How Technology Helps Enforce and Maintain the Secure SDLC

Human nature being what it is, people tend to slip back into their old sloppy ways if new behaviors (the software development life cycle processes we discussed earlier) are not enforced. That's where technology can play a role. The right tools not only help to automate the security assessment and secure coding process; they also can help keep in place the Web application development framework necessary for success.

As discussed in the first article of this series, at the very minimum you'll need a Web application security scanner to assess your custom-built as well as your commercially-acquired software. Depending on the size of your Web application development team, and how many applications you're working on at any given time, you'll want to consider other tools that will improve your software development life cycle processes as well. For instance, quality and assurance tools are available that integrate directly into application performance and quality testing programs that many organizations already use, such as those from IBM and HP. With this integration of security into quality and performance testing, quality assurance teams can concurrently manage functional and security testing from a single platform.