Welcome to our May blog. This month, we take a look at a couple of ‘Secure-by…’ approaches to achieving higher security outcomes. Secure-by-design is the concept of making the very earliest steps of product design such that security is built-in as a fundamental and holistic design criterion, rather than by just implementing the functionality and ‘bolting on’ security as a later design and development action. Secure-by-default aims to improve the starting security of a newly deployed product or service by establishing a default security ‘hardening’ requiring much less effort to establish a robust security baseline.
Secure-By-Design
A secure-by-design software development process is a systematic approach applied throughout the development lifecycle that places security at the centre of product development. Secure-by-design applies the process beyond just the design phase where security risks are considered at the requirements, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance stages. This source establishes five principles for the design of cyber-secure systems.
- Establish the context before designing a system
- Make compromise difficult
- Make disruption difficult
- Make compromise detection easier
- Reduce the impact of compromise
A foundational component of SBD is to actively undertake threat assessments informed by the operating security landscape. In this way, robust security foundations can be established for both products and services. The concept is well established and can form a fundamental part of any development lifecycle. From a supply chain perspective, mobile network operators may wish to consider the benefits of a robust secure-by-design process from their prospective suppliers.
Secure-By-Default
Computing platforms and enabling software contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited for malicious purposes. Secure by Default means products are delivered in a resilient, ‘hardened’, configuration against likely exploitation techniques without additional steps to secure them. In this way, the initial deployments have a security baseline on which to layer additional controls. Examples of secure by default security measures include:
- Eliminate Default Passwords: Requiring administrators to set a strong password during installation and configuration
- Disabling known unused network ports: to reduce the attack surface
- Enabling secure connection protocols such as Secure Socket Layer (SSL) / TSL automatically: to protect data in transit from initial deployment
- The build and configuration include up to date patches and code updates without the need for additional provisioning
- Secure Logging: Provide high-quality audit logs to customers at no extra charge
- Software Authorisation Profile: Manufacturers should include a visible warning that notifies customers of an increased risk if they deviate from the recommended profile authorisation
- Track and reduce “hardening guide” size: Reduce the size of “hardening guides” produced for products and strive to ensure that the size shrinks over time as new versions of the software are released.
Defining secure by design and by default requirements within the procurement and delivery phases can build an initial security baseline on which to build additional layered security measures. If you’d like to discuss these topics or to get more closely involved, please email [email protected].