Stages of a Secure Software Development Lifecycle

Software security has now become a wider concept other than network security. There is a developing common sense that creating secured enough software is not just about individual skills but also or even more on work flows — Software Development Life Cycle. To achieve security requires to be involved in every phase of a Secure Software Development Life Cycle.

Most organizations have a well-defined process with the sole purpose to create, release, and maintain functional software. However, the increasing security concerns and business risks associated with software have brought increased attention to integrate security into the software development process. Implementing a proper secure software development life cycle (SSDLC)

Security risks identified late in the development cycle are costly to fix and trigger several steps that delay application deployment, including:Isolating at-risk code,Patching,Refactoring,Testing.

The following figure depicts various stages of a Secure Software Development Lifecycle

Secure SDLC is set up by adding security-related activities to an existing development process.It can have multiple Stake Holders — some of them can be in Senior Management while some of them can even be at root level (e.g. Software Developers). It is imperative to communicate with these stake holders for the success of the program. Stake holders will differ from organization to organization based on the software development approach that it follows.