Secure Coding – With the scare of recent cyber crimes and leaks occurring over the internet even with the deepest firewall security in place, developers are required to rely on prohibiting their code from being the subject to malice from the roots. This protocol defined as secure coding primarily relies on the writing code and developing programs that are resilient and not prone to attack by Trojan viruses and malware. This security also prevents mass cyber attacks that link private company computers to local servers for a business thereby dispersing confidential and private company information through the attack leading to major issues including complete shutdown and compromising of business data.
Targets
As far as targets are concerned, every program can be a potential target and source of information. As is the case with most attackers, they will try to find spots of vulnerability in your server firewalls and use that to corrupt server data, steal information, gain unauthorized yet complete access to all data, and even to the extent of gaining control of your computer. For businesses, even a minor attack can lead to loss of key client data close to millions of dollars.
Principles
Incorporating the secure coding practices while writing code is to be done as per the principles and requirements of the software. The nature of threats to the software have to be accessed to develop smarter solutions. Without thorough planning, the secure coding practices would be rendered useless to fix the code vulnerabilities.
• Validating Inputs
• Encoded Output
• Managing passwords through authenticated sources
• Manage Sessions
• Control for access to code
• Use of cryptography
• Log and report errors
• Secure, encrypted communication
• Configuring systems
• Secure database management
• File and memory disk Management
• Best Coding Practices
Secure Coding Practices
• Approved secure code, tested for authenticity to be used over new, unauthenticated code.
• Built-in stock specific APIs to be used for tasks that are directed to the Operating System directly.
• Check for integrity of code and extended configuration files using checksums or hashes
• Lock to prevent simultaneous access
• Protect variables and resources from cross-access
• Extended privileges are to be used and dropped immediately
• Avoid calculation errors during code writing
• Restriction of users from extending or rewriting existing code with their own
• Review third party code before development of programs for secure coding compliance
• Safe, encrypted channels for updating along with cryptography security
