a third party.

These long processes make patching one of the hardest practices for secure software. It is also one of the reasons software development outsourcing can be a better choice for many businesses.

Keep employees trained and educated 

If you are developing a software, developers should be following the best practices for secure software development.

This means that they should be trained on the best secure coding practices, and should be well educated and updated to the latest on this.

You can also invest in hiring a security expert to lead all the operations related to securing your software. Then keep all the efforts for securing the product organized and well managed.

Consider automating repetitive process

You can always consider automation of security monitoring workflows as one of the best practices for secure software development. Automatic analysis of firewall changes and device configurations can help your team focus on more important tasks.

You can also put the right tools in place to track malicious user activity or detect attacks before they occur. So that you save much time and get notified on a scheduled basis with updates on such metrics. Software testing should also be as automated and aligned with security efforts as possible.

Develop an incident response plan

While following the best practices for secure software, you need to never ditch the possibility of a security breach, because it happens to the biggest companies in the software and technology industry.

Having an incident response plan in place is essential. So in case an attack is detected and you want to limit its damages, you will already have a plan with clear steps and procedures.

Invest in an updated security policy 

Security policies are very important. Thus, having an updated security policy for your software is one of the essential best practices for secure software.

Security policies can keep each employee aware of their responsibilities. While you should have this policy, you should also make it an essential part of the on-boarding process of each employee.

Bottom line

There are many best practices for secure software development. We have picked the most critical ones whether for keeping your software more secure or for knowing what to do in case of a data breach.

At B5 Digital, security is one of our top priorities. You can learn more about how we keep each software for each client secure by claiming our free 30-minute consultation.