Secure Software Factory: Protecting Your Supply Chain

Software supply chains are vital, especially in the modern economy where businesses must compete against each other to ensure continuous delivery for end users and clients. Without a secure and efficient software supply chain, your company will find it difficult to keep up with competitors, produce software on time and protect itself (and end users) from various threats.

You can protect your software supply chain and ensure efficient delivery of products by investing in security practices for your software factory.

What is a ‘Software Factory’?

A software factory isn’t necessarily a manufacturing plant or a real-world environment. Instead, it’s a series of tools, processes and platforms your team uses to regularly and efficiently make software products.

The software factory might be at your business offices, in the cloud or elsewhere. Regardless, it’s where you make all your software products and where many security breaches can spiral out of control.

To protect your supply chain, you need to secure your software factory from top to bottom. Fortunately, there are many ways you can do just that.

Map Your Development Pipeline

For starters, you need to map out your company’s development pipeline. To secure your software supply chain, you need to understand how your pipeline is constructed, how raw materials enter the pipeline and how the pipeline’s different sections feed into and interact with each other.

To do this, make a visual map of the pipeline and all of its entry points. Entry points are areas where software components can be ingested or added to a developing piece of software.

Once you have your software solution’s map laid out, you can then:

  • Determine if there are any weak entry points
  • Figure out the most likely spots for hazards to affect your supply chain
  • Determine if there are improvements to your supply chain you can implement ASAP
  • Address technical debt from third-party components, etc.

Scan for Risks From Third-Party Components

Speaking of third-party components, you must ensure that any third-party tools, platforms or software components don’t have risks that can compromise the rest of your software supply chain.

This is easier said than done, of course. Many software development companies use third-party components and tools to meet their deadlines or produce software solutions for their clients, ranging from antivirus to Windows logs and more. However, those third-party components can have their own security problems that may not have been caught by their original developers or manufacturers.

To avoid these risks, only incorporate new third-party tools and components into your supply chain or development pipeline when you are 100% sure they won’t compromise its overall security.

Don’t Allow Software Security to be (Easily) Bypassed

Security, of course, is also crucial when protecting your software supply chain. To make sure your software factory is never affected by security breaches, you should ensure that security controls and features aren’t easily bypassed or taken over.

For instance, imagine a scenario where one developer wants to meet a deadline during crunch time. But instead of following security procedures and checking for bugs or flaws in a third-party tool, they circumvent security tests to meet that deadline. This is unacceptable and can lead to wide-ranging problems later down the road. 

Furthermore, you should ensure that your pipeline (as mapped earlier) has no issues with construction or governance. If it does, ensure that security procedures can’t be bypassed by in-house developers or bad actors.

Bottom line: All the security measures you undertake for your company must be adhered to by everyone who works in the supply chain. There should be no exceptions for anyone, except perhaps for security chiefs in emergencies.

Consider Who Has Pipeline Access

In a complex project with many people, you might find that your development pipeline has many different access needs. But the more people who have access to your development pipeline, the more potential security breaches you have to anticipate and counteract.

It might be wiser to limit who has total pipeline access. If developers or workers have to access the supply chain, try to limit their access to exactly what they need or their responsibilities. Giving 100% pipeline access is a recipe for disaster.

Even if a developer doesn’t mean to cause a security breach, they could leave the proverbial door open and make a potential hack much easier for a cybercriminal. You wouldn’t leave your crypto wallet open for anyone to use, right? The same principle should apply to development pipelines and access points.

Mandate Software Vulnerability Scanning

Lastly, you can secure your software factory and protect your supply chain by mandating vulnerability scanning. Don’t just scan individual components for vulnerabilities; scan the entire pipeline and supply chain from top to bottom using cloud or in-house security.

Mandated and continuous security tests help to ensure security by:

  • Not leaving the decision to run a vulnerability scan up to any one person. This prevents issues like the above scenario, where a developer hurrying to reach a deadline decides to circumvent a security policy in a rush.
  • Ensuring that vulnerability scans happen consistently, so they are more likely to catch accidental bugs or security breaches.

However, remember that vulnerability scanning is only part of the picture. Someone should oversee the vulnerability scans and analyze the results. Don’t rely too much on AI or machine learning tools to point out issues with your supply chain. Such tools can miss obvious security breaches that human eyes can easily catch.

Conclusion

Investing in a secure software factory is the best way to protect your supply chain, ensure you deliver your products on time and protect your company and end-users from cybersecurity threats. By following each of the practices above, you’ll be well equipped to anticipate and counteract potential breaches now and in the future.

Nahla Davies

Nahla Davies is a software developer and tech writer. Before devoting her work full time to technical writing, she managed—among other intriguing things—to serve as a lead programmer at an Inc. 5,000 experiential branding organization whose clients include Samsung, Time Warner, Netflix, and Sony.

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