What are the most effective ways to secure software development?

In my opinion, security has to be thought of right from the beginning i.e. planning stage. One has to think as to what are the likely uses of this software, the sensitivity of users and start development procedure accordingly. As is said, it's difficult to place new doors after a house is already constructed similarly security can't come as an after thought rather it has to be there from the very beginning To conclude I will say that the thought of security should come into play along with the first thought of software requirements and development

The software development process is crucial for preventing vulnerabilities, protecting data, and ensuring application integrity. To enhance security, organizations should implement secure coding practices, regular code reviews, a Secure Development Lifecycle, security training, and use least privilege principles. This can reduce the risk of security breaches and improve overall security posture.

Here the most important is that if using open source codes use from trusted libraries and also keep track of updates or changes if any. Further if a piece of code has already been used and if similar function is to be achieved, reuse the same code. This will help to later make changes and updates if required Watch out against backdoors and check thoroughly To conclude I will say reuse code, use trusted libraries, don't save sensitive info in repository and guard against backdoors

In most cases, you don't need to send sensitive data with the deployment itself, so encryption is secondary, but still, all traffic and communication between your deployment service and the client should be encrypted. On the other hand, hashes are very important to make sure you are using trusted installers. Another point here is to use only trusted sources for your downloads to minimize the possibility of supply chain attacks.

Encryption and hashing in my opinion serve two different purposes. Encryption protects the code content whereas hashing serves to guard against unauthorised changes in code if made my any malicious actor in a code which is available for download. A user who downloads a code can generate hash of the code with known hashing alho and match it against the provided hash to see if there is any mismatch in hash value To conclude I will say use what is applicable whether encryption or hashing, further it's best to use both together as both actually serve different purpose Best wishes

Most important thing in this is that if possible the auditing should not be done by people who have been associated with development of code. These people although not necessarily but may have some bias. As far as possible use third party auditing for the code to overcome conflict of interest Further to conclude I will add that auditing is the final check and hence should be done diligently and deliberately. If possible use professional third party auditors for unbiased check

Businesses worth millions of dollars are known to have closed down owing to cyberattacks which are on known vulnerabilities for which updates were issued. Its just that no one paid attention and it somehow got missed and the entire organisation was put to risk Patches and updates should be applied as a habit and should not be missed. Updates and patches should be provided in a push model to users rather than users working in a pull model seeking updates To conclude the thing, pls pay attention to update and patches like you would to anything which if ignored can close down business.

Security is not an afterthought, it needs to be embedded from the start of the development (or even innovation cycle). This means that every team member needs to be educated and trained on the security mechanisms, while technology needs to be put in place to allow security to be embedded and enforced in every step of the development cycle . All this is surrounded by security governance.

I received a ph call 4m d grp HR head of a large Entertaiment org. that has a large presence in d OTT industry.He sounded very disturbed about d constant conflict & diference of opinion btw Cyber Sec team and SW Devs. Most of d content that neds 2 be released on d OTT are driven by d mkting team who work on tight schedules & d presure is on d devs. Revenue is @ stake. Devs dont get a quick go ahd 4m d Cyber Sec team to release d prod. Every1 is right 4m where they stand. I sugested that both teams shud undergo training to understand each others perspective,understand d proces each folows & ultimately how both d team are intrdepndent. At d end of it, both d teams colaborated & ensured they combine strengths to achieve & organizational goal.