Best Security Coding Practices PDF

Best Security Coding Practices What are security coding practices? Security coding practices are set of rules, procedures, and approaches that software developers use to ensure that their code is secure and resistant to attacks. The purpose is to avoid vulnerabilities and secure software, sys...

Best Security Coding Practices What are security coding practices? Security coding practices are set of rules, procedures, and approaches that software developers use to ensure that their code is secure and resistant to attacks. The purpose is to avoid vulnerabilities and secure software, systems, and user data from being accessed by hackers or malicious users. Some benefits of Security Coding Practices  Safeguards User Data  Reduces Vulnerabilities  Improves Trust and Reputation Best security coding practices 1) Verify for Security Early and Often 2) Parameterize Queries 3) Encode Data 4) Validate All Inputs 5) Implement Identity and Authentication Controls 6) Implement Access Controls 7) Protect Data 8) Implement Logging and Intrusion Detection 1. verify for security early and often It means checking for potential security vulnerabilities throughout the entire development process. This practice involves integrating security checks from the initial planning phase to the final testing stage. By doing this, developers can identify and address security issues promptly, reducing the risk of breaches or attacks. Regular security checks ensure that vulnerabilities are detected and fixed early, saving time and resources. 2. parameterize queries Parameterizing queries means separating user input from SQL code to prevent SQL injection attacks. Instead of directly inserting user input into queries, parameters are used as placeholders (like ? Or @). This practice ensures that user input is treated as data, not executable code, preventing malicious SQL execution. 2. parameterize queries 3. encode data Encoding data ensures that user-inputted or sensitive information is converted into a secure format, preventing unauthorized access or malicious exploitation. This practice involves using standardized encoding schemes, such as HTML Encoding. 3. encode data 4. Validate all inputs Validating all inputs is a crucial security practice to ensure that the data provided by users is safe and conforms to expected formats before being processed. This involves checking inputs for type, length, format, and range, and rejecting any input that doesn’t meet the criteria. By validating inputs, you can prevent malicious data from being injected into your system, which can lead to security vulnerabilities. Input validation also helps ensure that the data used in the application is clean, consistent, and within the expected bounds, reducing the risk of crashes or unexpected behavior. 4. Validate all inputs 5. Implement Identity and Authentication Controls Implementing identity and authentication controls is a key security practice to ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive systems and data. This involves verifying the identity of users through methods like usernames and passwords, biometrics, or multi-factor authentication (MFA). By enforcing strong authentication measures, such as using complex passwords or requiring multiple forms of verification, you reduce the risk of unauthorized access. Additionally, identity controls help ensure that users have appropriate permissions and access rights based on their role or identity, minimizing the chances of privilege escalation or data breaches. 5. Implement Identity and Authentication Controls 6. Implement Access Controls Implementing access controls is a critical security practice that ensures users only have access to the resources and actions they are authorized to use. This involves setting permissions and restrictions based on roles, identity, or other factors to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data or functions. Access controls can be enforced through methods like Role- Based Access Control (RBAC), where users are assigned roles (e.g., admin, user, guest) with specific access rights. 6. Implement Access Controls 7. Protect Data Protecting data is a fundamental security practice that involves ensuring sensitive information is kept secure from unauthorized access, modification, or exposure. This includes encrypting data both in transit and at rest. Strong encryption algorithms should be used to protect data from being read or tampered with if compromised. Access to sensitive data should be limited to only those who need it. Finally, sensitive data should never be hard-coded in code or logs, and it should always be securely backed up to ensure availability while minimizing the risk of loss or corruption. 8. Implement Logging and Intrusion Detection Implementing logging and intrusion detection is an essential security practice that helps monitor and detect potential security breaches or suspicious activity in a system. Logging involves recording events and actions within an application, such as user logins, access to sensitive data, and errors, to create an audit trail. These logs should be securely stored, regularly reviewed, and protected from tampering. 8. Implement Logging and Intrusion Detection Intrusion detection systems (IDS) continuously analyze these logs and network traffic to identify signs of malicious activity, such as unauthorized access attempts, unusual behavior, or abnormal traffic patterns. By integrating logging and IDS, organizations can quickly detect and respond to security incidents, investigate suspicious events, and improve overall security posture. It's important to ensure logs are detailed, timestamped, and stored in a secure, centralized location to facilitate real-time monitoring and forensics. 8. Implement Logging and Intrusion Detection Examples: Each login attempt (successful or failed) is logged with a timestamp, username, and action type. Failed login tracking: The system tracks the number of failed login attempts for each user within a time window (30 minutes). Account lockout: If a user exceeds the maximum failed attempts (e.g., 5 failed attempts), their account is locked for a period (30 minutes) to prevent brute force attacks. Alerting: If multiple failed attempts occur, the system generates an alert by logging the suspicious activity. Ready for a group quiz? AMBAGAN QUIZ Mechanics: 1. You will go to your respective groups and form a line. 2. Each member will use his/her own notes and knowledge in answering each question. No using of other groupmate’s notes. If it happens, 1 point penalty shall be noted in your group score. Using of phones is equivalent to 3-point penalty. 3. No question shall be left unanswered. The member who doesn’t know the answer can use the privilege to pass it to the next member who’s in front, and so on, until the question is answered. Each member should answer only one question at a time. 4. You will be given 30 minutes to answer the 25-item quiz. The first group to complete answering the quiz will get additional 5 points to their group score. The remaining groups should still finish the quiz until the time is up. 5. STRICTLY NO CHEATING and NO COACHING. Penalty will be given to your group if that happens. Do trust yourself and your groupmates. Enjoy and let the ambagan begin!