Top 6 security best practices for agile development environments

Introduction 

Software development teams have had to change significantly to cope with the ever-evolving software markets. The high competition in the market has especially pushed firms to adopt agile development methodologies to remain relevant. The traditional waterfall development life cycle has proved inefficient in delivering customer needs in a timely fashion due to its lags. RAD methodologies have hence taken over the industry, with herds of teams altogether abandoning the waterfall SDLC in favor of agile development.

Agile methodologies employ a semi-organic software development process. Small, manageable and cross-functional teams are the norm of the day in an agile development organization. 

The teams, as well as the process, are highly flexible to changes in requirements but susceptible to creating insecure code. Since security in agile development is termed a non-functional requirement, some development teams thus neglect it until later in the process. This exposes the system developed in this process to more and probably severe security-related vulnerabilities. 

However, the situation can be changed by incorporating security-aware development practices throughout the coding process and organizational culture.

Agile SDLC for secure software systems

There are various tips which will eventually improve the security and hence reliability of the systems. Below is a discussion of the top six secure coding tips for agile development environments.

1. Utilize the hacker in that developer

Not every developer is a hacker, but every developer with the right tools, training and mindset can uncover the most common security pitfalls in code. If your systems will be secure, the developers must be empowered through training and the provision of the right tools that will enable them to analyze code before submitting it to quality assurance or testing teams. 

All development team members must be aware of the most common vulnerabilities in each system they (Read more...)