What is software security assurance? Is it must for a software developed to meet security standards? This article brings answer to all such related queries. Software security assurance is a process of making sure that software designed operates at set security standards such that potential harm could not be disastrous. The security standards safeguard software from loss, misuse of data, inaccuracy and resources that controls and protects. A software development company should take care of these standards to protect software from the security issues.
This process starts with recognizing and categorizing of the information used by the software. Categorization is done on basis of sensitivity of data. In lowest category, the impact of security violation is lowest. For top category information, impact of security violation may pose threat to human life or loss to significant assets. The next step is to develop security requirements on categorization of information. It includes access control, data management and data access, human resource security, audit trails and usage records etc.
At the same time, the point to ponder over is why do software security problems arise? It is because of security bugs or so called defects that are made at the time of software development. The common cause to these defects may be either an error in software requirements or failure to fulfil requirements.
A non-conformance (failure to meet requirements) may be simple or complex. There may be coding error or input validation error or subtle timing error. Such errors cause threat to software security. In order to keep these issues at bay, there are several validation and verification techniques that are used to detect them and security assurance techniques to prevent them. Hence, if improvements are made in these techniques, the probability of security issues may be reduced.
The second major source of these problems is omission in software requirements. It is therefore advisable to focus on understanding of software requirements. There should be no communication gap or confusion at this initial stage. If software development requirement passed on to a designer are incorrect, inappropriate or incomplete, errors are likely to occur. Therefore, a software development company should focus on these areas of concern and should be extra active in understanding of the needs.
Keeping the above mentioned problems in minds, software security assurance came into role. The activities involved in software security assurance focus on proper categorizing of information assigned, developing and meeting of appropriate protection needs and controls and protection of software as well as tools and data supported by the software.
Hence, a software development company should ensure that security evaluation and requirement tests should be performed for the software before delivery of the same. A review or audit should be made for software development and various associated operation processes.
Likewise, security should also be given importance at the time of designing of web solutions or customized software; else these issues might throw up all efforts in vain. Web solutions or software development should meet set security standards for smooth and efficient working.
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