What is software security and why is it important?

Software is embedded in our daily lives in everything from banking to talking to our friends. In business, we rely on it to complete a wide variety of critical tasks, all with the assumption that our data is secure.

But how can you be sure your software security is up to scratch? It’s all too easy to underestimate the importance of a comprehensive software security strategy until your own code becomes an attack vector.

At Contentful, we adopt a security-first approach to software development as part of our ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation. We conduct regular penetration tests, and while we thoroughly analyze our code for bugs, we also invite you to do the same via our bug bounty program.

In this article, we share concrete tips on the best software security techniques and strategies. We also explain why software security is so important and why you should prioritize it.

What is software security?

Software security is the processes and mechanisms used to protect software from unauthorized access, use, or destruction. Software security solutions help ensure data is protected while in transit and at rest. They also help protect against system vulnerabilities like malware and ransomware attacks.

According to Veracode’s State of Software Security 2024, as many as 94% of all the apps they tested had at least one security flaw, so the odds are high that your application has some security debt. As software developers, our customers rely on us to keep the infrastructure and code that hosts and processes their data secure. 

Software developers and stakeholders have a vested interest in making sure that the software solutions they build and distribute are secured against potential threats. End users should ensure that the software they adopt comes from developers with a good reputation for security and user privacy.

What are the three types of software security?

There are three main types of software security:

1. Application security

Application security involves ensuring that the code is secure by identifying and fixing vulnerabilities within the software itself. This includes practices such as code reviews, automated security scanning, secure coding practices, input validation, and penetration testing to ensure that the application is resilient against attacks.

2. Data security

It’s vital to protect the data that your application processes from unauthorized access. You can do this by encrypting data while it’s in storage or transit, using data masking techniques for sensitive data, and adding monitoring processes to any data movement. Additionally, applying role-based access controls can ensure the integrity of your data.

3. Infrastructure security in software applications

Infrastructure security involves securing the environment where the software operates, ensuring that the underlying systems and networks that support the application are protected. This includes monitoring network traffic for suspicious activities, setting up firewalls, ensuring secure configurations of servers and databases, and regularly updating and patching the infrastructure components.

Software security versus cybersecurity

Software security focuses specifically on safeguarding software applications from threats, vulnerabilities, and attacks. This involves ensuring that the application code, data associated with the application, and the infrastructure supporting the application are secure. Software security practices are integrated into the software development lifecycle (SDLC) to identify and mitigate risks within the software itself, making sure the application behaves securely in various operating environments.

By contrast, cybersecurity is a broader field that focuses on securing all types of systems. It’s usually applied at the level of an entire organization and is responsible for securing all internal and external company systems — through technological or physical means.

How does software security work?

You should aggressively pursue software security as part of an ongoing process that starts with thorough auditing and progresses to diligent security maintenance over the lifetime of the product.

Software security works by incorporating a variety of technical measures and coding practices into your software development lifecycles (SDLCs) and software testing processes, including:

Defining software security requirements

It’s crucial to do this early in your development process. You need to identify all potential security vulnerabilities and attack vectors and address them during design and implementation. You could start with OWASP’s “Top 10” list of web application security vulnerabilities and then start looking at more comprehensive lists. 

Secure coding practices

To avoid introducing vulnerabilities into your code, you need to follow secure coding practices, such as preventing SQL injection, avoiding cross-site scripting (XSS), or stopping buffer overflows. 

Static application security testing

This means analyzing your source code for bugs before executing it, usually via automated tools that scan your code, such as SonarQube or Checkmarx.

Penetration testing

This involves simulating different kinds of attacks and seeing how your software holds up against them. You can do this yourself if you have the skills in-house, or you can hire specialist firms to do it for you. Choose a firm that has security certifications like CREST, OSCP, CEH, and CISSP, as well as ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation, which shows a commitment to good information security management.

Limiting access control

Ensure that your users only have the permissions they need and nothing further by following the principle of least privilege. This helps to minimize damage if a security breach occurs.

Code signing

If you are distributing your software for users to install on their devices, you should sign your artifacts to prevent copycats from taking your product, adding their own malicious code, and then trying to fool your customers into installing it.

Why is software security important?

The most successful software products focus on the user — and that focus should extend to security. You have a responsibility to secure your users’ private information, and companies that do so benefit when their users become aware that they’re taking this responsibility seriously.

In addition, companies are required by regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA to protect certain types of data, such as credit card information and social security numbers.

One security breach of a critical system could be enough to allow an attacker to impersonate a user or administrator of that system with potentially disastrous results.

It’s true that implementing good software security practices requires significant financial investment and ongoing maintenance. But the costs of fixing issues — along with paying fines — after a data breach are astronomical. The most expensive fine so far has been for Equifax’s 2017 data breach, which cost them USD 1.7 billion.

Moreover, the reputational hit your company would take after a data breach or system outage could be immense — affecting your bottom line and your ability to continue operating. After a ransomware attack on Travelex, the foreign exchange company went into administration (a form of bankruptcy protection in the United Kingdom) in 2020, citing the reputational hit after its data breach as a major factor behind this.

For these reasons, it’s clear that investing in software security measures is essential for protecting your business and its future.

Examples of software security techniques

Software security is like protecting a bank vault. You’re fully aware that there are people out there who want to compromise your software, and your goal is to prevent them from doing so.

To do this, security teams and developers must leverage common security best practices and mitigation tactics:

Patch management

Patching your software is the process of updating it with new code that fixes a software vulnerability. This should be done as soon as possible once a vulnerability is discovered.

Security flaws can also be in third-party libraries, so make sure you update these on a regular schedule to take advantage of any new patches that they’ve released. Solutions like Dependabot or Renovate will automatically check for dependency updates when you integrate them into your CI workflow.

Securing your application’s infrastructure

Control incoming and outgoing network traffic for your application by implementing a firewall. This sits between internal networks and external sources and allows you to set security rules on which IP addresses and ports can access each part of the system.

If you’re hosting your infrastructure in the cloud, you can use virtual firewalls such as AWS Security Groups or Google Cloud Firewall Rules. 

In addition to setting up a firewall, you can also use monitoring to detect suspicious activity. 

Authentication and authorization

Limiting the privileges of users who can access your software development tools, source code, and sensitive data using the principle of least privilege (POLP) and role-based access control (RBAC) can help prevent hackers from infiltrating your infrastructure and tampering with your code.

Some ways to do this include using multi-factor authentication (MFA) or token-based authentication such as OAuth, which delegates access to third-party applications without sharing user credentials.

You should also implement similar functionality in the software you are developing, providing users with the tools to reduce their attack surface by controlling access to the data your code processes and stores, minimizing the risk of a data breach.

Encrypting your application data

Data encryption is a common cybersecurity practice that involves transforming readable data into an unreadable format. Decryption reverses this transformation. If your software has sensitive data, you should encrypt it, for example, using the AES encryption standard. 

It’s generally not a good idea to attempt to write your own encryption algorithms. You should use an existing reputable library or interface to do this.

Developer training and security awareness

Training developers is essential for software security so that they know to keep their devices and toolchains secure and up to date to ensure that they don’t become the source of a security vulnerability in the software they’re developing.

Malicious actors are now increasingly using social engineering techniques to target developers with phishing emails, phone calls, and DMs to try to get them to give up secrets like API keys, admin credentials, and MFA codes. Identifying these attempts should be part of their training.

Regular software security audits

Perform manual code reviews and penetration testing for critical parts of your application. You should also use automated tools for regular static and dynamic analysis of your code.

Software security’s role in scalability

Choosing the right amount of security for your app or digital experience is vital to scalability. Growth happens at different paces across different dimensions of scale and isn’t always predictable. An increase in the number of users on a platform will require more governance features. Scaling to global markets means meeting new legal and regulatory requirements. The bigger your brand or product grows, the greater the damage can be from a security risk and the more important building secure software becomes.

Putting off security features early in a build racks up security debt that you’ll need to pay as the app or product scales. Underestimating the time it takes to implement security after the fact can be a costly mistake. It can slow down scalability, jeopardize your reputation, and cost more to fix than to do it right from the start. HubSpot puts the cost at USD $6 to USD $23 per line of code that needs to be rewritten. With costs like this, most companies can’t afford to deprioritize software security and application security testing.

Four strategies to reduce security-related technical debt

Implementing security best practices early in your software development process can help you avoid costly refactoring or potentially catastrophic security breaches later in the application’s lifecycle. Application security is a small piece of the overall risk and can be overlooked, especially by less experienced builders.

Making security strategies part of how developers build new products makes software security more consistent and transparent. Learn how Contentful built a security culture that standardizes the way we operate, improves the way we make security decisions, and helps us stay ahead of evolving threats.

1. Shift left 

Don’t make security an afterthought — bring it in early. Shifting left means integrating security measures earlier in the SDLC (that is, moving something “left” moves it closer to the beginning). 

Shifting security left means considering security requirements or testing for security flaws at an earlier stage in the SLDC.

Part of shifting left means getting your requirements correct from the start instead of waiting to uncover problems later in the process. Spend more time in the planning stages to avoid redesign and delays later on. Developers need to understand from the start what the software will do, who will use it, what problems it will solve or what needs it will address, and how it will scale.

The other major part of shifting left is to bring your testing processes earlier in your SDLC. You can integrate automated testing processes like static or dynamic application security testing into your CI pipeline and run them before your code enters a production environment.

2. Perform regular software security audits

This involves regularly reviewing your security policies and practices so that you can identify vulnerabilities in your software before hackers do. You can use these audits to identify libraries and components that you should update or replace.

3. Keep track of software security debt

Incurring security debt for an MVP can be a good strategic decision, but you need to keep track of this debt so that you can fix it later. Veracode’s State of Software Security 2024 report found that the older a flaw was, the less likely it was to be fixed. It’s critical to document security debt and hold someone accountable — at Contentful, every business feature has a security owner. Understanding when security flaws will pose an unacceptable risk and what time and resources are required to fix them can enable you to avoid unexpected delays.

You can use tools to help you keep track of your debt. If you’re using a system like SonarQube or Checkmarx to detect issues, note that these both differentiate between general bugs and security vulnerabilities, making it easy to stay on top of your software security debt. They will even categorize your security flaws so that you can understand them better.

SonarQube has an “OWASP Top 10” view, showing which of the top 10 software security vulnerabilities you need to fix in your own software.

Security audits help educate developers in good software security practices, as they learn to highlight common security pitfalls and the importance of secure coding practices. This is all part of building a security-conscious development culture, which is essential for reducing security debt.

4. Improve developer security awareness

All developers should receive training on software security that is specifically pitched to developers. This could be through attending workshops, webinars, or courses where they can get certifications. 

They could also complete training on the job via participation in code reviews that specifically check for security vulnerabilities or in post-mortem analyses of security incidents. This will help them learn to identify root causes and improve their future code.

Contentful provides a secure composable content platform for your applications, reducing your attack surface

By choosing trusted partners with ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation that take software security seriously, you can be more confident in your own compliance with legal regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. 

Contentful is an API-first content platform that sits at the heart of the modern tech stack. Learn how our commitment to software security helps digital teams go to market faster and scale confidently. 

Get started with Contentful to see how you can securely define, manage, and deliver your content to your websites and apps.

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