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HOME >> OPINIONS

Focus on Security

By SD Times News Team

July 15, 2007 — (Page 1 of 2)
First came the announcement last month that IBM would acquire Watchfire, which sells security assessment software. Then HP followed by announcing it would buy SPI Dynamics, another well-regarded software security company.

Industry pundits had been writing for some time that there would be consolidation in this market, which features companies such as Cenzic, Klocwork and Ounce Labs. Any or all of these concerns could be ripe for the picking by Microsoft or Oracle, which as of now do not offer a secure software solution to compete against IBM and HP.

These acquisitions are a signal that software tool providers acknowledge that firewalls, access control lists and other measures are not enough to stop the siege from hackers looking to exploit personal data or to simply lock up a system for the fun of it. These major companies are learning that security is something that needs to be addressed during the creation of code, not a feature to be slapped on at the end.

Preventing access only stops people from getting to your data in ways you expect; writing secure code can cover the entry points you don’t immediately think of, or even see.

IBM already had tight integration with Watchfire in its Rational development life-cycle tools, while HP will incorporate the SPI Dynamics functionality into its former Mercury testing and QA tools. That’s an excellent first step toward securing software, in addition to securing networks and servers.

The harder challenge remains: convincing the people who gather requirements, create models and write code that security is their responsibility as well. Analysts have cited an unchanging culture among developers as a roadblock to security. And vendors have said you can give developers all the tools in the world, but you can’t make them use them.

Well, their bosses can. Now that IBM and HP are providing enterprise-class tools for security assessment, it falls to the development managers and project managers to make sure security is considered at each step—requirements, modeling, code, build, test and QA. They have a harder job than the vendors, but software will always be vulnerable until they get buy-in all along the life cycle.

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