Enterprise software security starts with protecting your software artifacts from unauthorized use or modification in order to protect your intellectual property (IP), reduce compliance exposure, and provide protection against supply chain issues. A framework of strong software security requires an understanding of access management, distribution controls, compliance requirements, and software lifecycle management in order to secure your software. The following is a review of software security principles and best practices that an enterprise should adopt to ensure software is protected against unlawful access, compliance issues and supply chain issues.Implementing Enterprise Level Access ControlSoftware security is fundamentally about access management.
Enterprises can assess access controls as follows:
- Role Based Access Control (RBAC) should be adopted to define and enforce access policies at a granular level.
- Single Sign-On (SSO) via SAML should be implemented so that users can authenticate once and manage users’ identities centrally.
- SCIM integration can be used to automate provisioning and deprovisioning of users in order to minimize the risk of stale user accounts and assign timely access to service accounts.
- Structured management of teams and service accounts will ensure unnecessary or excessive privileges are not granted.
These practices ensure that only authorized users are able to interact with your software artifacts, providing security enhancements to managing any policy related to access management, distribution, or compliance. In particular, implementing least privilege will act as an effective form of security control, and prevents unnecessary privilege escalation during changes in personnel or services.
Implementing Effective Controls of Software DistributionFor any enterprise routing software to an external audience, precise access controls is required. Best practices include the following:
Using entitlement tokens that can provide controlled access to individual packages with read-only rights.
Tracking and limiting software downloads, ensuring the organization always has visibility into usage.
Access to entitlement tokens should be revoked or modified accordingly, based on software licenses and organizational security policies.
Together, these practices enable an organization to securely manage the distribution of its software products while maintaining full visibility into how the assets are accessed and used.Meeting Compliance.
Location-based Security
RequirementsGlobal enterprises must comply with software storage and access with requirements across the organization. To achieve this involve:Geo/IP restrictions to manage where software can be accessed.
Custom storage regions based on regional data sovereignty and regulatory requirements. These practices will assist with maintaining software compliance with industry regulations while protecting sensitive data.
Auditing, Tracking, and Managing the Software
LifecycleVisibility and traceability is critical to the software lifecycle and software security. Enterprises can enhance software security by:Logging client requests to record when software was accessed by specific individuals for tracking purposes as well as visible detection of unusual activity. Audit logs to track administrative changes and record any changes to your operational software processes and procedures.
Define retention and lifecycle rules for computer software processes and procedures that determines when software artifacts are archived or deleted.The visibility from ongoing tracking will enable organizations to respond in real-time to identified risks and potential security issues while
Developing and Delivering Secure Software In order to maintain secure software promotion workflows, organizations must:
Implement promotion workflows for packages, which dictate how software is moved from development to staging and into production.
Implement some form of provenance tracking, which establishes that there is an immutable record of a software’s lineage.
Enforce policy about the integrity of software,
which verifies that the software is trustworthy and can be deployed in production.
By incorporating these objects into the software development lifecycle, enterprises can mitigate risk and guarantee only trusted and verified software will be deployed within production environments.Implementing a Zero Trust Software Security Model A Zero Trust security model — an approach whereby no party is trusted by default — can help organizations maintain security within their software supply chain. With an emphasis on deploying permissioning controls and entitlement based distribution, and ensuring continuous compliance monitoring, enterprises can deliver improved security while maintaining their ability to innovate and scale.
By understanding security principles and using the right tools, organizations can gain complete control of their software IP, ensuring their digital properties remain secure, compliant and resilient to evolving threats.
AidatQ is a single, cloud-native platform built specifically to help organizations manage and protect their software artifacts. With capabilities like role-based access control, entitlement management, compliance enforcement, and observability, AidatQ enables organizations to take a comprehensive security posture throughout their software supply chain.
To learn more about AidatQ’s capabilities regarding your software security strategy talk to one of our experts.