Secure by Design: Engineering Principles for Building Secure Applications from Day One

Given the advanced and long-lasting nature of cyber threats infiltrating our complex world, security’s role in building secure applications from the ground up can’t be overemphasized.

Henry Williams, a Senior Software Engineer with more than five years of experience, has based his professional foundation on a very real concept: security shouldn’t be viewed as a secondary consideration to add in after the fact, but as a cornerstone on which applications should have been built.

It’s only by this approach that security stops being viewed as a product feature but becomes a foundational quality of the program’s overall architecture, shaping decision after decision, from the very first line of code through deployment and into maintenance.

The conventional approach to application security often involves discovery of vulnerabilities in the latter stages of the development lifecycle or, more harmfully, after deployment of an application.

The reactive nature of this approach yields labor-intensive security patches, compliance issues, and a continuous challenge to stay ahead of new threats.

Henry has long promoted a shift towards a proactive approach in which security issues are built into a natural aspect of each phase of the software development lifecycle. Not only this, but this approach reduces vulnerabilities and creates more robust, stable applications.

Right from the beginning of software development, Henry gives equal weight to security requirements as to performance and functionality requirements. He incorporates security risk modeling into the development process so as to catch possible attack vectors well ahead of development’s kickoff. The process involves tracing data flow across the system, researching its vulnerabilities, as well as how to protect against them by using cryptographic methods, access controls, as well as secure data protocols.

Henry follows robust secure coding practices throughout development to address common vulnerabilities such as injection attacks, broken authentication, and insecure direct object references.

He handles sensitive information with great care at all times, using encryption both when data rests and when it’s in motion, as well as implementing strong access controls to limit exposure as much as possible.

Not only does his coding approach prioritize remediation of vulnerabilities when they are encountered, but also actively prevents against such vulnerabilities by applying well-known engineering principles

Security testing is a critical part of Henry’s process and is not an afterthought. He consistently incorporates security testing tools into continuous integration and deployment pipelines, thus ensuring that all code commits are thoroughly tested for vulnerabilities.

To augment this process with automation, he also performs regular manual code reviews and penetration testing to find vulnerabilities that automated tools might possibly miss. With this extensive testing approach, security vulnerabilities are discovered and resolved well ahead of their possible exploitation in a production setting.

Henry has a watchful eye as applications move from development into deployment, securing the underlying infrastructure. He works with a principle of least-privilege, where each service of a system runs with only those permissions needed to fulfill its particular task.

He scaled applications based on zero trust, where authenticity and vetting are constantly checked and not assumed. Through containerization and following infrastructure-as-code security best practices, he ensures that applications are insulated against misconfigurations, which are among the yielding causes of security breaches.

Along with his role of incorporating, Henry acts as a continuous advocate of scaling a security-focused culture among development teams.

He believes security to be a shared responsibility and spends a lot of time coaching junior engineers with secure coding practices, focusing on not just technical practices in secure coding but also on why security controls are important.

In addition, he works constantly with security teams to bring development projects in line with company security strategy, thus guaranteeing programs follow technical guidelines as well as industry and regulatory guidelines.

Henry’s approach to security-first software development has brought tangible dividends to the organizations he has worked with.

Due to his expertise in writing applications with security and performance as an integral aspect, security breaches are reduced, system resiliency has been improved, and end-user trust has been enhanced.

With security considerations built into the early stages of software development, he is setting a new standard in application development, proving security as an enabler of better and more robust software and not an inhibitor of innovation.