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

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.

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

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

“Things you owe”
• Software security requirements can usually be sorted into three categories:
1. Source code
2. Documentation (of secure software development-related activities)
3. Organization responsibility (for security-related infrastructure services)

“Things you owe” continued
• Usually software security requirements have severities or penalties associated with not meeting them:
– E.g., severities: high / medium / low
– E.g., penalties: monetary penalties

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)

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).

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.

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.

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

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

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

Tracking progress
Establish target
Define requirements
Map requirements
Initial assessment
• 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)

Tracking progress
Establish target
• Example:
T10.A1-Injection
Define requirements
Map requirements
Initial assessment
Shall perform user input validation.
Shall perform safe datbase queries.
SAMM.CR3B
Shall perform milestone code review before the application is released.

Tracking progress
Establish target
Define requirements
• Example:
Shall perform user input validation.
Shall perform safe datbase queries.
Map requirements
Initial assessment
User input validation mechanism
Parameterized queries
Shall perform milestone code review before the application is released.
Code review report

Tracking progress
Establish target
• Example:
Define requirements
Map requirements
Initial assessment
Thing owed (i.e. deliverable)
ID Severity Type
T10.A1.1
High Source code
...
Group Title Status Maturity Notes
...
Input validation
(users)
Validate all input
Potential items to address
50%

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.

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

Enforcing secure coding guidelines
Establish security controls
Establish security control usage
Use and retrofit security controls
• 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.

Enforcing secure coding guidelines
Establish security controls
• Example:
Establish security control usage
Use and retrofit security controls
Project Secure Coding Cheat Sheet
Safe database queries:
//TODO put description of SQL injection here
Here is an example of how to safely query the database:
//TODO put code snippet here
Notes:
//TODO usage notes, links, regular expressions to use to search for queries to review, etc.
...

Enforcing secure coding guidelines
Establish security controls
Establish security control usage
Use and retrofit security controls
• 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.

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

• Getting started:
1. Visualize
2. Limit work
3. Manage flow
4. Set policies
5. Improve iteratively
Planning work

Planning work
Visualize
• Example:
To do Security
Mechansim
Input validation mechanisms
Threat model document
Limit work
Manage flow
Set policies
Improve iteratively
In development
In verification Verified

Planning work
Visualize
Limit work
Manage flow
Set policies
Improve iteratively
• 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

Planning work
Visualize
Limit work
Manage flow
Set policies
Improve iteratively
• 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.

Planning work
Visualize
Limit work
Manage flow
Set policies
Improve iteratively
• 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

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

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