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Process, Best Practices Are Best Defense


Government task force recommends ways to improve software security

By David Rubinstein
January 15, 2005 — 
Education and training of software developers, as well as creating and sharing best practices for improving quality, are among recommendations made last month by the U.S. government-sponsored Security Across the Software Development Lifecycle task force for creating more secure applications.

The task force split into subgroups that reflect the issues involved, according to co-chair Ron Moritz of Computer Associates. In its executive summary, the task force said security is a research and education issue for universities, and involves skills, processes and testing for developers, requirements for software customers, and a patching issue for IT administrators.

“One of the key recommendations is to look at how we train engineers, and re-educating longtime practitioners,” Moritz said.

According to the summary, the education subgroup recommends that “software become a core component of software development programs at the university level with sufficient resources to build the academic capacity to improve secure software development.”

The group also recommends a certificate program for security professionals and supports creating software centers of excellence. Moritz added that one of the goals would be the funding of academic chairs at select universities in the area of secure software development.

Moritz said the group also advocates academic research into language design.

“The last major language introduced was Java,” said Moritz; the language was officially announced in May 1995. “It was an improvement over C++ in terms of security issues. But now, no faculty is researching software languages. Could a language be written that would ensure secure code?”

One subgroup urges the establishment of a security verification and validation program to evaluate different software development processes and practices for effectiveness in producing secure software.

A patching subgroup worked to define ways to make the process of patching simple and reliable, Moritz said. It developed guiding principles for patch management and recommended the adoption of a “top ten list” of best practices.

Another important area, according to Moritz, was finding ways to motivate developers to create more secure software, as well as disincentives for criminal and malicious behavior. “Problems come from executives pushing things into the market to provide a new service or product to stay ahead of the competition,” Moritz said. The incentives subgroup recommended making the security of software one measure of a developer’s job performance.

Moritz pointed out that the work of the task force is only a recommendation, adding, “I don’t think any of us think mandates are required or should be pursued.”

The National Cyber Security Division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security could simply advise purchasing agents, CIOs and programmers to begin to implement the recommendations. He did say the department could stop doing business with vendors that fail to show that they’ve implemented the recommendations to write secure code.

With the departures of Tom Ridge as secretary of the Homeland Security Department and Amit Yoran as head of the National Cyber Security Division, Moritz admitted the initiative has momentarily stalled. But he added that similar initiatives to create and ensure secure software already are under way in the industry.


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