Tips for developing secure custom software

Security is a decisive factor in custom software development. Depending on the individual software, sensitive data, for example customer data, is processed. This data is, of course, strictly confidential and must be protected from being viewed by third parties. We would like to show you how you can make your custom software secure with the help of a few tips. Unfortunately, security vulnerabilities occur again and again, and this must be avoided.

1. What does an individual software attack look like?
2. The planning of the safe individual software development
3. General principles, which can avoid security vulnerabilities
4. The development phases of secure software
5. Testing security
6. Conclusion

What does a custom software attack look like?

Vulnerabilities of various kinds are often the reason for easy access by hackers. The cybercriminals can access customers' data, modify it or use it for other purposes. In the worst cases, a hacker can destroy the IT infrastructure of the entire software. So the biggest goal in custom software development should be to make hacker attacks impossible in the first place. Step by step we explain to you in the following sections, how you can proceed thereby.

The planning of the safe individual software development

Before you begin to develop an individual software, you can already concern yourself with the topic security. Think about which security guidelines are important to you for your software and how you can test that they are also adhered to. For this purpose, you can hypothetically think about how an attack on your software could look like. In the next step, you will develop a concept with which measures this hacker attack could be avoided. You or your software developers will consider and implement these measures later.

General principles that can avoid security vulnerabilities

• Minimum principle
• Build in additional checks
• Security levels

In addition to the individual issues you should consider in terms of security for your custom software, there are general principles that can prevent unauthorized access.

One of these is the "least privilege" principle or minimal principle. This is simply a matter of giving individual users of your custom software only the permissions they need, so that a hacker of the user's account does not automatically gain access to all functions and data.

Also, you should monitor every access. This means that you should build in checks that go through each user's access and see if there is authorization for it. In principle, this is also the minimum principle, but you also build in checks that really look at whether the authorizations are working.

For more protection against hackers, it is also worthwhile to include security layers. This prevents the so-called single point of failure. Single point of failure means a failure of a technical function that leads to the entire failure of the system. If you install different levels, only one level is affected by the failure. Fixing the problem is then much easier.

Of course, all your security precautions should not mean that usability suffers. Of course, the security of your custom software is very important, but the user and the user application must be the focus of any software. So always check whether the security measures can be combined with usability.

The development phase of secure software

Once you have thought about how you can ensure the security of your individual software, it is time for the implementation or programming. You or the developers of the software should have the following aspects on the screen when programming, which can ensure security:

• Authentication
• Validation of data, i.e. input and output
• Handling of errors
• Data security
• Access control
• And session management

Testing security

The next step is to test the custom software extensively. As a rule, developers carry out a subsequent test phase anyway. So the security aspect in particular should be closely examined here. Why don't you go through the possible hacking attacks that you thought about in the first step and find out whether your software can be hacked or not. Depending on this, you may need to make changes or you may find that everything works as you thought it would.

You can also seek external help if you want to have the security of your custom software checked. There are enough service providers who deal with the topic of IT security on a daily basis and help you to protect your software from hackers.

Conclusion

Developing a secure software is not that easy, but super important. If you take our tips into account, then you are definitely on the right path to secure custom software. If you don't know how exactly to implement the tips or you need more information about custom software development and automation of your business processes, feel free to contact us. We are at your disposal for the individual development of your software - we are looking forward to you!