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Applying Security Concepts to Software Design - An insiders' story

One of main tenants of secure application development is to include Information Security Planning at the earliest in the projects that are executed. It has been our experience, that to include or to make provisions for security and related concepts into the application at a later date is very difficult and expensive.

The major design model that we use are the TOGAF open standards and SUP – a derivative of RUP customized for use in our organization. It is mandatory that a resource from the Information Security Team is included from the inception stage in any projects. We ensure that projects do not exclude the Information Security aspect of the project by ensuring that no projects get approval to procure or be issued a Project ID (for project tracking as well as for resource allocation) unless an approval is provided by the IT Integration and Security team.
We have found that this has vastly improved our project delivery schedules as well as to improve the Information Gathering stage, wherein projects are properly scoped and documented with all the elements including Information Security taken into consideration even before the elaboration stages.

The other major advantage that we realized was that the project has elements that map the data flow in the organization. Over time as the new projects started evolving it became obvious that we had a complete mapping of the various interaction between systems and the nature of data flows in the organization.

A few elements that flowed from the interactions was that we were able to improve the audit functions as well as operations and address certain weaknesses that were inherent that there were orphan applications that did not have the proper authorizations to be on the Information Technology landscape.

To summarize the major benefits in applying security concepts in design are

1. Better understanding of the Information Security landscape and the interactions between varied applications even before they leave the inception phase
2. Effective control over the flow of data as well as data at rest and identification of controls necessary to ensure protection of assets.
3. Operational efficiencies and quicker turn around as the applications are better designed and evolved.
4. Provides inputs for compliance with federally mandated requirements
5. Efficiency in improvements and collection of audit data as elements of audit, access control included and derived early and easier to develop into an functioning ecosystems.
6. Integration with already existing Information Security Systems in line with resource availability and technology exposure.

However we also found that the introduction of the concepts lead to
1. Information Concepts lead to new learning curve for new teams not exposed to Information Technology Concepts
2. Security considered a bottleneck for efficient development of products and services
3. Technology implementation restricted to proven technologies and resources

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