DEVOPSdigest

I've loved witnessing CISA's Secure-By-Design(link is external) (SBD) movement gain momentum worldwide, as the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, Japan, Germany, and the UK commit to integrating similar guidelines and expectations into their respective cybersecurity strategies — with many of these nations also contributing to the original US recommendations.

Since April 2024, more than 200 companies, including Secure Code Warrior, have signed the Secure-by-Design pledge(link is external), indicating broader industry commitment, alignment and unwavering support to improve software quality and security standards. We see these guidelines as a key moment in time for cybersecurity leaders who, for the first time, have global government support for significant cultural change in software development. Despite the lack of mandatory recommendations at this time (beyond software vendors selling directly to the US government), I see this as not just the future, but a golden opportunity to start fighting back against threat actors. Removing categories of vulnerabilities is a common thread throughout the US guidelines — an industry-wide focus on this goal could provide an avenue for the industry to make the most significant, positive impact on digital safety in decades.

We believe this movement is critical, and our latest research paper, Benchmarking Security Skills: Streamlining Secure-by-Design in the Enterprise is the result of deep analysis of real Secure-by-Design initiatives at the enterprise level, and deriving the best practices for implementation based on data-driven findings.

Measuring Organizational Secure-by-Design Efforts

Challenging the traditional practices of software development is no small undertaking. CISOs and security leadership are often challenged when attempting to prove the return on investment (ROI) and business value of security program activities — leaving many organizations forced to eliminate roles and scale back teams due to budget concerns. The absence of a skills benchmark to enable organizations to evaluate how they're tracking against industry standards has been a major challenge. Up until recently, a data-driven framework to evaluate Secure-by-Design initiatives has not existed at the industry level.

It should be no surprise that this lack of standard has made it incredibly difficult to develop and implement security programs that impact the right areas and foster continuous improvement of the development cohort, a crucial element of successful software security practices.

The key to making Secure-by-Design initiatives work is not only giving developers the skills to ensure secure code, but also assuring their organizations that those skills are in place. Based on internal data, our team analyzed developer team readiness, and the results may surprise.

Using Benchmarks to Accelerate SBD Initiatives

It's virtually impossible to improve efficiently without a concrete idea of where companies are starting, and where they need to go. However, the implementation of a benchmarking tool — a metric that quantifies developer teams' security competencies — can help provide these critical, comprehensive data points. These insights inform highly effective, developer-driven security programs that support successful Secure-by-Design initiatives.

As we discovered in our findings, organizations across the top critical infrastructure industries are striving to equip their developers to further internal SBD initiatives. We also found that the developer teams within these industries maintain an average security posture.

Our analysis of developer upskilling across critical infrastructure industries draws from insights from over 20 million data points from over 250,000 developers around the world. The analysis found that:

■ The total number of developers currently involved in developer-centric SBD upskilling initiatives is less than 4% of all developers globally.

■ Most large-scale Secure-by-Design upskilling initiatives are successful, while smaller-scale initiatives tend to be scattered. However, when given a mandate, they have been shown to deliver a measurable return on investment (ROI) sooner.

■ When upskilling initiatives are firmly in place, risks introduced by developers in applications are considerably fewer. The analysis found that developers within large upskilling initiatives (7000+ developers in a single company) can predictably reduce vulnerabilities by 47-53%.

The Solution | Conclusion

Benchmarking is a powerful metric in any security leader's arsenal, enabling an in-depth analysis of specific areas within an organization. Implementing benchmarking tools that produce customized reports to help companies identify the specific needs of developers or teams and pinpoint the areas where additional guidance or training is needed. After all, security is a never-ending endeavor; effectively benchmarking developer performance will help determine opportunities for sustained improvement.

Advanced software development and deployment, in conjunction with an increasingly threatening cyber landscape and vigilant regulators, have shifted cybersecurity to the forefront. Organizations must prioritize fostering an enterprise-wide security-first culture — if they haven't already.