Understanding the SDLC Security Categories (+ Tools)

SDLC security involves the continuous testing and analysis of code and the code pipeline to identify and resolve vulnerabilities before they reach production.

Nowadays, the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a multi-stage process that should have security at its heart, rather than just a process of creating software. This means weaving security considerations into the fabric of the SDLC from the start, rather than just including them at the final steps.

This new shift toward a security-centric development model not only secures the end product but also creates a culture of security within the team.



1. Application Security

Tools and Best Practices

• Static application security testing (SAST) tools: This involves analyzing an application's source code to identify potential security vulnerabilities in the code itself (such as weak encryption). It can be integrated early in the development process, and tools like Semgrep systematically examine source code for potential security vulnerabilities. They are some of the most common tools to begin implementing SDLC security.
• Secrets detection: hardcoded secrets like API keys, cloud provider tokens, and password can provide obvious attack paths for hackers. Tools like Gitleaks, Trufflehog, and Jit can automatically scan your repos for such hardcoded secrets so developers can fix them before production.
• Dynamic application security testing (DAST): This simulates an attack from an outside source to find vulnerabilities that could be exploited by feeding unexpected inputs or manipulating the code's behavior. It is slower and more resource-intensive than SAST but could create a more realistic attack scenario and uncover vulnerabilities missed by SAST. Using a solution like OWASP ZAP can help simulate attacks on running applications to identify runtime vulnerabilities.
• Software composition analysis (SCA) tools: With SCA, you can analyze open-source dependencies within application code for known vulnerabilities. It can help catch vulnerabilities that might not be apparent in your own code while also managing license compliance for open-source software.
• Interactive application security testing (IAST): Combining elements of both SAST and DAST, IAST tools provide real-time analysis of applications as they run in testing environments. It provides more dynamic analysis than SAST and integrates well with development workflows to offer faster feedback to developers, but is limited by the scope of the tests performed.

» Take a look at our key principles of secure design in software development

2. CI/CD Security

In a DevOps environment, the pace of integration and deployment can lead to potential misconfigurations that, if left unchecked, expose security vulnerabilities. Addressing these misconfigurations is vital for maintaining the integrity and security of the software development lifecycle.

CI/CD security is perhaps the most literal definition of "SDLC security", which focuses on the security of the code pipeline itself.

Tools and Best Practices

Tools like Jit and Legitify can scan your CI/CD pipeline to surface security weaknesses. They can be used to:

• Prevent code leakage: block creation of public repos that could result in exposure of proprietary or sensitive code and data.
• Ensure principles of least privilege: limit member permissions to only what is necessary to prevent avenues for malicious activity.

• Prevent unauthorized changes to your codebase: Surface weak branch protection rules that could allow malicious changes to your codebase.

3. Cloud Security

Tools and Best Practices

• Identity and access management (IAM): This governs who has access to what resources within a network by verifying a user's identity through login credentials or other methods and defining what actions a user can perform on a system. Tools like AWS IAM provide comprehensive capabilities to manage users and securely control resource access while preventing unauthorized access to sensitive data.
• Encryption and key management: This involves the process of transforming data into encrypted and unreadable formats while protecting and managing the keys used for encryption and decryption. Solutions like AWS KMS or Azure Key Vault help manage and safeguard cryptographic keys used to protect data.
• Cloud security posture management (CSPM): The main purpose of this is to continuously assess, identify, and address misconfigurations in cloud resources while tracking adherence to security best practices and industry regulations across cloud services.
• IaC security scanning: Rather than surfacing cloud misconfigurations in runtime, IaC scanning can help developers prevent them before they reach production. Consider tools like KICs, Kubescape, or Jit to scan Terraform, Pulumi, and K8s manifest files.

» See our top 10 cloud security tools for 2024

4. Web App and API Security

Tools and Best Practices

• Web application firewalls (WAF): Tools like Cloudflare can provide an external security layer to block attacks such as SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, and DDos attacks before they reach the application. It works as a security shield in front of your web application to filter and monitor incoming traffic
• Rate limiting and throttling: This controls the number of requests a user or IP address can send to your web application within a specific timeframe, potentially blocking the user temporarily after taking too many actions or slowing down the request rate.

» Feel overwhelmed? Make sure you understand the fundamentals of cloud-native applications security

Simplify SDLC Security With Jit

Jit's Open ASPM Platform simplifies the process of integrating comprehensive security measures throughout the SDLC, addressing all the critical security categories for safeguarding modern security products.

Jit integrates these SDLC security controls into the IDE, SCM, and cloud provider, so that developers never need to leave their environment to find and fix security issues.

• Application security: For AppSec, Jit deploys a suite of tools, including SAST for code analysis, SCA for open source security, generating an SBOM (software bill of materials) report for transparency in software components, and running secret detection to identify sensitive information within the code.
• CI/CD security: Jit focuses on identifying and rectifying misconfigurations within your GitHub environment, ensuring that the integration and deployment processes are secure.
• Cloud security: By running an IaC scanner, JIT examines the infrastructure as code for vulnerabilities, complemented by a CSPM solution that assesses the security posture of cloud environments in runtime.
• Web application and API security: JIT employs DAST solutions, among others, to dynamically test web applications and APIs, uncovering vulnerabilities that could compromise security.