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from the software-security-is-not-an-aftermarket-accessory dept.
Submitted via IRC for AnonymousLuser
Lack of Secure Coding Called a National Security Threat
The lack of secure coding is a pervasive and serious threat to national security, according to a new paper from the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, a cybersecurity think tank.
Rob Roy, an ICIT fellow who was co-author of the report, suggests in an interview with Information Security Media Group that an app standards body could play an important role in improving app security.
"If there were some objective standards put in place that all software would have to abide by, then we could start to make progress," Roy says. "It may just be that there needs to be an objective standard ... and a legislative mandate that requires a certain level of assurance to provide an assured product."
The "call to action" report, "Software Security Is National Security: Why the U.S. Must Replace Irresponsible Practices with a Culture of Institutionalized Security," discusses systemic issues with the software development landscape and what needs to be done to rectify the problem of negligent coding. But solving the problem won't be easy, given the problems of speed-to-market pressures and the sheer number of IoT devices being produced, the report notes.
[Ed Note - for those Soylentils that are software developers, does your company provide training/mentoring on how to develop secure software?]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Wednesday May 22 2019, @08:36PM (2 children)
From the green site [slashdot.org], "The reality is that security is not something you can buy; it is something you must get."
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday May 23 2019, @03:24PM (1 child)
I'd suggest that security is something that is not an absolute. This is why security departments are often attached to Risk Management divisions in corporations. As one who's worked in the security field I'd note you can't "get security" either, you only may obtain some measure of it.
How one obtains any security without the expenditure of money is beyond me, except in the sense that if one has literally nothing of value to lose and one wants it that way then one does not need security. One can pay an exorbitant amount for guns and guards and locks and cameras and not feel secure, true. But one cannot feel secure without having made an expenditure towards obtaining that which provides that feeling except as above. And in the context of this article (corporate security) one can certainly have objective metrics about the measures one has put in place to attain security, and one can document the failures of those measures to have provided security. That's the point of TFA, isn't it? The lack of attention paid to measures to attain a measure of security in coding are deficient to the point where it is a national-level problem now.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday May 24 2019, @08:11AM
See? This guy gets it.