Software Assurance Maturity Model

A guide to building security into software development

Open Web Application Security Project

SAMM version 1.0 rev 0.3

E-book version 1.0

Table of Contents

- Executive Summary

- Understanding the Model

- Business Functions

- Business Functions Details

- Applying the Model

- Using the Maturity Levels

- Conducting Assessments

- Security Scorecard

- Creating Scorecards

- Building Assurance Programs

- Independent Software Vendor

- Online Service Provider

- Financial Services Organization

- Government Organization

- The Security Practices

- Security Practices Details

- Case Studies

Executive Summary

The Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM) is an open framework to help organizations formulate and implement a strategy for software security that is tailored to the specific risks facing the organization. The resources provided by SAMM will aid in:

- Evaluating an organization’s existing software security practices

- Building a balanced software security assurance program in well-defined iterations

- Demonstrating concrete improvements to a security assurance program

- Defining and measuring security-related activities throughout an organization

SAMM was defined with flexibility in mind such that it can be utilized by small, medium, and large organizations using any style of development. Additionally, this model can be applied organization-wide, for a single line-of-business, or even for an individual project. Beyond these traits, SAMM was built on the following principles:

- An organization’s behavior changes slowly over time - A successful software security program should be specified in small iterations that deliver tangible assurance gains while incrementally working toward long-term goals.

- There is no single recipe that works for all organizations - A software security framework must be flexible and allow organizations to tailor their choices based on their risk tolerance and the way in which they build and use software.

- Guidance related to security activities must be prescriptive - All the steps in building and assessing an assurance program should be simple, well-defined, and measurable. This model also provides roadmap templates for common types of organizations.

The foundation of the model is built upon the core business functions of software development with security practices tied to each (see diagram below). The building blocks of the model are the three maturity levels defined for each of the twelve security practices. These define a wide variety of activities in which an organization could engage to reduce security risks and increase software assurance. Additional details are included to measure successful activity performance, understand the associated assurance benefits, estimate personnel and other costs. As an open project, SAMM content shall always remain vendor-neutral and freely available for all to use.

Understanding the Model

SAMM is built upon a collection of Security Practices that are tied back into the core Business Functions involved in software development. This section introduces those Business Functions and the corresponding Security Practices for each. After covering the high-level framework, the Maturity Levels for each Security Practice are also discussed briefly in order to paint a picture of how each can be iteratively improved over time.

Business Functions

At the highest level, SAMM defines four critical Business Functions. Each Business Function (listed below) is a category of activities related to the nuts-and-bolts of software development, or stated another way, any organization involved with software development must fulfill each of these Business Functions to some degree. For each Business Function, SAMM defines three Security Practices. Each Security Practice (listed opposite) is an area of security-related activities that build assurance for the related Business Function. So overall, there are twelve Security Practices that are the independent silos for improvement that map underneath the Business Functions of software development. For each Security Practice, SAMM defines three Maturity Levels as Objectives. Each Level within a Security Practice is characterized by a successively more sophisticated Objective defined by specific activities and more stringent success metrics than the previous level. Additionally, each Security Practice can be improved independently, though related activities can lead to optimizations.
Maturity Levels
Each of the twelve Security Practices has three defined Maturity Levels and an implicit starting point at zero. The details for each level differs between the Practices, but they generally represent:

- 0 Implicit starting point representing the activities in the Practice being unfulfilled

- 1 Initial understanding and ad hoc provision of Security Practice

- 2 Increase efficiency and/or effectiveness of the Security Practice

- 3 Comprehensive mastery of the Security Practice at scale

Notation
Throughout this document, the following capitalized terms will be reserved words that refer to the SAMM components defined in this section. If these terms appear without capitalization, they should be interpreted based on the their context:

- Business Function also as Function

- Security Practice also as Practice

- Maturity Level also as Level, Objective

Governance

Governance is centered on the processes and activities related to how an organization manages overall software development activities. More specifically, this includes concerns that cross-cut groups involved in development as well as business processes that are established at the organization level.

Strategy & Metrics

Strategy & Metrics involves the overall strategic direction of the software assurance program and instrumentation of processes and activities to collect metrics about an organization’s security posture.

Policy & Compliance

Policy & Compliance involves setting up a security and compliance control and audit framework throughout an organization to achieve increased assurance in software under construction and in operation.

Education & Guidance

Education & Guidance involves increasing security knowledge amongst personnel in software development through training and guidance on security topics relevant to individual job functions.

Construction

Construction concerns the processes and activities related to how an organization defines goals and creates software within development projects. In general, this will include product management, requirements gathering, high-level architecture specification, detailed design, and implementation.

Threat Assessment

Threat Assessment involves accurately identifying and characterizing potential attacks upon an organization’s software in order to better understand the risks and facilitate risk management.

Security Requirements

Security Requirements involves promoting the inclusion of security-related requirements during the software development process in order to specify correct functionality from inception.

Secure Architecture

Secure Architecture involves bolstering the design process with activities to promote secure-by-default designs and control over technologies and frameworks upon which software is built.

Verification

Verification is focused on the processes and activities related to how an organization checks and tests artifacts produced throughout software development. This typically includes quality assurance work such as testing, but it can also include other review and evaluation activities.

Design Review

Design Review involves inspection of the artifacts created from the design process to ensure provision of adequate security mechanisms and adherence to an organization’s expectations for security.

Code Review

Code Review involves assessment of an organization’s source code to aid vulnerability discovery and related mitigation activities as well as establish a baseline for secure coding expectations.

Security Testing

Security Testing involves testing the organization’s software in its runtime environment in order to both discover vulnerabilities and establish a minimum standard for software releases.

Deployment

Deployment entails the processes and activities related to how an organization manages release of software that has been created. This can involve shipping products to end users, deploying products to internal or external hosts, and normal operations of software in the runtime environment.

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerability Management involves establishing consistent processes for managing internal and external vulnerability reports to limit exposure and gather data to enhance the security assurance program.

Environment Hardening

Environment Hardening involves implementing controls for the operating environment surrounding an organization’s software to bolster the security posture of applications that have been deployed.

Operational Enablement

Operational Enablement involves identifying and capturing security-relevant information needed by an operator to properly configure, deploy, and run an organization’s software.

Applying the Model

This section covers several important and useful applications of SAMM. Given the core design of the model itself, an organization can use SAMM as a benchmark to measure its security assurance program and create a scorecard. Using scorecards, an organization can demonstrate improvement through iterations of developing an assurance program. And most importantly, an organization can use SAMM roadmap templates to guide the build-out or improvement of a security assurance initiative.

Using the Maturity Levels

Each of the twelve Security Practices have three Maturity Levels. Each Level has several components that specify the critical factors for understanding and achieving the stated Level. Beyond that, these prescriptive details make it possible to use the definitions of the Security Practices even outside the context of using SAMM to build a software assurance program.
Objective
The Objective is a general statement that captures the assurance goal of attaining the associated Level. As the Levels increase for a given Practice, the Objectives characterize more sophisticated goals in terms of building assurance for software development and deployment.
Activities
The Activities are core requisites for attaining the Level. Some are meant to be performed organization-wide and some correspond to actions for individual project teams. In either case, the Activities capture the core security function and organizations are free to determine how they fulfill the Activities.
Results
The Results characterize capabilities and deliverables obtained by achieving the given Level. In some cases these are specified concretely and in others, a more qualitative statement is made about increased capability.
Success Metrics
The Success Metrics specify example measurements that can be used to check if an organization is performing at the given Level. Data collection and management is left to the choice of each organization, but recommended data sources and thresholds are provided.
Costs
The Costs are qualitative statements about the expenses incurred by an organization attaining the given Level. While specific values will vary for each organizations, these are meant to provide an idea of the one-time and ongoing costs associated with operating at a particular Level.
Personnel
These properties of a Level indicate the estimated ongoing overhead in terms of human resources for operating at the given Level.

- Developers - Individuals performing detailed design and implementation of the software

- Architects - Individuals performing high-level design work and large scale system engineering

- Managers - Individuals performing day-to-day management of development staff

- QA Testers - Individuals performing quality assurance testing and pre-release verification of software

- Security Auditors - Individuals with technical security knowledge related to software being produced

- Business Owners - Individuals performing key decision making on software and its business requirements

- Support Operations - Individuals performing customer support or direct technical operations support

Related Levels
The Related Levels are references to Levels within other Practices that have some potential overlaps depending upon the organization’s structure and progress in building an assurance program. Functionally, these indicate synergies or optimizations in Activity implementation if the Related Level is also a goal or already in place.

Conducting Assessments

By measuring an organization against the defined Security Practices, an overall picture of built-in security assurance activities is created. This type of assessment is useful for understanding the breadth of security activities currently in place at an organization. Further, it enables that organization to then utilize SAMM to create a future roadmap for iterative improvement. The process of conducting an assessment is simply evaluating an organization to determine the Maturity Level at which it is performing, The extent to which an organization’s performance is checked will usually vary according to the drivers behind the assessment, but in general, there are two recommended styles:

- Lightweight - The assessment worksheets for each Practice are evaluated and scores are assigned based on answers. This type of assessment is usually sufficient for an organization that is trying to map their existing assurance program into SAMM and just wants to get a quick picture of where they stand.

- Detailed - After completion of the assessment worksheets, additional audit work is performed to check the organization to ensure the Activities prescribed by each Practice are in place. Additionally since each Practice also specifies Success Metrics, that data should be collected to ensure that the organization is performing as expected.

Scoring an organization using the assessment worksheets is straightforward. After answering the questions, evaluate the answer column to determine the Level. It is indicated by affirmative answers on all questions above the markers to the right of the answer column. Existing assurance programs might not always consist of activities that neatly fall on a boundary between Maturity Levels, e.g. an organization that assesses to a Level 1 for a given Practice might also have additional activities in place but not such that Level 2 is completed. For such cases, the organization’s score should be annotated with a “+” symbol to indicate there’s additional assurances in place beyond those indicated by the Level obtained. For example, an organization that is performing all Level 1 Activities for Operational Enablement as well as one Level 2 or 3 Activity would be assigned a “1+” score. Likewise, an organization performing all Activities for a Security Practice, including some beyond the scope of SAMM, would be given a "3+" score.Operational Enablement

Governance

Strategy & Metrics

Yes No

Maturity Level

Is there a software security assurance program already in place?

...

SM1

Do most of the business stakeholders understand your organization’s risk profile?

...

SM1

Is most of your development staff aware of future plans for the assurance program?

...

SM1

Are most of your applications and resources categorized by risk?

...

SM2

Are risk ratings used to tailor the required assurance activities?

...

SM2

Does most of the organization know about what’s required based on risk ratings?

...

SM2

Is per-project data for cost of assurance activities collected?

...

SM3

Does your organization regularly compare your security spend with other organizations?

...

SM3

Policy & Compliance

Yes No

Maturity Level

Do most project stakeholders know their project’s compliance status?

...

PC1

Are compliance requirements specifically considered by project teams?

...

PC1

Does the organization utilize a set of policies and standards to control software development?

...

PC2

Are project teams able to request an audit for compliance with policies and standards?

...

PC2

Are projects periodically audited to ensure a baseline of compliance with policies and standards?

...

PC3

Does the organization systematically use audits to collect and control compliance evidence?

...

PC3

Education & Guidance

Yes No

Maturity Level

Have most developers been given high-level security awareness training?

...

EG1

Does each project team have access to secure development best practices and guidance?

...

EG1

Are most roles in the development process given role-specific training and guidance?

...

EG2

Are most stakeholders able to pull in security coaches for use on projects?

...

EG2

Is security-related guidance centrally controlled and consistently distributed throughout the organization?

...

EG3

Are most people tested to ensure a baseline skill-set for secure development and deployment practices?

...

EG3

Construction

Threat Assessment

Yes No

Maturity Level

Do most projects in your organization consider and document likely threats?

...

TA1

Does your organization understand and document the types of attackers it faces?

...

TA1

Do project teams regularly analyze functional requirements for likely abuses?

...

TA2

Do project teams use a method of rating threats for relative comparison?

...

TA2

Are stakeholders aware of relevant threats and ratings?

...

TA2

Do project teams specifically consider risk from external software?

...

TA3

Are all protection mechanisms and controls captured and mapped back to threats?

...

TA3

Security Requirements

Yes No

Maturity Level

Do most project teams specify some security requirements during development?

...

SR1

Do project teams pull requirements from best-practices and compliance guidance?

...

SR1

Are most stakeholders reviewing access control matrices for relevant projects?

...

SR2

Are project teams specifying requirements based on feedback from other security activities?

...

SR2

Are most stakeholders reviewing vendor agreements for security requirements?

...

SR3

Are the security requirements specified by project teams being audited?

...

SR3

Secure Architecture

Yes No

Maturity Level

Are project teams provided with a list of recommended third-party components?

...

SA1

Are most project teams aware of secure design principles and applying them?

...

SA1

Do you advertise shared security services with guidance for project teams?

...

SA2

Are project teams provided with prescriptive design patterns based on their application architecture?

...

SA2

Are project teams building software from centrally controlled platforms and frameworks?

...

SA3

Are project teams being audited for usage of secure architecture components?

...

SA3

Verification

Design Review

Yes No

Maturity Level

Do project teams document the attack perimeter of software designs?

...

DR1

Do project teams check software designs against known security risks?

...

DR1

Do most project teams specifically analyze design elements for security mechanisms?

...

DR2

Are most project stakeholders aware of how to obtain a formal design review?

...

DR2

Does the design review process incorporate detailed data-level analysis?

...

DR3

Does routine project audit require a baseline for design review results?

...

DR3

Code Review

Yes No

Maturity Level

Do most project teams have review checklists based on common problems?

...

CR1

Are project teams generally performing review of selected high-risk code?

...

CR1

Can most project teams access automated code analysis tools to find security problems?

...

CR2

Do most stakeholders consistently require and review results from code reviews?

...

CR2

Do project teams utilize automation to check code against application-specific coding standards?

...

CR3

Does routine project audit require a baseline for code review results prior to release?

...

CR3

Security Testing

Yes No

Maturity Level

Are projects specifying some security tests based on requirements?

...

ST1

Do most projects perform penetration tests prior to release?

...

ST1

Are most stakeholders aware of the security test status prior to release?

...

ST1

Are projects using automation to evaluate security test cases?

...

ST2

Do most projects follow a consistent process to evaluate and report on security tests to stakeholders?

...

ST2

Are security test cases comprehensively generated for application-specific logic?

...

ST3

Do routine project audits demand minimum standard results from security testing?

...

ST3

Deployment

Vulnerability Management

Yes No

Maturity Level

Do most projects have a point of contact for security issues?

...

VM1

Does your organization have an assigned security response team?

...

VM1

Are most project teams aware of their security point(s) of contact and response team(s)?

...

VM1

Does the organization utilize a consistent process for incident reporting and handling?

...

VM2

Are most project stakeholders aware of relevant security disclosures related to their software projects?

...

VM2

Are most incidents inspected for root causes to generate further recommendations?

...

VM3

Do most projects consistently collect and report data and metrics related to incidents?

...

VM3

Environment Hardening

Yes No

Maturity Level

Do the majority of projects document some requirements for the operational environment?

...

EH1

Do most projects check for security updates to third-party software components?

...

EH1

Is a consistent process used to apply upgrades and patches to critical dependencies?

...

EH2

Do most project leverage automation to check application and environment health?

...

EH2

Are stakeholders aware of options for additional tools to protect software while running in operations?

...

EH3

Does routine audit check most projects for baseline environment health?

...

EH3

Operational Enablement

Yes No

Maturity Level

Do you deliver security notes with the majority of software releases?

...

OE1

Are security-related alerts and error conditions documented for most projects?

...

OE1

Are most project utilizing a change management process that’s well understood?

...

OE2

Do project teams deliver an operational security guide with each product release?

...

OE2

Are most projects being audited to check each release for appropriate operational security information?

...

OE3

Is code signing routinely performed on software components using a consistent process?

...

OE3

Creating Scorecards

Based on the scores assigned to each Security Practice, an organization can create a scorecard to capture those values. Functionally, a scorecard can be the simple set of 12 scores for a particular time. However, selecting a time interval over which to generate a scorecard facilitates understanding of overall changes in the assurance program during the time frame. Using interval scorecards is encouraged for several situations:

- Gap analysis - Capturing scores from detailed assessments versus expected performance levels

- Demonstrating improvement - Capturing scores from before and after an iteration of assurance program build-out

- Ongoing measurement - Capturing scores over consistent time frames for an assurance program that is already in place

The figure on the right shows an example scorecard for how an organization’s assurance program changed over the course of one year. If that organization had also saved the data about where they were planning on being at the end of the year, that would be another interesting data set to plot since it would help show the extent to which the plans had to change over the year.

Building Assurance Programs

One of the main uses of SAMM is to help organizations build software security assurance programs. That process is straightforward, and generally begins with an assessment if the organization is already performing some security assurance activities. Several roadmap templates for common types of organizations are provided. Thus, many organizations can choose an appropriate match and then tailor the roadmap template to their needs. For other types of organizations, it may be necessary to build a custom roadmap. Roadmaps (pictured to the right) consist of phases (the vertical bars) in which several Practices are each improved by one Level. Therefore, building a roadmap entails selection of which Practices to improve in each planned phase. Organizations are free to plan into the future as far as they wish, but are encouraged to iterate based on business drivers and organization-specific information to ensure the assurance goals are commensurate with their business goals and risk tolerance. After a roadmap is established, the build-out of an assurance program is simple. An organization begins an improvement phases and works to achieve the stated Levels by performing the prescribed Activities. At the end of the phase, the roadmap should be adjusted based on what was actually accomplished, and then the next phase can begin.

Independent Software Vendor

Rationale
An Independent Software Vendor involves the core business function of building and selling software components and applications. Initial drivers to limit common vulnerabilities affecting customers and users leads to early concentration on Code Review and Security Testing activities. Shifting toward more proactive prevention of security errors in product specification, an organization adds activities for Security Requirements over time. Also, to minimize the impact from any discovered security issues, the organization ramps up Vulnerability Management activities over time. As the organization matures, knowledge transfer activities from Operational Enablement are added to better inform customers and users about secure operation of the software.
Additional Considerations

Outsourced Development
For organizations using external development resources, restrictions on code access typically leads to prioritization of Security Requirements activities instead of Code Review activities. Additionally, advancing Threat Assessment in earlier phases would allow the organization to better clarify security needs to the outsourced developers. Since expertise on software configuration will generally be strongest within the outsourced group, contracts should be constructed to account for the activities related to Operational Enablement.
Internet-Connected Applications
Organizations building applications that use online resources have additional risks from the core internet-facing infrastructure that hosts the internet-facing systems. To account for this risk, organizations should add activities from Environment Hardening to their roadmaps.
Drivers and Embedded Development
For organizations building low-level drivers or software for embedded systems, security vulnerabilities in software design can be more damaging and costly to repair. Therefore, roadmaps should be modified to emphasize Secure Architecture and Design Review activities in earlier phases.
Organizations Grown by Acquisition
In an organization grown by acquisition, there can often be several project teams following different development models with varying degrees of security-related activities incorporated. An organization such as this may require a separate roadmap for each division or project team to account for varying starting points as well as project-specific concerns if a variety of software types are being developed.

Online Service Provider

Rationale
An Online Services Provider involves the core business function of building web applications and other network-accessible interfaces. Initial drivers to validate the overall soundness of design without stifling innovation lead to early concentration on Design Review and Security Testing activities. Since critical systems will be network-facing, Environment Hardening activities are also added early and ramped over time to account for risks from the hosted environment. Though it can vary based on the core business of the organizations, Policy & Compliance activities should be started early and then advanced according to the criticality of external compliance drivers. As the organization matures, activities from Threat Assessment, Security Requirements, and Secure Architecture are slowly added to help bolster proactive security after some baseline expectations for security have been established.
Additional Considerations

Outsourced Development
For organizations using external development resources, restrictions on code access typically leads to prioritization of Security Requirements activities instead of Code Review activities. Additionally, advancing Threat Assessment in earlier phases would allow the organization to better clarify security needs to the outsourced developers. Since expertise on software configuration will generally be strongest within the outsourced group, contracts should be constructed to account for the activities related to Operational Enablement.
Online Payment Processing
Organizations required to be in compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) or other online payment standards should place activities from Policy & Compliance in earlier phases of the roadmap. This allows the organization to opportunistically establish activities that ensure compliance and enable the future roadmap to be tailored accordingly.
Web Services Platforms
For organizations building web services platforms, design errors can carry additional risks and be more costly to mitigate. Therefore, activities from Threat Assessment, Security Requirements, and Secure Architecture should be placed in earlier phases of the roadmap.
Organizations Grown by Acquisition
In an organization grown by acquisition, there can often be several project teams following different development models with varying degrees of security-related activities incorporated. An organization such as this may require a separate roadmap for each division or project team to account for varying starting points as well as project-specific concerns if a variety of software types are being developed.

Financial Services Organization

Rationale
A Financial Services Organization involves the core business function of building systems to support financial transactions and processing. In general, this implies a greater concentration of internal and back-end systems that interface with disparate external data providers. Initially, effort is focused on improving the Practices related to Governance since these are critical services that set the baseline for the assurance program and help meet compliance requirements for the organization. Since building secure and reliable software proactively is an overall goal, Practices within Construction are started early on and ramped up sharply as the program matures. Verification activities are also ramped up smoothly over the course of the roadmap to handle legacy systems without creating unrealistic expectations. Additionally, this helps ensure enough cycles are spent building out more proactive Practices. Since a financial services organization often operates the software they build, focus is given to the Practices within Deployment during the middle of the roadmap after some initial Governance is in place but before heavy focus is given to the proactive Construction Practices.
Additional Considerations

Outsourced Development
For organizations using external development resources, restrictions on code access typically leads to prioritization of Security Requirements activities instead of Code Review activities. Additionally, advancing Threat Assessment in earlier phases would allow the organization to better clarify security needs to the outsourced developers. Since expertise on software configuration will generally be strongest within the outsourced group, contracts should be constructed to account for the activities related to Operational Enablement.
Web Services Platforms
For organizations building web services platforms, design errors can carry additional risks and be more costly to mitigate. Therefore, activities from Threat Assessment, Security Requirements, and Secure Architecture should be placed in earlier phases of the roadmap.
Organizations Grown by Acquisition
In an organization grown by acquisition, there can often be several project teams following different development models with varying degrees of security-related activities incorporated. An organization such as this may require a separate roadmap for each division or project team to account for varying starting points as well as project-specific concerns if a variety of software types are being developed.

Government Organization

Rationale
A Government Organization involves the core business function of being a state-affiliated organization that builds software to support public sector projects. Initially, Governance Practices are established, generally to get an idea of the overall compliance burden for the organization in context of the concrete roadmap for improvement. Because of risks of public exposure and the quantity of legacy code generally in place, early emphasis is given to Security Testing within the Verification Practices and later the more involved Code Review or Design Review Practices are developed. Similar emphasis is placed on the Construction and Deployment Practices. This helps establish the organization’s management of vulnerabilities and moves toward bolstering the security posture of the operating environment. At the same time, proactive security activities under Construction are built up to help prevent new issues in software under development.
Additional Considerations

Outsourced Development
For organizations using external development resources, restrictions on code access typically leads to prioritization of Security Requirements activities instead of Code Review activities. Additionally, advancing Threat Assessment in earlier phases would allow the organization to better clarify security needs to the outsourced developers. Since expertise on software configuration will generally be strongest within the outsourced group, contracts should be constructed to account for the activities related to Operational Enablement.
Web Services Platforms
For organizations building web services platforms, design errors can carry additional risks and be more costly to mitigate. Therefore, activities from Threat Assessment, Security Requirements, and Secure Architecture should be placed in earlier phases of the roadmap.
Regulatory Compliance
For organizations under heavy regulations that affect business processes, the build-out of the Policy & Compliance Practice should be adjusted to accommodate external drivers. Likewise, organizations under a lighter compliance load should take the opportunity to push back build-out of that Practice in favor of others.

The Security Practices

This section defines the building blocks of SAMM, the Maturity Levels under each Security Practice. For each Practice, the three Levels are covered in a summary table. Following that, the description for each Level includes detailed explanations of the required activities, results an organization can expect from attaining the Level, success metrics to gauge performance, required ongoing personnel investment, and additional associated costs.

Strategy & Metrics

SM1

SM1 - Activities

Estimate overall business risk profile

Interview business owners and stakeholders and create a list of worst-case scenarios across the organization’s various application and data assets. Based on the way in which your organization builds, uses, or sells software, the list of worst-case scenarios can vary widely, but common issues include data theft or corruption, service outages, monetary loss, reverse engineering, account compromise, etc. After broadly capturing worst-case scenario ideas, collate and select the most important based on collected information and knowledge about the core business. Any number can be selected, but aim for at least 3 and no more than 7 to make efficient use of time and keep the exercise focused. Elaborate a description of each of the selected items and document details of contributing worst-case scenarios, potential contributing factors, and potential mitigating factors for the organization. The final business risk profile should be reviewed with business owners and other stakeholders for understanding.

Build and maintain assurance program roadmap

Understanding the main business risks to the organization, evaluate the current performance of the organization against each the twelve Practices. Assign a score for each Practice from 1, 2, or 3 based on the corresponding Objective if the organization passes all the cumulative success metrics. If no success metrics are being met, assign a score of 0 to the Practice. Once a good understanding of current status is obtained, the next goal is to identify the Practices that will be improved in the next iteration. Select them based on business risk profile, other business drivers, compliance requirements, budget tolerance, etc. Once Practices are selected, the goals of the iteration are to achieve the next Objective under each. Iterations of improvement on the assurance program should be approximately 3-6 months, but an assurance strategy session should take place at least every 3 months to review progress on activities, performance against success metrics and other business drivers that may require program changes.

SM1 - Assessment

- Is there a software security assurance program already in place?

- Do most of the business stakeholders understand your organization’s risk profile?

- Is most of your development staff aware of future plans for the assurance program?

SM1 - Results

- Concrete list of the most critical business-level risks caused by software

- Tailored roadmap that addresses the security needs for your organization with minimal overhead

- Organization-wide understanding of how the assurance program will grow over time

SM1 - Metrics

- >80% of stakeholders briefed on business risk profile in past 6 months

- >80% of staff briefed on assurance program roadmap in past 3 months

- >1 assurance program strategy session in past 3 months

SM1 - Costs

- Buildout and maintenance of business risk profile

- Quarterly evaluation of assurance program

SM1 - Personnel

- Developers (1 day/yr)

- Architects (4 days/yr)

- Managers (4 days/yr)

- Business Owners (4 days/yr)

- QA Testers (1 day/yr)

- Security Auditor (4 days/yr)

SM1 - Related

- Policy & Compliance - 1

- Threat Assessment - 1

- Security Requirements - 2

SM2

SM2 - Activities

Classify data and applications based on business risk

Establish a simple classification system to represent risk-tiers for applications. In its simplest form, this can be a High/Medium/Low categorization. More sophisticated classifications can be used, but there should be no more than seven categories and they should roughly represent a gradient from high to low impact against business risks. Working from the organization’s business risk profile, create project evaluation criteria that maps each project to one of the risk categories. A similar but separate classification scheme should be created for data assets and each item should be weighted and categorized based on potential impact to business risks. Evaluate collected information about each application and assign each a risk category based upon overall evaluation criteria and the risk categories of data assets in use. This can be done centrally by a security group or by individual project teams through a customized questionnaire to gather the requisite information. An ongoing process for application and data asset risk categorization should be established to assign categories to new assets and keep the existing information updated at least biannually.

Establish and measure per-classification security goals

With a classification scheme for the organization’s application portfolio in place, direct security goals and assurance program roadmap choices can be made more granular. The assurance program’s roadmap should be modified to account for each application risk category by specifying emphasis on particular Practices for each category. For each iteration of the assurance program, this would typically take the form of prioritizing more higher-level Objectives on the highest risk application tier and progressively less stringent Objectives for lower/other categories. This process establishes the organization’s risk tolerance since active decisions must be made as to what specific Objectives are expected of applications in each risk category. By choosing to keep lower risk applications at lower levels of performance with respect to the Security Practices, resources are saved in exchange for acceptance of a weighted risk. However, it is not necessary to arbitrarily build a separate roadmap for each risk category since that can leads to inefficiency in management of the assurance program itself.

SM2 - Assessment

- Are most of your applications and resources categorized by risk?

- Are risk ratings used to tailor the required assurance activities?

- Does most of the organization know about what’s required based on risk ratings?

SM2 - Results

- Customized assurance plans per project based on core value to the business

- Organization-wide understanding of security-relevance of data and application assets

- Better informed stakeholders with respect to understanding and accepting risks

SM2 - Metrics

- >90% applications and data assets evaluated for risk classification in past 12 months

- >80% of staff briefed on relevant application and data risk ratings in past 6 months

- >80% of staff briefed on relevant assurance program roadmap in past 3 months

SM2 - Costs

- Buildout or license of application and data risk categorization scheme

- Program overhead from more granular roadmap planning

SM2 - Personnel

- Architects (2 days/yr)

- Managers (2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (2 days/yr)

- Security Auditor (2 days/yr)

SM2 - Related

- Policy & Compliance - 2

- Threat Assessment - 2

- Design Review - 2

SM3

SM3 - Activities

Conduct periodic industry-wide cost comparisons

Research and gather information about security costs from intra-industry communication forums, business analyst and consulting firms, or other external sources. In particular, there are a few key factors that need to be identified. First, use collected information to identify the average amount of security effort being applied by similar types of organizations in your industry. This can be done either top-down from estimates of total percentage of budget, revenue, etc. or it can be done bottom-up by identifying security-related activities that are considered normal for your type of organization. Overall, this can be hard to gauge for certain industries, so collect information from as many relevant sources as are accessible. The next goal of researching security costs is to determine if there are potential cost savings on third-party security products and services that your organization currently uses. When weighing the decision of switching vendors, account for hidden costs such as retraining staff or other program overhead. Overall, these cost-comparison exercises should be conducted at least annually prior to the subsequent assurance program strategy session. Comparison information should be presented to stakeholders in order to better align the assurance program with the business.

Collect metrics for historic security spend

Collect project-specific information on the cost of past security incidents. For instance, time and money spent in cleaning up a breach, monetary loss from system outages, fines and fees to regulatory agencies, project-specific one-off security expenditures for tools or services, etc. Using the application risk categories and the respective prescribed assurance program roadmaps for each, a baseline security cost for each application can be initially estimated from the costs associated with the corresponding risk category. Combine the application-specific cost information with the general cost model based on risk category, and then evaluate projects for outliers, i.e. sums disproportionate to the risk rating. These indicate either an error in risk evaluation/classification or the necessity to tune the organization’s assurance program to address root causes for security cost more effectively. The tracking of security spend per project should be done quarterly at the assurance program strategy session, and the information should be reviewed and evaluated by stakeholders at least annually. Outliers and other unforeseen costs should be discussed for potential affect on assurance program roadmap.

SM3 - Assessment

- Is per-project data for cost of assurance activities collected?

- Does your organization regularly compare your security spend with other organizations?

SM3 - Results

- Information to make informed case-by-case decisions on security expenditures

- Estimates of past loss due to security issues

- Per-project consideration of security expense versus loss potential

- Industry-wide due diligence with regard to security

SM3 - Metrics

- >80% of projects reporting security costs in past 3 months

- >1 industry-wide cost comparison in past 1 year

- >1 historic security spend evaluation in past 1 year

SM3 - Costs

- Buildout or license industry intelligence on security programs

- Program overhead from cost estimation, tracking, and evaluation

SM3 - Personnel

- Architects (1 days/yr)

- Managers (1 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1 days/yr)

- Security Auditor (1 days/yr)

SM3 - Related

- Vulnerability Management - 1

Policy & Compliance

PC1

PC1 - Activities

Identify and monitor external compliance drivers

While an organization might have a wide variety of compliance requirements, this activity is specifically oriented around those that either directly or indirectly affect the way in which the organization builds or uses software and/or data. Leverage internal staff focused on compliance if available. Based on the organization’s core business, conduct research and identify third-party regulatory standards with which compliance is required or considered an industry norm. Possibilities include the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), etc. After reading and understanding each third-party standard, collect specific requirements related to software and data and build a consolidated list that maps each driver (third-party standard) to each of its specific requirements for security. At this stage, try to limit the amount of requirements by dropping anything considered optional or only recommended. At a minimum, conduct research at least biannually to ensure the organization is keeping updated on changes to third-party standards. Depending upon the industry and the importance of compliance, this activity can vary in effort and personnel involvement, but should always be done explicitly.

Build and maintain compliance guidelines

Based upon the consolidated list of software and data-related requirements from compliance drivers, elaborate the list by creating a corresponding response statement to each requirement. Sometimes called control statements, each response should capture the concept of what the organization does to ensure the requirement is met (or to note why it does not apply). Since typical audit practice often involves checking a control statement for sufficiency and then measuring the organization against the control statement itself, it is critical that they accurately represent actual organizational practices. Also, many requirements can be met by instituting simple, lightweight process elements to cover base-line compliance prior to evolving the organization for better assurance down the road. Working from the consolidated list, identify major gaps to feed the future planning efforts with regard to building the assurance program. Communicate information about compliance gaps with stakeholders to ensure awareness of the risk from non-compliance. At a minimum, update and review control statements with stakeholders at least biannually. Depending on the number of compliance drivers, it may make sense to perform updates more often.

PC1 - Assessment

- Do most project stakeholders know their project’s compliance status?

- Are compliance requirements specifically considered by project teams?

PC1 - Results

- Increased assurance for handling third-party audit with positive outcome

- Alignment of internal resources based on priority of compliance requirements

- Timely discovery of evolving regulatory requirements that affect your organization

PC1 - Metrics

- >1 compliance discovery meeting in past 6 months

- Compliance checklist completed and updated within past 6 months

- >1 compliance review meeting with stakeholders in past 6 months

PC1 - Costs

- Initial creation and ongoing maintenance of compliance checklist

PC1 - Personnel

- Architects (1 day/yr)

- Managers (2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1-2 days/yr)

PC1 - Related

- Strategy & Metrics - 1

PC2

PC2 - Activities

Build policies and standards for security and compliance

Beginning with a current compliance guidelines, review regulatory standards and note any optional or recommended security requirements. Also, the organization should conduct a small amount of research to discover any potential future changes in compliance requirements that are relevant. Augment the list with any additional requirements based on known business drivers for security. Often it is simplest to consult existing guidance being provided to development staff and gather a set of best practices. Group common/similar requirements and rewrite each group as more generalized/simplified statements that meet all the compliance drivers as well as provide some additional security value. Work through this process for each grouping with the goal of building a set of internal policies and standards that can be directly mapped back to compliance drivers and best practices. It is important for the set of policies and standards to not contain requirements that are too difficult or excessively costly for project teams to comply. A useful heuristic is that approximately 80% of projects should be able to comply with minimal disruption. This requires a good communications program being set up to advertise the new policies/standards and assist teams with compliance if needed.

Establish project audit practice

Create a simple audit process for project teams to request and receive an audit against internal standards. Audits are typically performed by security auditors but can also be conducted by security-savvy staff as long as they are knowledgeable about the internal standards. Based upon any known business risk indicators, projects can be prioritized concurrently with audit queue triage such that high-risk software is assessed sooner or more frequently. Additionally, low-risk projects can have internal audit requirements loosened to make the audit practice more cost-effective. Overall, each active project should undergo an audit at least biannually. Generally, subsequent audits after the initial will be simpler to perform if sufficient audit information about the application is retained. Advertise this service to business owners and other stakeholders so that they may request an audit for their projects. Detailed pass/fail results per requirement from the internal standards should be delivered to project stakeholders for evaluation. Where practical, audit results should also contain explanations of impact and remediation recommendations.

PC2 - Assessment

- Does the organization utilize a set of policies and standards to control software development?

- Are project teams able to request an audit for compliance with policies and standards?

PC2 - Results

- Awareness for project teams regarding expectations for both security and compliance

- Business owners that better understand specific compliance risks in their product lines

- Optimized approach for efficiently meeting compliance with opportunistic security improvement

PC2 - Metrics

- >75% of staff briefed on policies and standards in past 6 months

- >80% stakeholders aware of compliance status against policies and standards

PC2 - Costs

- Internal standards buildout or license

- Per-project overhead from compliance with internal standards and audit

PC2 - Personnel

- Architects (1 days/yr)

- Managers (1 days/yr)

- Security Auditors (2 days/project/yr)

PC2 - Related

- Education & Guidance - 1 & 3

- Strategy & Metrics - 2

- Security Requirements - 1 & 3

- Secure Architecture - 3

- Code Review - 3

- Design Review - 3

- Environment Hardening - 3

PC3

PC3 - Activities

Create compliance gates for projects

Once an organization has established internal standards for security, the next level of enforcement is to set particular points in the project life-cycle where a project cannot pass until it is audited against the internal standards and found to be in compliance. Usually, the compliance gate is placed at the point of software release such that they are not allowed to publish a release until the compliance check is passed. It is important to provide enough time for the audit to take place and remediation to occur, so generally the audit should begin earlier, for instance when a release is given to QA. Despite being a firm compliance gate, legacy or other specialized projects may not be able to comply, so an exception approval process must also be created. No more than about 20% of all projects should have exception approval.

Adopt solution for audit data collection

Organizations conducting regular audits of project teams generate a large amount of audit data over time. Automation should be utilized to assist in automated collection, manage collation for storage and retrieval, and to limit individual access to sensitive audit data. For many concrete requirements from the internal standards, existing tools such as code analyzers, application penetration testing tools, monitoring software, etc. can be customized and leveraged to automate compliance checks against internal standards. The purpose of automating compliance checks is to both improve efficiency of audit as well as enable more staff to self-check for compliance before a formal audit takes place. Additionally, automated checks are less error-prone and allow for lower latency on discovery of problems. Information storage features should allow centralized access to current and historic audit data per project. Automation solutions must also provide detailed access control features to limit access to approved individuals with valid business purpose for accessing the audit data. All instructions and procedures related to accessing compliance data as well as requesting access privileges should be advertised to project teams. Additional time may be initially required from security auditors to bootstrap project teams.

PC3 - Assessment

- Are projects periodically audited to ensure a baseline of compliance with policies and standards?

- Does the organization systematically use audits to collect and control compliance evidence?

PC3 - Results

- Organization-level visibility of accepted risks due to non-compliance

- Concrete assurance for compliance at the project level

- Accurate tracking of past project compliance history

- Efficient audit process leveraging tools to cut manual effort

PC3 - Metrics

- >80% projects in compliance with policies and standards as seen by audit

- <50% time per audit as compared to manual

PC3 - Costs

- Buildout or license tools to automate audit against internal standards

- Ongoing maintenance of audit gates and exception process

PC3 - Personnel

- Developers (1 days/yr)

- Architects (1 days/yr)

- Managers (1 days/yr)

PC3 - Related

- Education & Guidance - 3

- Code Review - 2

- Security Testing - 2

Education & Guidance

EG1

EG1 - Activities

Conduct technical security awareness training

Either internally or externally sourced, conduct security training for technical staff that covers the basic tenets of application security. Generally, this can be accomplished via instructor-led training in 1-2 days or via computer-based training with modules taking about the same amount of time per developer. Course content should cover both conceptual and technical information. Appropriate topics include high-level best practices surrounding input validation, output encoding, error handling, logging, authentication, authorization. Additional coverage of commonplace software vulnerabilities is also desirable such as a Top 10 list appropriate to the software being developed (web applications, embedded devices, client-server applications, back-end transaction systems, etc.). Wherever possible, use code samples and lab exercises in the specific programming language(s) that applies. To rollout such training, it is recommended to mandate annual security training and then hold courses (either instructor-led or computer-based) as often as required based on development head-count.

Build and maintain technical guidelines

For development staff, assemble a list of approved documents, web pages, and technical notes that provide technology-specific security advice. These references can be assembled from many publicly available resources on the Internet. In cases where very specialized or proprietary technologies permeate the development environment, utilize senior, security-savvy staff to build security notes over time to create such a knowledge base in an ad hoc fashion. Ensure management is aware of the resources and briefs oncoming staff about their expected usage. Try to keep the guidelines lightweight and up-to-date to avoid clutter and irrelevance. Once a comfort-level has been established, they can be used as a qualitative checklist to ensure that the guidelines have been read, understood, and followed in the development process.

EG1 - Assessment

- Have most developers been given high-level security awareness training?

- Does each project team have access to secure development best practices and guidance?

EG1 - Results

- Increased developer awareness on the most common problems at the code level

- Maintain software with rudimentary security best-practices in place

- Set baseline for security know-how among technical staff

- Enable qualitative security checks for baseline security knowledge

EG1 - Metrics

- >50% development staff briefed on security issues within past 1 year

- >75% senior development/architect staff briefed on security issues within past 1 year

- Launch technical guidance within 3 months of first training

EG1 - Costs

- Training course buildout or license

- Ongoing maintenance of technical guidance

EG1 - Personnel

- Developers (1-2 days/yr)

- Architects (1-2 days/yr)

EG1 - Related

- Policy & Compliance - 2

- Security Requirements - 1

- Secure Architecture - 1

EG2

EG2 - Activities

Conduct role-specific application security training

Conduct security training for staff that highlights application security in the context of each role’s job function. Generally, this can be accomplished via instructor-led training in 1-2 days or via computer-based training with modules taking about the same amount of time per person. For managers and requirements specifiers, course content should feature security requirements planning, vulnerability and incident management, threat modeling, and misuse/abuse case design. Tester and auditor training should focus on training staff to understand and more effectively analyze software for security-relevant issues. As such, it should feature techniques for code review, architecture and design analysis, runtime analysis, and effective security test planning. Expand technical training targeting developers and architects to include other relevant topics such as security design patterns, tool-specific training, threat modeling and software assessment techniques. To rollout such training, it is recommended to mandate annual security awareness training and periodic specialized topics training. Course should be available (either instructor-led or computer-based) as often as required based on head-count per role.

Utilize security coaches to enhance project teams

Using either internal or external experts, make security-savvy staff available to project teams for consultation. Further, this coaching resource should be advertised internally to ensure that staff are aware of its availability. The coaching staff can be created by recruiting experienced individuals within the organization to spend some percentage of their time, around 10% maximum, performing coaching activities. The coaches should communicate between one another to ensure they are aware of each other’s area of expertise and route questions accordingly for efficiency. While coaches can be used at any point in the software life-cycle, appropriate times to use the coaches include during initial product conception, before completion of functional or detailed design specification(s), when issues arise during development, test planning, and when operational security incidents occur. Over time, the internal network of coaching resources can be used as points-of-contact for communicating security-relevant information throughout the organization as well as being local resources that have greater familiarity with the ongoing project teams than a purely centralized security team might.

EG2 - Assessment

- Are most roles in the development process given role-specific training and guidance?

- Are most stakeholders able to pull in security coaches for use on projects?

EG2 - Results

- End-to-end awareness of the issues that leads to security vulnerabilities at the product, design, and code levels

- Build plans to remediate vulnerabilities and design flaws in ongoing projects

- Enable qualitative security checkpoints at requirements, design, and development stages

- Deeper understanding of security issues encourages more proactive security planning

EG2 - Metrics

- >60% development staff trained within past 1 year

- >50% management/analyst staff trained within past 1 year

- >80% senior development/architect staff trained within past 1 year

- >3.0 Likert on usefulness of training courses

EG2 - Costs

- Training library build-out or license

- Security-savvy staff for hands-on coaching

EG2 - Personnel

- Developers (2 days/yr)

- Architects (2 days/yr)

- Managers (1-2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1-2 days/yr)

- QA Testers (1-2 days/yr)

- Security Auditors (1-2 days/yr)

EG2 - Related

- Vulnerability Management - 1

- Design Review - 2

- Secure Architecture - 2

EG3

EG3 - Activities

Create formal application security support portal

Building upon written resources on topics relevant to application security, create and advertise a centralized repository (usually an internal web site). The guidelines themselves can be created in any way that makes sense for the organization, but an approval board and straightforward change control processes must be established. Beyond static content in the form of best-practices lists, tool-specific guides, FAQs, and other articles, the support portal should feature interactive components such as mailing lists, web-based forums, or wikis to allow internal resources to cross-communicate security relevant topics and have the information cataloged for future reference. The content should be cataloged and easily searchable based upon several common factors such as platform, programming language, pertinence to specific third party libraries or frameworks, life-cycle stage, etc. Project teams creating software should align themselves early in product development to the specific guidelines that they will follow. In product assessments, the list of applicable guidelines and product-related discussions should be used as audit criteria.

Establish role-based examination/certification

Either per role or per training class/module, create and administer aptitude exams that test people for comprehension and utilization of security knowledge. Typically, exams should be created based on the role-based curricula and target a minimum passing score around 75% correct. While staff should be required to take applicable training or refresher courses annually, certification exams should be required biannually at a minimum. Based upon pass/fail criteria or exceptional performance, staff should be ranked into tiers such that other security-related activities could require individuals of a particular certification level to sign-off before the activity is complete, e.g. an uncertified developer cannot pass a design into implementation without explicit approval from a certified architect. This provides granular visibility on an per-project basis for tracking security decisions with individual accountability. Overall, this provides a foundation for rewarding or penalizing staff for making good business decisions regarding application security.

EG3 - Assessment

- Is security-related guidance centrally controlled and consistently distributed throughout the organization?

- Are most people tested to ensure a baseline skill-set for secure development and deployment practices?

EG3 - Results

- Efficient remediation of vulnerabilities in both ongoing and legacy code bases

- Quickly understand and mitigate against new attacks and threats

- Judge security-savvy of staff and measure against a common standard

- Establish fair incentives toward security awareness

EG3 - Metrics

- >80% staff certified within past 1 year

EG3 - Costs

- Certification examination build-out or license

- Ongoing maintenance and change control for application security support portal

- Human-resources and overhead cost for implementing employee certification

EG3 - Personnel

- Developers (1 day/yr)

- Architects (1 day/yr)

- Managers (1 day/yr)

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

- QA Testers (1 day/yr)

- Security Auditors (1 day/yr)

EG3 - Related

- Policy & Compliance - 2 & 3

Threat Assessment

TA1

TA1 - Activities

Build and maintain application-specific threat models

Based purely on the business purpose of each software project and the business risk profile (if available) identify likely worst-case scenarios for the software under development in each project team. This can be conducted using simple attack trees or through a more formal threat modeling process such as Microsoft’s STRIDE, Trike, etc. To build attack trees, identify each worst-case scenario in one sentence and label these as the high-level goals of an attacker. From each attacker goal identified, identify preconditions that must hold in order for each goal to be realized. This information should be captured in branches underneath each goal where each branch is either a logical AND or a logical OR of the statements contained underneath. An AND branch indicates that each directly attached child nodes must be true in order to realize the parent node. An OR branch indicates that any one of the directly attached child nodes must be true in order to achieve the parent node. Regardless of the threat modeling approach, review each current and historic functional requirement to augment the attack tree to indicate security failures relevant to each. Brainstorm by iteratively dissecting each failure scenario into all the possible ways in which an attacker might be able to reach one of the goals. After initial creation, the threat model for an application should be updated when significant changes to the software are made. This assessment should be conducted with senior developers and architects as well as one or more security auditors.

Develop attacker profile from software architecture

Initially, conduct an assessment to identify all likely threats to the organization based on software projects. For this assessment, consider threats to be limited to agents of malicious intent and omit other risks such as known vulnerabilities, potential weaknesses, etc. Begin by generally considering external agents and their corresponding motivations for attack. To this list, add internal roles that could cause damage and their motivations for insider attack. Based on the architecture of the software project(s) under consideration, it can be more efficient to conduct this analysis once per architecture type instead of for each project individually since applications of architecture and business purpose will generally be susceptible to similar threats. This assessment should be conducted with business owners and other stakeholders but also include one or more security auditors for additional perspective on threats. In the end, the goal is to have a concise list of threat agents and their corresponding motivations for attack.

TA1 - Assessment

- Do most projects in your organization consider and document likely threats?

- Does your organization understand and document the types of attackers it faces?

TA1 - Results

- High-level understanding of factors that may lead to negative outcomes

- Increased awareness of threats amongst project teams

- Inventory of threats for your organization

TA1 - Metrics

- >50% of project stakeholders briefed on the threat models of relevant projects within past 12 months

- >75% of project stakeholders briefed on attacker profiles for relevant architectures

TA1 - Costs

- Buildout and maintenance of project artifacts for threat models

TA1 - Personnel

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

- Developers (1 day/yr)

- Architects (1 day/yr)

- Security Auditors (2 day/yr)

- Managers (1 day/yr)

TA1 - Related

- Strategy & Metrics - 1

- Security Requirements - 2

TA2

TA2 - Activities

Build and maintain abuse-case models per project

Further considering the threats to the organization, conduct a more formal analysis to determine potential misuse or abuse of functionality. Typically, this process begins with identification of normal usage scenarios, e.g. use-case diagrams if available. If a formal abuse-case technique isn’t used, generate a set of abuse-cases for each scenario by starting with a statement of normal usage and brainstorming ways in which the statement might be negated, in whole or in part. The simplest way to get started is to insert the word “no” or “not” into the usage statement in as many ways as possible, typically around nouns and verbs. Each usage scenario should generate several possible abuse-case statements. Further elaborate the abuse-case statements to include any application-specific concerns based on the business function of the software. The ultimate goal is for the completed set of abuse statements to form a model for usage patterns that should be disallowed by the software. If desired, these abuse cases can be combined with existing threat models. After initial creation, abuse-case models should be updated for active projects during the design phase. For existing projects, new requirements should be analyzed for potential abuse, and existing projects should opportunistically build abuse-cases for established functionality where practical.

Adopt a weighting system for measurement of threats

Based on the established attacker profiles, identify a rating system to allow relative comparison between the threats. Initially, this can be a simple high-medium-low rating based upon business risk, but any scale can be used provided that there are no more than 5 categories. After identification of a rating system, build evaluation criteria that allow each threat to be assigned a rating. In order to do this properly, additional factors about each threat must be considered beyond motivation. Important factors include capital and human resources, inherent access privilege, technical ability, relevant goals on the threat model(s), likelihood of successful attack, etc. After assigning each threat to a rating, use this information to prioritize risk mitigation activities within the development life-cycle. Once built for a project team, it should be updated during design of new features or refactoring efforts.

TA2 - Assessment

- Do project teams regularly analyze functional requirements for likely abuses?

- Do project teams use a method of rating threats for relative comparison?

- Are stakeholders aware of relevant threats and ratings?

TA2 - Results

- Granular understanding of likely threats to individual projects

- Framework for better tradeoff decisions within project teams

- Ability to prioritize development efforts within a project team based on risk weighting

TA2 - Metrics

- >75% of project teams with identified and rated threats

- >75% of project stakeholders briefed on threat and abuse models of relevant projects within past 6 months

TA2 - Costs

- Project overhead from maintenance of threat models and attacker profiles

TA2 - Personnel

- Security Auditor (1 day/yr)

- Business Owner (1 day/yr)

- Managers (1 day/yr)

TA2 - Related

- Strategy & Metrics - 2

- Secure Architecture - 2

TA3

TA3 - Activities

Explicitly evaluate risk from third-party components

Conduct an assessment of your software code-base and identify any components that are of external origin. Typically, these will include open-source projects, purchased COTS software, and online services which your software uses. For each identified component, elaborate attacker profiles for the software project based upon potential compromise of third-party components. Based upon the newly identified attacker profiles, update software threat models to incorporate any likely risks based upon new attacker goals or capabilities. In addition to threat scenarios, also consider ways in which vulnerabilities or design flaws in the third-party software might affect your code and design. Elaborate your threat models accordingly with the potential risks from vulnerabilities and knowledge of the updated attacker profile. After initially conducted for a project, this must be updated and reviewed during the design phase or every development cycle. This activity should be conducted by a security auditor with relevant technical and business stakeholders.

Elaborate threat models with compensating controls

Conduct an assessment to formally identify factors that directly prevent preconditions for compromise represented by the threat models. These mitigating factors are the compensating controls that formally address the direct risks from software. Factors can be technical features in the software itself, but can also be process elements in the development life-cycle, infrastructure features, etc. If using attack trees, the logical relationship represented by each branch will be either an AND or an OR. Therefore, by mitigating against just one precondition on an AND branch, the parent and all connected leaf nodes can be marked as mitigated. However, all child nodes on an OR node must be prevented before the parent can be marked as mitigated. Regardless of threat modeling technique, identify compensating controls and annotate the threat models directly. The goal is to maximize coverage in terms of controls that mark parts of the threat model as mitigated. For any viable paths remaining, identify potential compensating controls for feedback into organizational strategy. After initially conducted for a project, this must be updated and reviewed during the design phase or every development cycle. This activity should be conducted by a security auditor with relevant technical and business stakeholders.

TA3 - Assessment

- Do project teams specifically consider risk from external software?

- Are all protection mechanisms and controls captured and mapped back to threats?

TA3 - Results

- Deeper consideration of full threat profile for each software project

- Detailed mapping of assurance features to established threats against each software project

- Artifacts to document due diligence based on business function of each software project

TA3 - Metrics

- >80% of project teams with updated threat models prior to every implementation cycle

- >80% of project teams with updated inventory of third-party components prior to every release

- >50% of all security incidents identified a priori by threat models in past 12 months

TA3 - Costs

- Project overhead from maintenance of detailed threat models and expanded attacker profiles

- Discovery of all third-party dependencies

TA3 - Personnel

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

- Developers (1 day/yr)

- Architects (1 day/yr)

- Security Auditors (2 day/yr)

- Managers (1 day/yr)

TA3 - Related

- Security Requirements - 2 & 3

Security Requirements

SR1

SR1 - Activities

Derive security requirements from business functionality

Conduct a review of functional requirements that specify the business logic and overall behavior for each software project. After gathering requirements for a project, conduct an assessment to derive relevant security requirements. Even if software is being built by a third-party, these requirements, once identified, should be included with functional requirements delivered to vendors. For each functional requirement, a security auditor should lead stakeholders through the process of explicitly noting any expectations with regard to security. Typically, questions to clarify for each requirement include expectations for data security, access control, transaction integrity, criticality of business function, separation of duties, uptime, etc. It is important to ensure that all security requirements follow the same principles for writing good requirements in general. Specifically, they should be specific, measurable, and reasonable. Conduct this process for all new requirements on active projects. For existing features, it is recommended to conduct the same process as a gap analysis to fuel future refactoring for security.

Evaluate security and compliance guidance for requirements

Determine industry best-practices that project teams should treat as requirements. These can be chosen from publicly available guidelines, internal or external guidelines/standards/policies, or established compliance requirements. It is important to not attempt to bring in too many best-practice requirements into each development iteration since there is a time trade-off with design and implementation. The recommended approach is to slowly add best-practices over successive development cycles to bolster the software’s overall assurance profile over time. For existing systems, refactoring for security best practices can be a complex undertaking. Where possible, add security requirements opportunistically when adding new features. At a minimum, conducting the analysis to identify applicable best practices should be done to help fuel future planning efforts. This review should be performed by a security auditor with input from business stakeholders. Senior developers, architects, and other technical stakeholders should also be involved to bring design and implementation-specific knowledge into the decision process.

SR1 - Assessment

- Do most project teams specify some security requirements during development?

- Do project teams pull requirements from best-practices and compliance guidance?

SR1 - Results

- High-level alignment of development effort with business risks

- Ad hoc capturing of industry best-practices for security as explicit requirements

- Awareness amongst stakeholders of measures being taken to mitigate risk from software

SR1 - Metrics

- >50% of project teams with explicitly defined security requirements

SR1 - Costs

- Project overhead from addition of security requirements to each development cycle

SR1 - Personnel

- Security Auditor (2 days/yr)

- Business Owner (1 days/yr)

- Managers (1 day/yr)

- Architects (1 day/yr)

SR1 - Related

- Education & Guidance - 1

- Policy & Compliance - 2

- Design Review - 1

- Code Review - 1

- Security Testing - 1

SR2

SR2 - Activities

Build an access control matrix for resources and capabilities

Based upon the business purpose of the application, identify user and operator roles. Additionally, build a list of resources and capabilities by gathering all relevant data assets and application-specific features that are guarded by any form of access control. In a simple matrix with roles on one axis and resources on the other, consider the relationships between each role and each resource and note in each intersection the correct behavior of the system in terms of access control according to stakeholders. For data resources, it is important to note access rights in terms of creation, read access, update, and deletion. For resources that are features, gradation of access rights will likely be application-specific, but at a minimum note if the role should be permitted access to the feature. This permission matrix will serve as an artifact to document the correct access control rights for the business logic of the overall system. As such, it should be created by the project teams with input from business stakeholders. After initial creation, it should be updated by business stakeholders before every release, but usually toward the beginning of the design phase.

Specify security requirements based on known risks

Explicitly review existing artifacts that indicate organization or project-specific security risk in order to better understand the overall risk profile for the software. When available, draw on resources such as the high-level business risk profile, individual application threat models, findings from design review, code review, security testing, etc. In addition to review of existing artifacts, use abuse-case models for an application to serve as fuel for identification of concrete security requirements that directly or indirectly mitigate the abuse scenarios. This process should be conducted by business owners and security auditors as needed. Ultimately, the notion of risks leading to new security requirements should become a built-in step in the planning phase whereby newly discovered risks are specifically assessed by project teams.

SR2 - Assessment

- Are most stakeholders reviewing access control matrices for relevant projects?

- Are project teams specifying requirements based on feedback from other security activities?

SR2 - Results

- Detailed understanding of attack scenarios against business logic

- Prioritized development effort for security features based on likely attacks

- More educated decision-making for tradeoffs between features and security efforts

- Stakeholders that can better avoid functional requirements that inherently have security flaws

SR2 - Metrics

- >75% of all projects with updated abuse-case models within past 6 months

SR2 - Costs

- Project overhead from buildout and maintenance of abuse-case models

SR2 - Personnel

- Security Auditor (2 days/yr)

- Managers (1 day/yr)

- Architects (2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

SR2 - Related

- Threat Assessment - 1 & 3

- Strategy & Metrics - 1

SR3

SR3 - Activities

Build security requirements into supplier agreements

Beyond the kinds of security requirements already identified by previous analysis, additional security benefits can be derived from third-party agreements. Typically, requirements and perhaps high-level design will be developed internally while detailed design and implementation is often left up to suppliers. Based on the specific division of labor for each externally developed component, identify specific security activities and technical assessment criteria to add to the vendor contracts. Commonly, this is a set of activities from the Design Review, Code Review, and Security Testing Practices. Modifications of agreement language should be handled on a case-by-case basis with each supplier since adding additional requirements will generally mean an increase in cost. The cost of each potential security activity should be balanced against the benefit of the activity as per the usage of the component or system being considered.

Expand audit program for security requirements

Incorporate checks for completeness of security requirements into routine project audits. Since this can be difficult to gauge without project-specific knowledge, the audit should focus on checking project artifacts such as requirements or design documentation for evidence that the proper types of analysis were conducted. Particularly, each functional requirement should be annotated with security requirements based on business drivers as well as expected abuse scenarios. The overall project requirements should contain a list of requirements generated from best-practices in guidelines and standards. Additionally, there should be a clear list of unfulfilled security requirements and an estimated timeline for their provision in future releases. This audit should be performed during every development iteration, ideally toward the end of the requirements process, but it must be performed before a release can be made.

SR3 - Assessment

- Are most stakeholders reviewing vendor agreements for security requirements?

- Are the security requirements specified by project teams being audited?

SR3 - Results

- Formally set baseline for security expectations from external code

- Centralized information on security effort undertaken by each project team

- Ability to align resources to projects based on application risk and desired security requirements

SR3 - Metrics

- >80% of projects passing security requirements audit in past 6 months

- >80% of vendor agreements analyzed for contractual security requirements in past 12 months

SR3 - Costs

- Increased cost from outsourced development from additional security requirements

- Ongoing project overhead from release gates for security requirements

SR3 - Personnel

- Security Auditor (2 days/yr)

- Managers (2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

SR3 - Related

- Threat Assessment - 3

- Policy & Compliance - 2

Secure Architecture

SA1

SA1 - Activities

Maintain list of recommended software frameworks

Across software projects within the organization identify commonly used third-party software libraries and frameworks in use. Generally, this need not be an exhaustive search for dependencies, but rather focus on capturing the high-level components that are most often used. From the list of components, group them into functional categories based on the core features provided by the third-party component. Also, note the usage prevalence of each component across project teams to weight the reliance upon the third-party code. Using this weighted list as a guide, create a list of components to be advertised across the development organization as recommended components. Several factors should contribute to decisions for inclusion on the recommended list. Although a list can be created without conducting research specifically, it is advisable to inspect each for incident history, track record for responding to vulnerabilities, appropriateness of functionality for the organization, excessive complexity in usage of the third-party component, etc. This list should be created by senior developers and architects, but also include input from managers and security auditors. After creation, this list of recommended components matched against functional categories should be advertised to the development organization. Ultimately, the goal is to provide well-known defaults for project teams.

Explicitly apply security principles to design

During design, technical staff on the project team should use a short list of guiding security principles as a checklist against detailed system designs. Typically, security principles include defense in depth, securing the weakest link, use of secure defaults, simplicity in design of security functionality, secure failure, balance of security and usability, running with least privilege, avoidance of security by obscurity, etc. In particular for perimeter interfaces, the design team should consider each principle in the context of the overall system and identify features that can be added to bolster security at each such interface. Generally, these should be limited such that they only take a small amount of extra effort beyond the normal implementation cost of functional requirements and anything larger should be noted and scheduled for future releases. While this process should be conducted by each project team after being trained with security awareness, it is helpful to incorporate more security-savvy staff to aide in making design decisions.

SA1 - Assessment

- Are project teams provided with a list of recommended third-party components?

- Are most project teams aware of secure design principles and applying them?

SA1 - Results

- Ad hoc prevention of unexpected dependencies and one-off implementation choices

- Stakeholders aware of increased project risk due to libraries and frameworks chosen

- Established protocol within development for proactively applying security mechanisms to a design

SA1 - Metrics

- >80% of development staff briefed on software framework recommendations in past 1 year

- >50% of projects self-reporting application of security principles to design

SA1 - Costs

- Buildout, maintenance, and awareness of software framework recommendations

- Ongoing project overhead from analysis and application of security principles

SA1 - Personnel

- Architects (2-4 days/yr)

- Developers (2-4 days/yr)

- Security Auditors (2-4 days/yr)

- Managers (2 days/yr)

SA1 - Related

- Education & Guidance - 1

SA2

SA2 - Activities

Identify and promote security services and infrastructure

Organizations should identify shared infrastructure or services with security functionality. These will typically include single-sign-on services, corporate directory systems, access control or entitlements services, and authentication systems. By collecting and evaluating reusable systems, assemble a list of such resources and categorize them by the security mechanism they fulfill. It is also helpful to consider each resource in terms of why a development team would want to integrate with it, i.e. the benefits of using the shared resource. If multiple resources exist in each category, an organization should select and standardize on one or more shared service per category. Because future software development will rely on these selected services, each should be thoroughly audited to ensure the baseline security posture is understood. For each selected service, design guidance should be created for development teams to understand how to integrate with the system. After such guidance is assembled, it should be made available to development teams through training, mentorship, guidelines, and standards. The benefits of doing this include promotion of known-secure systems, simplified security guidance for project design teams, and clearer paths to building assurance around the applications utilizing the shared security services.

Identify security design patterns from architecture

Across software projects at an organization, each should be categorized in terms of the generic architecture type. Common categories include client-server applications, embedded systems, desktop applications, web-facing applications, web services platforms, transactional middleware systems, mainframe applications, etc. Depending on your organizations specialty, more detailed categories may need to be developed based upon language, or processor architecture, or even era of deployment. For the generic software architecture type, a set of general design patterns representing sound methods of implementing security functionality can be derived and applied to the individual designs of an organization’s software projects. These security design patterns represent general definitions of generic design elements they can be researched or purchased, and it is often even more effective if these patterns are customized to be made more specific to your organization. Example patterns include a single-sign-on subsystem, a cross-tier delegation model, a hardened interface design, separation-of-duties authorization model, a centralized logging pattern, etc. The process of identification of applicable and appropriate patterns should be carried out by architects, senior developers, and other technical stakeholders during the design phase.

SA2 - Assessment

- Do you advertise shared security services with guidance for project teams?

- Are project teams provided with prescriptive design patterns based on their application architecture?

SA2 - Results

- Detailed mapping of assets to user roles to encourage better compartmentalization in design

- Reusable design building blocks for provision of security protections and functionality

- Increased confidence for software projects from use of established design techniques for security

SA2 - Metrics

- >80% of projects with updated permission matrix in past 6 months

- >80% of project teams briefed on applicable security patterns in past 6 months

SA2 - Costs

- Buildout or license of applicable security patterns

- Ongoing project overhead from maintenance of permission matrix

SA2 - Personnel

- Architects (2-4 days/yr)

- Developers (1-2 days/yr)

- Managers (1-2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

- Security Auditors (1-2 days/yr)

SA2 - Related

- Education & Guidance - 1

SA3

SA3 - Activities

Establish formal reference architectures and platforms

After promoting integration with shared security services and working with security patterns specific to each type of architecture, a collection of code implementing these pieces of functionality should be selected from project teams and used as the basis for a shared code-base. This shared code-base can initially start as a collection of commonly recommended libraries that each project needs to use and it can grow over time into one or more software frameworks representing reference platforms upon which project teams build their software. Examples of reference platforms include frameworks for model-view-controller web applications, libraries supporting transactional back-end systems, frameworks for web services platforms, scaffolding for client-server applications, frameworks for middle-ware with pluggable business logic, etc. Another method of building initial reference platforms is to select a particular project early in the life-cycle and have security-savvy staff work with them to build the security functionality in a generic way so that it could be extracted from the project and utilized elsewhere in the organization. Regardless of approach to creation, reference platforms have advantages in terms of speeding audit and security-related reviews, increasing efficiency in development, and lowering maintenance overhead. Architects, senior developers and other technical stakeholders should participate in design and creation of reference platforms. After creation, a team must maintain ongoing support and updates.

Validate usage of frameworks, patterns, and platforms

During routine audits of projects conduct additional analysis of project artifacts to measure usage of recommended frameworks, design patterns, shared security services, and reference platforms. Though conducted during routine audits, the goal of this activity is to collect feedback from project teams as much as to measure their individual proactive security effort. Overall, it is important to verify several factors with project teams. Identify use of non-recommended frameworks to determine if there may be a gap in recommendations versus the organization’s functionality needs. Examine unused or incorrectly used design patterns and reference platform modules to determine if updates are needed. Additionally, there may be more or different functionality that project teams would like to see implemented in the reference platforms as the organization evolves. This analysis can be conducted by any security-savvy technical staff. Metrics collected from each project should be collated for analysis by managers and stakeholders.

SA3 - Assessment

- Are project teams building software from centrally controlled platforms and frameworks?

- Are project teams being audited for usage of secure architecture components?

SA3 - Results

- Customized application development platforms that provide built-in security protections

- Organization-wide expectations for proactive security effort in development

- Stakeholders better able to make tradeoff decisions based on business need for secure design

SA3 - Metrics

- >50% of active projects using reference platforms

- >80% of projects reporting framework, pattern, and platform usage feedback in past 6 months

- >3.0 Likert on usefulness of guidance/platforms reported by project teams

SA3 - Costs

- Buildout or license of reference platform(s)

- Ongoing maintenance and support of reference platforms

- Ongoing project overhead from usage validation during audit

SA3 - Personnel

- Managers (1 day/yr)

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

- Architects (3-4 days/yr)

- Developers (2-3 days/yr)

- Security Auditors (2 days/yr)

SA3 - Related

- Policy & Compliance - 2

- Design Review - 3

- Code Review - 3

- Security Testing - 3

Design Review

DR1

DR1 - Activities

Identify software attack surface

For each software project, create a simplified view of the overall architecture. Typically, this should be created based on project artifacts such as high-level requirements and design documents, interviews with technical staff, or module-level review of the code base. It is important to capture the high-level modules in the system, but a good rule of thumb for granularity is to ensure that the diagram of the whole system under review fits onto one page. From the single page architecture view, analyze each component in terms of accessibility of the interfaces from authorized users, anonymous users, operators, application-specific roles, etc. The components providing the interfaces should also be considered in the context of the one-page view to find points of functional delegation or data pass-through to other components on the diagram. Group interfaces and components with similar accessibility profiles and capture this as the software attack surface. For each interface, further elaborate the one-page diagram to note any security-related functionality. Based on the identified interface groups comprising the attack surface, check the model for design-level consistency for how interfaces with similar access are secured. Any breaks in consistency can be noted as assessment findings This analysis should be conducted by security-savvy technical staff, either within the project team or external. Typically, after initial creation, the diagram and attack surface analysis only needs to be updated during the design phase when additions or changes are made to the edge system interfaces.

Analyze design against known security requirements

Security requirements, either formally identified or informally known, should be identified and collected. Additionally, identify and include any security assumptions upon which safe operation of the system relies. Review each item on the list of known security requirements against the one-page diagram of the system architecture. Elaborate the diagram to show the design-level features that address each security requirement. Separate, granular diagrams can be created to simplify capturing this information if the system is large and/or complex. The overall goal is to verify that each known security requirement has been addressed by the system design. Any security requirements that are not clearly provided at the design level should be noted as assessment findings. This analysis should be conducted by security-savvy technical staff with input from architects, developers, managers, and business owners as needed. It should be updated during the design phase when there are changes in security requirements or high-level system design.

DR1 - Assessment

- Do project teams document the attack perimeter of software designs?

- Do project teams check software designs against known security risks?

DR1 - Results

- High-level understanding of security implications from perimeter architecture

- Enable development teams to self-check designs for security best-practices

- Lightweight process for conducting project-level design reviews

DR1 - Metrics

- >50% of projects with updated attack surface analysis in past 12 months

- >50% of projects with updated security requirements design-level analysis in past 12 months

DR1 - Costs

- Buildout and maintenance of architecture diagrams for each project

- Ongoing project overhead from attack surface and security requirement design inspection

DR1 - Personnel

- Architects (2-3 days/yr)

- Developers (1-2 days/yr)

- Managers (1 day/yr)

- Security Auditor (1 day/yr)

DR1 - Related

- Security Requirements - 1

DR2

DR2 - Activities

Inspect for complete provision of security mechanisms

For each interface on a module in the high-level architecture diagram, formally iterate through the list of security mechanisms and analyze the system for their provision. This type of analysis should be performed on both internal interfaces, e.g. between tiers, as well as external ones, e.g. those comprising the attack surface. The six main security mechanisms to consider are authentication, authorization, input validation, output encoding, error handling and logging. Where relevant, also consider the mechanisms of cryptography and session management. For each interface, determine where in the system design each mechanism is provided and note any missing or unclear features as findings. This analysis should be conducted by security-savvy staff with assistance from the project team for application-specific knowledge. This analysis should be performed once per release, usually toward the end of the design phase. After initial analysis, subsequent releases are required to update the findings based on changes being made during the development cycle.

Deploy design review service for project teams

Institute a process whereby project stakeholders can request an design review. This service may be provided centrally within the organization or distributed across existing staff, but all reviewers must be trained on performing the reviews completely and consistently. The review service should be centrally managed in that the review request queue should be triaged by senior managers, architects, and stakeholders that are familiar with the overall business risk profile for the organization. This allows prioritization of project reviews in alignment with overall business risk. During a design review, the review team should work with project teams to collect information sufficient to formulate an understanding of the attack surface, match project-specific security requirements to design elements, and verify security mechanisms at module interfaces.

DR2 - Assessment

- Do most project teams specifically analyze design elements for security mechanisms?

- Are most project stakeholders aware of how to obtain a formal design review?

DR2 - Results

- Formally offered assessment service to consistently review architecture for security

- Pinpoint security flaws in maintenance-mode and legacy systems

- Deeper understanding amongst project stakeholders on how the software provides assurance protections

DR2 - Metrics

- >80% of stakeholders briefed on status of review requests in past 6 months

- >75% of projects undergoing design review in past 12 months

DR2 - Costs

- Buildout, training, and maintenance of design review team

- Ongoing project overhead from review activities

DR2 - Personnel

- Architects (1-2 days/yr)

- Developers (1 day/yr)

- Managers (1 day/yr)

- Security Auditors (2-3 days/yr)

DR2 - Related

- Education & Guidance - 2

- Strategy & Metrics - 2

DR3

DR3 - Activities

Develop data-flow diagrams for sensitive resources

Based on the business function of the software project, conduct analysis to identify details on system behavior around high-risk functionality. Typically, high-risk functionality will correlate to features implementing creation, access, update, and deletion of sensitive data. Beyond data, high-risk functionality also includes project-specific business logic that is critical in nature, either from a denial-of-service or compromise perspective. For each identified data source or business function, select and use a standardized notation to capture relevant software modules, data sources, actors, and messages that flow amongst them. It is often helpful to start with a high-level design diagram and iteratively flesh out relevant detail while removing elements that do not correspond to the sensitive resource. With data-flow diagrams created for a project, conduct analysis over them to determine internal choke-points in the design. Generally, these will be individual software modules that handle data with differing sensitivity levels or those that gate access to several business functions of various levels of business criticality.

Establish release gates for design review

Having established a consistent design review program, the next step of enforcement is to set a particular point in the software development life-cycle where a project cannot pass until an design review is conducted and findings are reviewed and accepted. In order to accomplish this, a baseline level of expectations should be set, e.g. no projects with any high-severity findings will be allowed to pass and all other findings must be accepted by the business owner. Generally, design reviews should occur toward the end of the design phase to aide early detection of security issues, but it must occur before releases can be made from the project team. For legacy systems or inactive projects, an exception process should be created to allow those projects to continue operations, but with an explicitly assigned time-frame for each to be reviewed to illuminate any hidden vulnerabilities in the existing systems. Exceptions for should be limited to no more than 20% of all projects.

DR3 - Assessment

- Does the design review process incorporate detailed data-level analysis?

- Does routine project audit require a baseline for design review results?

DR3 - Results

- Granular view of weak points in a system design to encourage better compartmentalization

- Organization-level awareness of project standing against baseline security expectations for architecture

- Comparisons between projects for efficiency and progress toward mitigating known flaws

DR3 - Metrics

- >80% of projects with updated data-flow diagrams in past 6 months

- >75% of projects passing design review audit in past 6 months

DR3 - Costs

- Ongoing project overhead from maintenance of data-flow diagrams

- Organization overhead from project delays caused by failed design review audits

DR3 - Personnel

- Developers (2 days/yr)

- Architects (1 day/yr)

- Managers (1-2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1-2 days/yr)

- Security Auditors (2-3 days/yr)

DR3 - Related

- Secure Architecture - 3

- Code Review - 3

Code Review

CR1

CR1 - Activities

Create review checklists from known security requirements

From the known security requirements for a project, derive a lightweight code review checklist for security. These can be checks specific to the security concerns surrounding the functional requirements or checks for secure coding best practices based on the implementation language, platform, typical technology stack, etc. Due to these variations, often a set of checklist are needed to cover the different types of software development within an organization. Regardless, of whether created from publicly available resources or purchased, technical stakeholders such as development managers, architects, developers, and security auditors should review the checklists for efficacy and feasibility. It is important to keep the lists short and simple, aiming to catch high-priority issues that are straightforward to find in code either manually or with simple search tools. Code analysis automation tools may also be used to achieve this same end, but should also be customized to reduce the overall set of security checks to a small, valuable set in order to make the scan and review process efficient. Developers should be briefed on the goals of checklists appropriate to their job function.

Perform point-review of high-risk code

Since code-level vulnerabilities can have dramatically increased impacts if they occur in security-critical parts of software, project teams should review high-risk modules for common vulnerabilities. Common examples of high-risk functionality include authentication modules, access control enforcement points, session management schemes, external interfaces, input validators and data parsers, etc. Utilizing the code review checklists, the analysis can be performed as a normal part of the development process where members of the project team are assigned modules to review when changes are made. Security auditors and automated review tools can also be utilized for the review. During development cycles where high-risk code is being changed and reviewed, development managers should triage the findings and prioritize remediation appropriately with input from other project stakeholders.

CR1 - Assessment

- Do most project teams have review checklists based on common problems?

- Are project teams generally performing review of selected high-risk code?

CR1 - Results

- Inspection for common code vulnerabilities that lead to likely discovery or attack

- Lightweight review for coding errors that lead to severe security impact

- Basic code-level due diligence for security assurance

CR1 - Metrics

- >80% of project teams briefed on relevant code review checklists in past 6 months

- >50% of project teams performing code review on high-risk code in past 6 months

- >3.0 Likert on usefulness of code review checklists reported by developers

CR1 - Costs

- Buildout or license of code review checklists

- Ongoing project overhead from code review activities of high-risk code

CR1 - Personnel

- Developers (2-4 days/yr)

- Architects (1-2 days/yr)

- Managers (1-2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

CR1 - Related

- Security Requirements - 1

CR2

CR2 - Activities

Utilize automated code analysis tools

Many security vulnerabilities at the code level are complex to understand and require careful inspection for discovery. However, there are many useful automation solutions available to automatically analyze code for bugs and vulnerabilities. There are both commercial and open-source products available to cover popular programming languages and frameworks. Selection of an appropriate code analysis solution is based on several factors including depth and accuracy of inspection, product usability and usage model, expandability and customization features, applicability to the organization’s architecture and technology stack(s), etc. Utilize input from security-savvy technical staff as well as developers and development managers in the selection process, and review overall results with stakeholders.

Integrate code analysis into development process

Once a code analysis solution is selected, it must be integrated into the development process to encourage project teams to utilize its capabilities. An effective way to accomplish this is to setup the infrastructure for the scans to run automatically at build time or from code in the project’s code repository. In this fashion, results are available earlier thus enabling development teams to self-check along the way before release. A potential problem with legacy systems or large ongoing projects is that code scanners will typically report findings in modules that were not being updated in the release. If automatic scanning is setup to run periodically, an effective strategy to avoid review overhead is to limit consideration of findings to those that have been added, removed, or changed since the previous scan. If is critical to not ignore the rest of the results however, so development managers should take input from security auditors, stakeholders, and the project team to formulate a concrete plan for addressing the rest of the findings. If unaddressed findings from code review remain at release, these must be reviewed and accepted by project stakeholders.

CR2 - Assessment

- Can most project teams access automated code analysis tools to find security problems?

- Do most stakeholders consistently require and review results from code reviews?

CR2 - Results

- Development enabled to consistently self-check for code-level security vulnerabilities

- Routine analysis results to compile historic data on per-team secure coding habits

- Stakeholders aware of unmitigated vulnerabilities to support better tradeoff analysis

CR2 - Metrics

- >50% of projects with code review and stakeholder sign-off in past 6 months

- >80% of projects with access to automated code review results in past 1 month

CR2 - Costs

- Research and selection of code analysis solution

- Initial cost and maintenance of automation integration

- Ongoing project overhead from automated code review and mitigation

CR2 - Personnel

- Developers (1-2 days/yr)

- Architects (1 day/yr)

- Managers (1-2 days/yr)

- Security Auditors (3-4 days/yr)

CR2 - Related

CR3

CR3 - Activities

Customize code analysis for application-specific concerns

Code scanning tools are powered by built-in a knowledge-base of rules to check code based on language APIs and commonly used libraries, but have limited ability to understand custom APIs and designs to apply analogous checks. However, through customization, a code scanner can be a powerful, generic analysis engine for finding organization and project-specific security concerns. While details vary between tools in terms of ease and power of custom analysis, code scanner customization generally involves specifying checks to be performed at specific APIs and function call sites. Checks can include analysis for adherence to internal coding standards, unchecked tainted data being passed to custom interfaces, tracking and verification of sensitive data handling, correct usage of an internal API, etc. Checkers for usage of shared code-bases are an effective place to begin scanner customizations since the created checkers can be utilized across multiple projects. To customize a tool for a code-base, a security auditor should inspect both code and high-level design to identify candidate checkers to discuss with development staff and stakeholders for implementation.

Establish release gates for code review

To set a code-level security baseline for all software projects, a particular point in the software development life-cycle should be established as a checkpoint where a minimum standard for code review results must be met in order to make a release. To begin, this standard should be straightforward to meet, for example by choosing one or two vulnerability types and a setting the standard that no project may pass with any corresponding findings. Over time, this baseline standard should be improved by adding additional criteria for passing the checkpoint. Generally, the code review checkpoint should occur toward the end of the implementation phase, but must occur before release. For legacy systems or inactive projects, an exception process should be created to allow those projects to continue operations, but with an explicitly assigned timeframe for mitigation of findings. Exceptions should be limited to no more that 20% of all projects.

CR3 - Assessment

- Do project teams utilize automation to check code against application-specific coding standards?

- Does routine project audit require a baseline for code review results prior to release?

CR3 - Results

- Increased confidence in accuracy and applicability of code analysis results

- Organization-wide baseline for secure coding expectations

- Project teams with an objective goal for judging code-level security

CR3 - Metrics

- >50% of projects using code analysis customizations

- >75% of projects passing code review audit in past 6 months

CR3 - Costs

- Buildout and maintenance of custom code review checks

- Ongoing project overhead from code review audit

- Organization overhead from project delays caused by failed code review audits

CR3 - Personnel

- Architects (1 day/yr)

- Developers (1 day/yr)

- Security Auditors (1-2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

- Managers (1 day/yr)

CR3 - Related

- Policy & Compliance - 2

- Secure Architecture - 3

Security Testing

ST1

ST1 - Activities

Derive test cases from known security requirements

From the known security requirements for a project, identify a set of test cases to check the software for correct functionality. Typically, these test cases are derived from security concerns surrounding the functional requirements and business logic of the system, but should also include generic tests for common vulnerabilities based on the implementation language or technology stack. Often, it is most effective to use the project team’s time to build application-specific test cases and utilize publicly available resources or purchased knowledge bases to select applicable general test cases for security. Although not required, automated security testing tools can also be utilized to cover the general security test cases. This test case planning should occur during the requirements and/or design phases, but must occur before final testing prior to release. Candidate test cases should be reviewed for applicability, efficacy, and feasibility by relevant development, security, and quality assurance staff.

Conduct penetration testing on software releases

Using the set of security test cases identified for each project, penetration testing should be conducted to evaluate the system’s performance against each case. It is common for this to occur during the testing phase prior to release. Penetration testing cases should include both application-specific tests to check soundness of business logic as well as common vulnerability tests to check the design and implementation. Once specified, security test cases can be executed by security-savvy quality assurance or development staff, but first-time execution of security test cases for a project team should be monitored by a security auditor to assist and coach team members. Prior to release or deployment, stakeholders must review results of security tests and accept the risks indicated by failing security tests at release time. In the latter case, a concrete timeline should be established to address the gaps over time.

ST1 - Assessment

- Are projects specifying some security tests based on requirements?

- Do most projects perform penetration tests prior to release?

- Are most stakeholders aware of the security test status prior to release?

ST1 - Results

- Independent verification of expected security mechanisms surrounding critical business functions

- High-level due diligence toward security testing

ST1 - Metrics

- >50% of projects specifying security test cases in past 12 months

- >50% of stakeholders briefed on project status against security tests in past 6 months

ST1 - Costs

- Buildout or license of security test cases

- Ongoing project overhead from maintenance and evaluation of security test cases

ST1 - Personnel

- QA Testers (1-2 days/yr)

- Security Auditor (1-2 days/yr)

- Developers (1 day/yr)

- Architects (1 day/yr)

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

ST1 - Related

- Security Requirements - 1

ST2

ST2 - Activities

Utilize automated security testing tools

In order to test for security issues, a potentially large number of input cases must be checked against each software interface, which can make effective security testing using manual test case implementation and execution unwieldy. Thus, automated security test tools should be used to automatically test software, resulting in more efficient security testing and higher quality results. Both commercial and open-source products are available and should be reviewed for appropriateness for the organization. Selecting a a suitable tool is based on several factors including robustness and accuracy of built-in security test cases, efficacy at testing architecture types important to organization, customization to change or add test cases, quality and usability of findings to the development organization, etc.. Utilize input from security-savvy technical staff as well as development and quality assurance staff in the selection process, and review overall results with stakeholders.

Integrate security testing into development process

With tools to run automated security tests, projects within the organization should routinely run security tests and review results during development. In order to make this scalable with low overhead, security testing tools should be configured to automatically run on a routine basis, e.g. nightly or weekly, and findings should be inspected as they occur. Conducting security tests as early as the requirements or design phases can be beneficial. While traditionally, used for functional test cases, this type of test-driven development approach involves identifying and running relevant security test cases early in the development cycle, usually during design. With the automatic execution of security test cases, projects enter the implementation phase with a number of failing tests for the non-existent functionality. Implementation is complete when all the tests pass. This provides a clear, upfront goal for developers early in the development cycle, thus lowering risk of release delays due to security concerns or forced acceptance of risk in order to meet project deadlines. For each project release, results from automated and manual security tests should be presented to management and business stakeholders for review. If there are unaddressed findings that remain as accepted risks for the release, stakeholders and development managers should work together to establish a concrete timeframe for addressing them.

ST2 - Assessment

- Are projects using automation to evaluate security test cases?

- Do most projects follow a consistent process to evaluate and report on security tests to stakeholders?

ST2 - Results

- Deeper and more consistent verification of software functionality for security

- Development teams enabled to self-check and correct problems before release

- Stakeholders better aware of open vulnerabilities when making risk acceptance decisions

ST2 - Metrics

- >50% of projects with security testing and stakeholder sign-off in past 6 months

- >80% of projects with access to automated security testing results in past 1 month

ST2 - Costs

- Research and selection of automated security testing solution

- Initial cost and maintenance of automation integration

- Ongoing project overhead from automated security testing and mitigation

ST2 - Personnel

- Developers (1 days/yr)

- Architects (1 day/yr)

- Managers (1-2 days/yr)

- Security Auditors (2 days/yr)

- QA Testers (3-4 days/yr)

ST2 - Related

ST3

ST3 - Activities

Employ application-specific security testing automation

Through either customization of security testing tools, enhancements to generic test case execution tools, or buildout of custom test harnesses, project teams should formally iterate through security requirements and build a set of automated checkers to test the security of the implemented business logic. Additionally, many automated security testing tools can be greatly improved in accuracy and depth of coverage if they are customized to understand more detail about the specific software interfaces in the project under test. Further, organization-specific concerns from compliance or technical standards can be codified as a reusable, central test battery to make audit data collection and per-project management visibility simpler. Project teams should focus on buildout of granular security test cases based on the business functionality of their software, and an organization-level team led by a security auditor should focus on specification of automated tests for compliance and internal standards.

Establish release gates for security testing

To prevent software from being released with easily found security bugs, a particular point in the software development life-cycle should be identified as a checkpoint where an established set of security test cases must pass in order to make a release from the project. This establishes a baseline for the kinds of security tests all projects are expected to pass. Since adding too many test cases initially can result in an overhead cost bubble, begin by choosing one or two security issues and include a wide variety of test cases for each with the expectation that no project may pass if any test fails. Over time, this baseline should be improved by selecting additional security issues and adding a variety of corresponding test cases. Generally, this security testing checkpoint should occur toward the end of the implementation or testing, but must occur before release. For legacy systems or inactive projects, an exception process should be created to allow those projects to continue operations, but with an explicitly assigned timeframe for mitigation of findings. Exceptions should be limited to no more that 20% of all projects.

ST3 - Assessment

- Are security test cases comprehensively generated for application-specific logic?

- Do routine project audits demand minimum standard results from security testing?

ST3 - Results

- Organization-wide baseline for expected application performance against attacks

- Customized security test suites to improve accuracy of automated analysis

- Project teams aware of objective goals for attack resistance

ST3 - Metrics

- >50% of projects using security testing customizations

- >75% of projects passing all security tests in past 6 months

ST3 - Costs

- Buildout and maintenance of customizations to security testing automation

- Ongoing project overhead from security testing audit process

- Organization overhead from project delays caused by failed security testing audits

ST3 - Personnel

- Architects (1 day/yr)

- Developers (1 day/yr)

- Security Auditors (1-2 days/yr)

- QA Testers (1-2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

- Managers (1 day/yr)

ST3 - Related

- Policy & Compliance - 2

- Secure Architecture - 3

Vulnerability Management

VM1

VM1 - Activities

Identify point of contact for security issues

For each division within the organization or for each project team, establish a point of contact to serve as a communications hub for security information. While generally this responsibility will not claim much time from the individuals, the purpose of having a predetermined point of contact is to add structure and governance for vulnerability management. Examples of incidents that might cause the utilization include receipt of a vulnerability report from an external entity, compromise or other security failure of software in the field, internal discovery of high-risk vulnerabilities, etc. In case of an event, the closest contact would step in as an extra resource and advisor to the affected project team(s) to provide technical guidance and brief other stakeholders on progress of mitigation efforts. The point of contact should be chosen from security-savvy technical or management staff with a breadth of knowledge over the software projects in the organization. A list of these assigned security points of contact should be centrally maintained and updated at least every six months. Additionally, publishing and advertising this list allows staff within the organization to request help and work directly with one another on security problems.

Create informal security response team(s)

From the list of individuals assigned responsibility as a security point of contact or from dedicated security personnel, select a small group to serve as a centralized technical security response team. The responsibilities of the team will include directly taking ownership of security incidents or vulnerability reports and being responsible for triage, mitigation, and reporting to stakeholders. Given their responsibility when tapped, members of the security response team are also responsible for executive briefings and upward communication during an incident. It is likely that most of the time, the security response team would not be operating in this capacity, though they must be flexible enough to be able to respond quickly or a smooth process must exist for deferring and incident to another team member. The response team should hold a meeting at least annually to brief security points of contact on the response process and high-level expectations for security-related reporting from project teams.

VM1 - Assessment

- Do most projects have a point of contact for security issues?

- Does your organization have an assigned security response team?

- Are most project teams aware of their security point(s) of contact and response team(s)?

VM1 - Results

- Lightweight process in place to handle high-priority vulnerabilities or incidents

- Framework for stakeholder notification and reporting of events with security impact

- High-level due diligence for handling security issues

VM1 - Metrics

- >50% of the organization briefed on closest security point of contact in past 6 months

- >1 meeting of security response team and points of contact in past 12 months

VM1 - Costs

- Ongoing variable project overhead from staff filling the security point of contact roles

- Identification of appropriate security response team

VM1 - Personnel

- Security Auditors (1 day/yr)

- Architects (1 day/yr)

- Managers (1 day/yr)

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

VM1 - Related

- Education & Guidance - 2

- Strategy & Metrics - 3

VM2

VM2 - Activities

Establish consistent incident response process

Extending from the informal security response team, explicitly document the organization’s incident response process as well as the procedures that team members are expected to follow. Additionally, each member of the security response team must be trained on this material at least annually. There are several tenets to sound incident response process and they include initial triage to prevent additional damage, change management and patch application, managing project personnel and others involved in the incident, forensic evidence collection and preservation, limiting communication about the incident to stakeholders, well-defined reporting to stakeholders and/or communications trees, etc. With development teams, the security responders should work together to conduct the technical analysis to verify facts and assumptions about each incident or vulnerability report. Likewise, when project teams detect an incident or high-risk vulnerability, they should follow an internal process that puts them in contact with a member of the security response team.

Adopt a security issue disclosure process

For most organizations, it is undesirable to let news of a security problem become public, but there are several important ways in which internal-to-external communications on security issues should be fulfilled. The first and most common is through creation and deployment of security patches for the software produced by the organization. Generally, if all software projects are only used internally, then this becomes less critical, but for all contexts where the software is being operated by parties external to the organization, a patch release process must exist. It should provide for several factors including change management and regression testing prior to patch release, announcement to operators/users with assigned criticality category for the patch, sparse technical details so that an exploit cannot be directly derived, etc. Another avenue for external communications is with third parties that report security vulnerabilities in an organization’s software. By adopting and externally posting the expected process with timeframes for response, vulnerability reporters are encouraged to follow responsible disclosure practices. Lastly, many states and countries legally require external communications for incidents involving data theft of personally identifiable information and other sensitive data type. Should this type of incident occur, the security response team should work with managers and business stakeholders to determine appropriate next-steps.

VM2 - Assessment

- Does the organization utilize a consistent process for incident reporting and handling?

- Are most project stakeholders aware of relevant security disclosures related to their software projects?

VM2 - Results

- Communications plan for dealing with vulnerability reports from third-parties

- Clear process for releasing security patches to software operators

- Formal process for tracking, handling, and internally communicating about incidents

VM2 - Metrics

- >80% of project teams briefed on incident response process in past 6 months

- >80% of stakeholders briefed on security issue disclosures in past 6 months

VM2 - Costs

- Ongoing organization overhead from incident response process

VM2 - Personnel

- Security Auditors (3-5 days/yr)

- Managers (1-2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1-2 days/yr)

- Support/Operators (1-2 days/yr)

VM2 - Related

VM3

VM3 - Activities

Conduct root cause analysis for incidents

Though potentially time consuming, the incident response process should be augmented to include additional analysis to identify the key, underlying security failures. These root causes can be technical problems such as code-level vulnerabilities, configuration errors, etc. or they can be people/process problems such as social engineering, failure to follow procedures, etc. Once a root cause is identified for an incident, it should be used as a tool to find other potential weaknesses in the organization where an analogous incident could have occurred. For each identified weakness additional recommendations for proactive mitigations should be communicated as part of closing out the original incident response effort. Any recommendations based on root cause analysis should be reviewed by management and relevant business stakeholders in order to either schedule mitigation activities or note the accepted risks.

Collect per-incident metrics

By having a centralized process to handle all compromise and high-priority vulnerability reports, an organization is enabled to take measurements of trends over time to determine impact and efficiency of initiatives for security assurance. Records of past incidents should be stored and reviewed at least every 6 months. Group similar incidents and simply tally the overall count for each type of problem. Additional measurements to take from the incidents include frequency of software projects affected by incidents, system downtime and cost from loss of use, human resources taken in handling and cleanup of the incident, estimates of long-term costs such as regulatory fines or brand damage, etc. For root causes that were technical problems in nature, it is also helpful to identify what kind of proactive, review, or operational practice might have detected it earlier or lessened the damage. This information is concrete feedback into the program planning process since it represents the real security impact that the organization has felt over time.

VM3 - Assessment

- Are most incidents inspected for root causes to generate further recommendations?

- Do most projects consistently collect and report data and metrics related to incidents?

VM3 - Results

- Detailed feedback for organizational improvement after each incident

- Rough cost estimation from vulnerabilities and compromises

- Stakeholders better able to make tradeoff decisions based on historic incident trends

VM3 - Metrics

- >80% of incidents documented with root causes and further recommendations in past 6 months

- >80% of incidents collated for metrics in the past 6 months

VM3 - Costs

- Ongoing organization overhead from conducting deeper research and analysis of incidents

- Ongoing organization overhead from collection and review of incident metrics

VM3 - Personnel

- Security Auditors (3 days/yr)

- Managers (2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (2 days/yr)

VM3 - Related

- Strategy & Metrics - 3

Environment Hardening

EH1

EH1 - Activities

Maintain operational environment specification

For each project, a concrete definition of the expected operating platforms should be created and maintained. Depending on the organization, this specification should be jointly created with development staff, stakeholders, support and operations groups, etc. Begin this specification should by capturing all details that must be true about the operating environment based upon the business function of the software. These can include factors such as processor architecture, operating system versions, prerequisite software, conflicting software, etc. Further, note any known user or operator configurable options about the operating environment that affect the way in which the software will behave. Additionally, identify any relevant assumptions about the operating environment that were made in design and implementation of the project and capture those assumptions in the specification. This specification should be reviewed and updated at least every 6 months for active projects or more often if changes are being made to the software design or the expected operating environment.

Identify and install critical security upgrades and patches

Most applications are software that runs on top of another large stack of software composed of built-in programming language libraries, third-party components and development frameworks, base operating systems, etc. Because security flaws contained in any module in that large software stack affect the overall security of the organization’s software, critical security updates for elements of the technology stack must be installed. As such, regular research or ongoing monitoring of high-risk dependencies should be performed to stay abreast of the latest fixes to security flaws. Upon identification of a critical upgrade or patch that would impact the security posture of the software project, plans should be made to get affected users and operators to update their installations. Depending on the type of software project, details on doing this can vary.

EH1 - Assessment

- Do the majority of projects document some requirements for the operational environment?

- Do most projects check for security updates to third-party software components?

EH1 - Results

- Clear understanding of operational expectations within the development team

- High-priority risks from underlying infrastructure mitigated on a well-understood timeline

- Software operators with a high-level plan for security-critical maintenance of infrastructure

EH1 - Metrics

- >50% project with updated operational environment specification in past 6 months

- >50% of projects with updated list of relevant critical security patches in past 6 months

EH1 - Costs

- Ongoing project overhead from buildout and maintenance of operational environment specification

- Ongoing project overhead from monitoring and installing critical security updates

EH1 - Personnel

- Developers (1-2 day/yr)

- Architects (1-2 day/yr)

- Managers (2-4 day/yr)

- Support/Operators (3-4 days/yr)

EH1 - Related

- Operational Enablement - 2

EH2

EH2 - Activities

Establish routine patch management process

Moving to a more formal process than ad hoc application of critical upgrades and patches, an ongoing process should be created in the organization to consistently apply updates to software dependencies in the operating environment. In the most basic form, the process should aim to make guarantees for time lapse between release and application of security upgrades and patches. To make this process efficient, organizations typically accept high latency on lower priority updates, e.g. maximum of 2 days for critical patches spanning to a maximum of 30 days for low priority patches. This activity should be primarily conducted by support and operations staff, but routine meetings with development should also be conducted to keep the whole project abreast of past changes and scheduled upgrades. Additionally, development staff should share a list of third-party components upon which the software project internally depends so that support and operations staff can monitor those as well to cue development teams on when an upgrade is required.

Monitor baseline environment configuration status

Given the complexity of monitoring and managing patches alone across the variety of components composing the infrastructure for a software project, automation tools should be utilized to automatically monitor systems for soundness of configuration. There are both commercial and open-source tools available to provide this type of functionality, so project teams should select a solution based on appropriateness to the organization’s needs. Typical selection criteria includes ease of deployment and customization, applicability to the organization’s platforms and technology stacks, built-in features for change management and alerting, metrics collection and trend tracking etc. In addition to host and platform checks, monitoring automation should be customized to perform application-specific health checks and configuration verifications. Support and operations personnel should work with architects and developers to determine the optimal amount of monitoring for a given software project. Ultimately, after a solution is deployed for monitoring the environment’s configuration status, unexpected alerts or configuration changes should be collected and regularly reviewed by project stakeholders as often as weekly but at least once per quarter.

EH2 - Assessment

- Is a consistent process used to apply upgrades and patches to critical dependencies?

- Do most project leverage automation to check application and environment health?

EH2 - Results

- Granular verification of security characteristics of systems in operations

- Formal expectations on timelines for infrastructure risk mitigation

- Stakeholders consistently aware of current operations status of software projects

EH2 - Metrics

- >80% of project teams briefed on patch management process in past 12 months

- >80% of stakeholders aware of current patch status in past 6 months

EH2 - Costs

- Ongoing organization overhead from patch management and monitoring

- Buildout or license of infrastructure monitoring tools

EH2 - Personnel

- Architects (1-2 days/yr)

- Developers (1-2 days/yr)

- Business Owners (1-2 days/yr)

- Managers (1-2 days/yr)

- Support/Operators (3-4 days/yr)

EH2 - Related

EH3

EH3 - Activities

Identify and deploy relevant operations protection tools

In order to build a better assurance case for software in its operating environment, additional tools can be used to enhance the security posture of the overall system. Operational environments can vary dramatically, thus the appropriateness of given protection technology should be considered in the project context. Commonly used protections tools include web application firewalls, XML security gateways for web services, anti-tamper and obfuscation packages for client/embedded systems, network intrusion detection/prevention systems for legacy infrastructure, forensic log aggregation tools, host-based integrity verification tools, etc. Based on the organization and project-specific knowledge, technical stakeholders should work with support and operations staff to identify and recommend selected operations protection tools to business stakeholders. If deemed a valuable investment in terms of risk-reduction versus cost of implementation, stakeholders should agree on plans for a pilot, widespread rollout, and ongoing maintenance.

Expand audit program for environment configuration

When conducting routine project-level audits, expand the review to include inspection of artifacts related to hardening the operating environment. Beyond an up-to-date specification for the operational environment, audits should inspect current patch status and historic data since the previous audit. By tapping into monitoring tools, audits can also verify key factors about application configuration management and historic changes. Audits should also inspect the usage of operations protections tools against those available for the software’s architecture type. Audits for infrastructure can occur at any point after a project’s initial release and deployment, but should occur at least every 6 months. For legacy systems or projects without active development, infrastructure audits should still be conducted and reviewed by business stakeholders. An exception process should be created to allow special-case projects to continue operations, but with an explicitly assigned timeframe for mitigation of findings. Exceptions should be limited to no more that 20% of all projects.

EH3 - Assessment

- Are stakeholders aware of options for additional tools to protect software while running in operations?

- Does routine audit check most projects for baseline environment health?

EH3 - Results

- Reinforced operational environment with layered checks for security

- Established and measured goals for operational maintenance and performance

- Reduced likelihood of successful attack via flaws in external dependencies

EH3 - Metrics

- >80% of stakeholders briefed on relevant operations protection tools in past 6 months

- >75% of projects passing infrastructure audits in past 6 months

EH3 - Costs

- Research and selection of operations protection solutions

- Buildout or license of operations protections tools

- Ongoing operations overhead from maintenance of protection tools

- Ongoing project overhead from infrastructure-related audits

EH3 - Personnel

- Business Owners (1 day/yr)

- Managers (1-2 days/yr)

- Support/Operators (3-4 days)

EH3 - Related

- Policy & Compliance - 2

Operational Enablement

OE1

OE1 - Activities

Capture critical security information for deployment

With software-specific knowledge, project teams should identify any security-relevant configuration and operations information and communicate it to users and operators. This enables the actual security posture of software at deployment sites to function in the same way that designers in the project team intended. This analysis should begin with architects and developers building a list of security features built-in to the software. From that list, information about configuration options and their security impact should be captured as well. For projects that offer several different deployment models, information about the security ramifications of each should be noted to better inform users and operators about the impact of their choices. Overall, the list should be lightweight and aim to capture the most critical information. Once initially created, it should be reviewed by the project team and business stakeholders for agreement. Additionally, it is effective to review this list with select operators or users in order to ensure the information is understandable and actionable. Project teams should review and update this information with every release, but must do so at least every 6 months.

Document procedures for typical application alerts

With specific knowledge of ways in which software behaves, project teams should identify the most important error and alert messages which require user/operator attention. From each identified event, information related to appropriate user/operator actions in response to the event should be captured. From the potentially large set of events that the software might generate, select the highest priority set based on relevance in terms of the business purpose of the software. This should include any security-related events, but also may include critical errors and alerts related to software health and configuration status. For each event, actionable advice should be captured to inform users and operators of required next steps and potential root causes of the event. These procedures must be reviewed by the project team and updated at every major product release, every 6 months, but can be done more frequently, e.g. with each release.

OE1 - Assessment

- Do you deliver security notes with the majority of software releases?

- Are security-related alerts and error conditions documented for most projects?

OE1 - Results

- Ad hoc improvements to software security posture through better understanding of correct operations

- Operators and users aware of their role in ensuring secure deployment

- Improved communications between software developers and users for security-critical information

OE1 - Metrics

- >50% of projects with updated deployment security information in past 6 months

- >50% of projects with operational procedures for events updated in past 6 months

OE1 - Costs

- Ongoing project overhead from maintenance of deployment security information

- Ongoing project overhead from maintenance of critical operating procedures

OE1 - Personnel

- Developers (1-2 days/yr)

- Architects (1-2 days/yr)

- Managers (1 days/yr)

- Support/Operators (1 days/yr)

OE1 - Related

OE2

OE2 - Activities

Create per-release change management procedures

To more formally update users and operators on relevant changes in the software, each release must include change management procedures relevant to upgrade and first-time installation. Overall, the goal is to capture the expected accompanying steps that ensure the deployment will be successful and not incur excessive downtime or degradation of security posture. To build these procedures during development, the project teams should setup a lightweight internal process for capturing relevant items that would impact deployments. It is effective to have this process in place early in the development cycle so that this information can be retained as soon as it is identified while in the requirements, design, and implementation phases. Before each release, the project team should review the list as a whole for completeness and feasibility. For some projects, extensive change procedures accompanying a given release may warrant special handling, such as building automated upgrade scripts to prevent errors during deployment.

Maintain formal operational security guides

Starting from the information captured on critical software events and the procedures for handling each, project teams should build and maintain formal guides that capture all the security-relevant information that users and operators need to know. Initially, this guide should be built from the known information about the system, such as security-related configuration options, event handling procedures, installation and upgrade guides, operational environment specifications, security-related assumptions about the deployment environment, etc. Extending this, the formal operational security guide should elaborate on each of these to cover more details such that the majority of the users and operators will be informed for all the questions they might have had. For large or complex systems, this can be challenging, so project teams should work with business stakeholders to determine the appropriate level of documentation. Additionally, project teams should document any recommendations for deployments that would enhance security. The operational security guide, after initial creation, should be reviewed by project teams and updated with each release.

OE2 - Assessment

- Are most project utilizing a change management process that’s well understood?

- Do project teams deliver an operational security guide with each product release?

OE2 - Results

- Detailed guidance for security-relevant changes delivered with software releases

- Updated information repository on secure operating procedures per application

- Alignment of operations expectations among developers, operators, and users.

OE2 - Metrics

- >50% of projects with updated change management procedures in past 6 months

- >80% of stakeholders briefed on status of operational security guides in past 6 months

OE2 - Costs

- Ongoing project overhead from maintenance of change management procedures

- Ongoing project overhead from maintenance of operational security guides

OE2 - Personnel

- Developers (1-2 days/yr)

- Architects (1-2 days/yr)

- Managers (1 days/yr)

- Support/Operators (1 days/yr)

OE2 - Related

- Environment Hardening - 1

OE3

OE3 - Activities

Expand audit program for operational information

When conducting routine project-level audits, expand the review to include inspection of artifacts related to operational enablement for security. Projects should be checked to ensure they have an updated and complete operational security guides as relevant to the specifics of the software. These audits should begin toward the end of the development cycle close to release, but must be completed and passed before a release can be made. For legacy systems or inactive projects, this type of audit should be conducted and a one-time effort should be made to address findings and verify audit compliance, after which additional audits for operational enablement are no longer required. Audit results must be reviewed with business stakeholders prior to release. An exception process should be created to allow projects failing an audit to continue with a release, but these projects should have a concrete timeline for mitigation of findings. Exceptions should be limited to no more that 20% of all active projects.

Perform code signing for application components

Though often used with special-purpose software, code signing allows users and operators to perform integrity checks on software such that they can cryptographically verify the authenticity of a module or release. By signing software modules, the project team enables deployments to operate with a greater degree of assurance against any corruption or modification of the deployed software in its operating environment. Signing code incurs overhead for management of signing credentials for the organization. An organization must follow safe key management processes to ensure the ongoing confidentiality of the signing keys. When dealing with any cryptographic keys, project stakeholders must also consider plans for dealing with common operational problems related to cryptography such as key rotation, key compromise, or key loss. Since code signing is not appropriate for everything, architects and developers should work with security auditors and business stakeholders to determine which parts of the software should be signed. As projects evolve, this list should be reviewed with each release, especially when adding new modules or making changes to previously signed components.

OE3 - Assessment

- Are most projects being audited to check each release for appropriate operational security information?

- Is code signing routinely performed on software components using a consistent process?

OE3 - Results

- Organization-wide understanding of expectations for security-relevant documentation

- Stakeholders better able to make tradeoff decisions based on feedback from deployment and operations

- Operators and/or users able to independently verify integrity of software releases

OE3 - Metrics

- >80% of projects with updated operational security guide in last 6 months

- >80% of stakeholders briefed on code signing options and status in past 6 months

OE3 - Costs

- Ongoing project overhead from audit of operational guides

- Ongoing organization overhead from management of code signing credentials

- Ongoing project overhead from identification and signing of code modules.

OE3 - Personnel

- Developers (1 days/yr)

- Architects (1 days/yr)

- Managers (1 days/yr)

- Security Auditors (1-2 days/yr)

OE3 - Related

Case Studies

This section features a selection of scenarios in which the application of SAMM is explained in the context of a specific business case. Using the roadmap templates as a guide, the case studies tell the story of how an organization might adapt best practices and take into account organization-specific risks when building a security assurance program.