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- Secure architecture — Get security involved in architecture design reviews
- Threat modeling — Catch avoidable security issues early in the process
- Secure coding — Utilize best practices
- Continuous security checks and monitoring — 24/7
- Prioritization and remediation — Automate everything (wherever possible)
- Engage, train, and reward — SWAG!
- Conclusion
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Building security by design is crucial, especially for startups and small businesses, where resources are often limited, and the pace of development is rapid. Security by design is a proactive approach that embeds security measures into the development process right from the start rather than as an afterthought. This approach is not just about preventing future breaches — it’s about building trust and ensuring that your product is resilient from day one. While implementing security by design might seem daunting for small teams, especially with the pressure to move fast, practical steps can make the process more manageable and effective. By prioritizing security early, companies can avoid costly security issues later on and establish a strong foundation for growth
Here are some best practices we follow at Nylas to ensure security is built into our products by design:
Secure architecture — Get security involved in architecture design reviews
One of the most important steps in building secure software is involving security in architecture design reviews. By integrating security considerations from the beginning of the development process, you can address potential risks before they become costly. To achieve this, it’s crucial to add Security Team members as reviewers for design documents, ensuring their expertise is applied early in the process.
Creating a standard design template that includes essential security (and privacy) questions is another effective strategy. Keeping the template focused, with no more than 10 key questions, can streamline the process while covering critical areas. These questions might include:
- Will this service be in scope for any compliance requirements?
- What is the tech stack going to look like?
- Is the service going to be publicly exposed?
- What data types will the service handle?
- What sensitive data will be stored/processed by the application?
- Where will the source code live?
- What access controls will be implemented?
- How will authentication and authorization be managed?
- What logging and monitoring will be in place?
- How will the service handle data retention and deletion?
By addressing these questions during the design phase, you can ensure that security is built into the architecture, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities and helping to meet compliance and privacy requirements efficiently.
Threat modeling — Catch avoidable security issues early in the process
Threat modeling can help identify and mitigate potential threats and vulnerabilities in software systems. To do this, follow these steps:
Step 1: Choosing a threat modeling framework is the essential first step—there are numerous frameworks available, like STRIDE, DREAD, and others. Select the one that best aligns with your company’s needs and requirements. Here are some resources to get started:
- OWASP Threat Modeling Cheat Sheet
- STRIDE Threat Modeling Methodology
- PASTA Threat Modeling Methodology
Step 2: Engage and interact with your developers. This is the most important step. Host interactive training sessions to explain what threat modeling is and use simple, relatable examples, like securing a house. For instance, you wouldn’t leave your front door unlocked or your windows open—threat modeling helps you think through similar vulnerabilities in your software. Show how it can be engaging and beneficial for their work. Here is a sample threat modeling training deck and template we created at Nylas!
Step 3: Include threat modeling as a mandatory section in your design templates and make it a self-service model for developers. While gaining initial buy-in and involvement might be challenging, persistence is key.
By incorporating threat modeling into your design and review processes, your organization can proactively address avoidable issues such as:
- Excessive or unnecessary information disclosure
- Weak random ID generation methods
- Inadequate cryptographic mechanisms
- Availability-related vulnerabilities
- Insecure data transmission
Secure coding — Utilize best practices
Promoting secure coding practices is fundamental to building software that can withstand security threats. Practices like input validation, output encoding, strong cryptography, and secure storage of sensitive data are fundamental to writing resilient code (or OWASP Top 10). Regular security updates ensure that vulnerabilities are patched quickly, keeping your software secure over time.
Beyond just enhancing security, secure coding practices also improve overall code quality, reduce development time by preventing issues early, and increase customer confidence in your products. When developers embrace these practices, they protect their users and contribute to creating more reliable and robust software.
To support this, provide your teams with security cheat sheets and best practice guides that they can refer to easily. Organizations like OWASP have come up with easy-to-understand developer cheat sheets related to common security risks and specific best practices on topics like hardcoded secrets, authorization, etc. If you are just starting out in this space, quickly read those available cheat sheets and draft your own custom version based on what you think most applies to your organization.
Additionally, mandate secure code training during onboarding and continue it regularly to keep everyone up to date. There are multiple platforms available, like Snyk Learn, SAFECode, etc., that specialize in key security concepts that every developer should know.
Most importantly, encourage an open line of communication where developers feel comfortable reaching out to the security team for guidance, reinforcing that security is a shared responsibility.
Continuous security checks and monitoring — 24/7
Integrating security into every step of the development process is key when it comes to building secure software. Tools that scan your code for vulnerabilities and exposed secrets — like passwords or API keys — should be part of your workflow during development. To catch issues early, these checks and open-source library scans should run automatically in your development environment and CI/CD pipeline.
Security-focused checks ensure that only secure code makes it through in code reviews. PR checks in version control systems can enforce security policies automatically before merging code. As your code progresses through the CI/CD pipeline, dynamic analysis and fuzz testing add an extra layer of scrutiny, catching issues that static analysis might miss. A quick and easy way to implement this is through ready-to-use workflows and templates available for your Version Control System (think GitHub Actions / GitLab CI/CD). You can schedule the workflows to run on code push before the code is committed and essentially at any step in the process!
Once your application is deployed, securing infrastructure and environment configurations is crucial, especially when managing secrets. Continuous monitoring tools help detect and respond to potential threats in real time. While automated tools do a lot of heavy lifting, manual security testing, like penetration testing, is still essential to uncover vulnerabilities that might slip through the cracks. By embedding security into every stage, from development through deployment, you keep your application resilient against evolving threats.
Prioritization and remediation — Automate everything (wherever possible)
Automation is necessary in order to security by design, making it easier to identify and mitigate risks quickly. By automating vulnerability fixes, you can streamline the process—think auto-generated pull requests that developers can merge with just a click. This ensures that security patches are applied swiftly without disrupting the workflow. For example, one easy way to automate vulnerability fixes in GitHub would be to enable Dependabot security updates in your repository settings, which will automatically scan for vulnerabilities and generate pull requests when fixes are available. Developers can review and merge these PRs with minimal effort, ensuring security patches are applied quickly.
Additionally, various tools in the market offer similar functionality, such as automated patch generation for code, containers, and dependency management. These tools can integrate with your GitHub workflow to automatically detect vulnerabilities, create pull requests for fixes, and even auto-merge them once they pass necessary tests, streamlining the entire security update process. But remember to keep a close eye and fine-tune as they could get noisy.
Alerting is another area where automation adds value. Automated alerts can notify the right teams as soon as security issues arise or infrastructure drifts occur, ensuring that potential threats are addressed in real time. This minimizes the window of exposure and keeps your systems secure.
Additionally, automated notifications for required vulnerability fixes keep teams proactive. When an issue is detected, relevant teams are notified with the necessary details, ensuring prompt action. Integrating automation across these areas makes security management more efficient and effective, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities slipping through the cracks.
Engage, train, and reward — SWAG!
Engaging with developers is key to building a strong security culture. Interact with them regularly and clarify that the security team is there to support, not police. By showing that you’re partners in making the right decisions, you can shift the perception of security from a roadblock to an enabler.
Training should be interactive and empathetic, tailored to developers’ real challenges. Listen to their concerns, understand their pain points, and provide hands-on learning opportunities that are relevant and engaging. When developers feel heard and supported, they’re more likely to embrace security practices.
Rewarding developers when they make the right security decisions is crucial for reinforcing positive behavior. Consider setting up leaderboards, recognizing security champions, and creating fun, competitive programs that highlight and celebrate good security practices. By making security rewarding and enjoyable, you can motivate developers to take ownership of security in their work.
Conclusion
In summary, security by design is an essential approach for startups, focusing on embedding security into the development process from the very beginning. By proactively identifying and addressing potential security risks early on, startups can build more secure, reliable, and resilient systems. This protects data and assets and builds trust with users, setting a strong foundation for sustainable growth. By making security a fun and engaging process, you can foster a culture where security is a core part of your product’s DNA, helping to avoid costly issues down the road while keeping the team motivated and involved.
