Achieving (and Maintaining) Compliance With Secure Software Development Compliance Requirements

1. Achieving (and Maintaining) Compliance With Secure Software Development Compliance Requirements (ISC)² SecureSDLC May 17, 2012

2. Welcome! • Thank you for attending this presentation. • My name is Mike, I’m a software assurance professional. • This enterprise software developer-focused presentation is about working on secure software development compliance requirements.

3. A little bit about software security • What “software security” means, in practice:

4. What are software security requirements? • Software security requirements: • Software security compliancerequirements: Technical requirements, Process requirements Things you owe • Not things you hope or assume got done or exist

5. “Things you owe” • Software security requirements can usually be sorted into three categories: • Source code • Documentation (of secure software development-relatedactivities) • Organizationresponsibility(for security-related infrastructure services)

6. “Things you owe” continued • Usuallysoftware security requirements have severities or penalties associatedwith not meeting them: • E.g., severities: high/medium/low • E.g., penalties: monetary penalties

7. Requirement examples • Here is a notional example of a technical requirement: • “[The application shall not contain] Injection flaws, such as SQL, OS, and LDAP injection, [...].” (OWASP Top Ten 2010, A1-Injection) • Here is a notional example of a process requirement: • “[The application lifescycle shall] Establish release gates for code review.” (OWASP OpenSAMM, CR3B)

8. What compliance means • Achieving and maintaining software security compliance must necessarily be owned by software development teams (i.e. not by information assurance or information security teams).

9. Take compliance seriously • Impacts of not taking compliance seriously are not limited to your application’s users. • Impacts to your business or organization potentially may include: • Litigation resulting from e.g. breach of contract • Very costly repairs to your application • Very costly repairs to interconnected applications • Damage to your business or organization’s reputation, perhaps mission, etc.

10. Getting started, carefully • Looking at compliance from certain different perspectives can help make working on compliance easier. • “Easier” means getting requirements to the point where they can be worked with the same ease and speed as requirements for business functions.

11. Achieving & maintaining compliance • Looking at compliance from three different perspectives, in particular: Enforce secure coding guidelines Track bugs Track progress Plan work Report status

12. Roles & responsbilities • Tracking progress • Enforcing secure coding guidelines • Planning work Owner: software development manager. Owner: lead developer & security buddy Owner: software development manager &security buddy

13. Tracking progress • Getting started: • Establish a compliance target • Define compliance requirements based on your compliance target • Map requirements to things owed • Perform an initial assessment to determine your current compliance posture

14. Tracking progress • Example • The application shall not have OWASP Top Ten vulnerabilities (these are the notional targeted technical requirements) • OWASP OpenSAMM maturity level 3 activities shall be performed before the application is released (these are the notional targeted process requirements)

15. Tracking progress • Example: Shall perform user input validation. Shall perform safe datbase queries. Shall perform milestone code review before the application is released. T10.A1-Injection SAMM.CR3B

16. Tracking progress • Example: User input validation mechanism Parameterized queries Code review report Shall perform user input validation. Shall perform safe datbase queries. Shall perform milestone code review before the application is released.

17. Tracking progress • Example: Thing owed (i.e. deliverable) Spreadsheet

18. A few words about performing an initial assessment • It is strongly advised to perform threat modeling to some extent and then review sampled code, in order to make sure that all security requirements and the overall architecture are considered. • Example: • Decompose your system into components, analyze each component for dependencies, then data flows, • Next establish boundaries and determine applicable security controls based on your requirements.

19. Enforcing secure coding guidelines • Getting started: • Establish security controls • Establish security control usage • Use and retrofit security controls • Repeat steps 1 – 3 as needed.

20. Enforcing secure coding guidelines • Rules of thumb: • Don’t build your own controls! • Do work with your security buddy to ensure security control mechanisms are implemented and work according to industry best practices, and meet your technical compliance requirements.

21. Enforcing secure coding guidelines • Example: Wiki

22. Enforcing secure coding guidelines • Rules of thumb: • Do publish secure coding guidelines to your development wiki and provide training as needed • Don’t forget to plan retrofit development cycles for new or changed security controls. • Do automate secure coding guidelines enforcement to the extent practical.

23. A little bit more on enforcing secure coding guidelines • Enforcing secure coding guidelines doesn’t have to be expensive or hard. • Example:

24. Planning work • Getting started: • Visualize • Limit work • Manage flow • Set policies • Improve iteratively

25. Planning work • Example: Task board

26. Planning work • Rules of thumb: • Do use your task board to make assignments for related work • Do assign compliance security tasks using your existing bug tracking system • Do perform incremental code reviews in between milestone reviews to the extent practical

27. Planning work • Rules of thumb: • Do what preparations you can as early as you can to avoid “development team death” • (i.e. to avoid development cycles dedicated entirely to retrofitting new or changed security controls). • Work with your security buddy to incrementally role out new or changed controls as needed. • Work with your security buddy to incrementally role out new or changed lifecycle activities.

28. Planning work • Rules of thumb: • Do set policies around using security controls and enforcing secure coding standards • Do set policies around timing, depth, and breadth of verification activities • Do work with your security buddy to enhance and maintain common security control library functionality

29. Where to go from here • OWASP resources that you may find helpful: • OWASP Contract Annex • OWASP Top Ten • OWASP OpenSAMM • OWASP ESAPI • OWASP ASVS

30. Questions • About Me: • Mike Boberski • Booz Allen Software Assurance Team • boberski_michael@bah.com