SOFTWARE SECURITY

Code Tools for Software Security



Code Tools for Software Security

Introduction

Software security has become an area of interest over the period of past few years. The organizations today are more vulnerable for hackers and various other attacks. To prevent these attacks, the organizations must ensure that the software under their use is secure.

The process of assessing the software security refers as Software security assurance, which finds out the degree to which the software is secure against Software security assurance deals with the use of software security code tools, for finding out the software vulnerabilities. The software developers also rely on these code tools for finding and fixing the software vulnerabilities. This essay discusses several types of software security code tools, and the advantages and disadvantages that associate with the use of software security code tools.

What are Software Security Code Tools?

Both the software developers and clients find it difficult to assess the software from the perspective of security. The developers cannot spend so much time for ensuring security of their software product, as timely delivery is the most important concern of the developers. On the other hand, most of the time, the customer is not very much sound technologically, and hence face difficulty in determining the security level of the software he is going to purchase. Therefore, there must be a means for ensuring and analyzing the software security.

Software code tools are essentially, the tools for reviewing the software code from the security perspective (McGraw G., 2008). Sometimes, these code tools also refer as software security analyzers; the name suits these tools, as the tools involve major functionality of detecting and reporting the weaknesses of the software, that can cause, security vulnerabilities in the software.

The main reason for using software security code tools is the fact that most of the time; code errors can affect the software from the security perspective. Even a very small and negligible bug at the time of development can compromise the security of the entire enterprise (Chmielewski, M., et.al, 2012). If, the minor coding errors go unidentified in the development and the testing phase, the security mechanism of the software may affect significantly. Thus, the security analyzer is one of the best choices to find and fix bug in the code.

Several software security codes can be run manually, while more advanced tools are automated for detecting and even resolving the security vulnerability issues. Most recently, the concept of Software security life cycle (SLC) has emerged. The process of SLC integrates into all of the phases of the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC). SLC involves the identification and resolution of security threats in the software throughout its life cycle. The major security activities which the developers include, in the SLC include educating the developers for the security requirements and mechanisms of the software, improving the design from the security perspective and reviewing and testing the software code for ensuring that there are no security vulnerabilities.

The next section of the essay discusses some of the major types of the ...