TY - JOUR

T1 - Challenging Software Developers

T2 - Dialectic as a Foundation for Security Assurance Techniques

AU - Weir, Charles

AU - Noble, James

AU - Rashid, Awaid

PY - 2020/4/21

Y1 - 2020/4/21

N2 - Development teams are increasingly expected to deliver secure code, but how can they best achieve this? Traditional security practice, which emphasises 'telling developers what to do' using checklists, processes and errors to avoid, has proved difficult to introduce. From analysis of industry interviews with a dozen experts in app development security, we find that secure development requires dialectic: a challenging dialog between the developers and a range of counterparties, continued throughout the development cycle. Analysing a further survey of sixteen industry developer security advocates, we identify the six assurance techniques that are most effective at achieving this dialectic in existing development teams, and conclude that the introduction of these techniques is best driven by the developers themselves. Concentrating on these six assurance techniques, and the dialectical interactions they involve, has the potential to increase the security of development activities and thus improve software security for everyone.

AB - Development teams are increasingly expected to deliver secure code, but how can they best achieve this? Traditional security practice, which emphasises 'telling developers what to do' using checklists, processes and errors to avoid, has proved difficult to introduce. From analysis of industry interviews with a dozen experts in app development security, we find that secure development requires dialectic: a challenging dialog between the developers and a range of counterparties, continued throughout the development cycle. Analysing a further survey of sixteen industry developer security advocates, we identify the six assurance techniques that are most effective at achieving this dialectic in existing development teams, and conclude that the introduction of these techniques is best driven by the developers themselves. Concentrating on these six assurance techniques, and the dialectical interactions they involve, has the potential to increase the security of development activities and thus improve software security for everyone.

KW - dialectical security

KW - grounded theory

KW - developer centred security

KW - software development

KW - assurance technique

KW - software security

M3 - Journal article

JO - Journal of Cybersecurity

JF - Journal of Cybersecurity

SN - 2057-2093

ER -