How do you secure your project from cyber attacks?

A threat model is a systematic approach to analyzing and understanding potential risks and vulnerabilities that could affect a project, system, or organization. It involves identifying various aspects, including potential adversaries (such as cybercriminals, competitors, activists, or state-sponsored actors), possible attack vectors (such as phishing, denial-of-service, ransomware, or SQL injection), and the assets that are at risk. By creating a threat model, you can effectively prioritize security measures and allocate resources to address the most significant threats, ultimately enhancing the overall security posture of your project or system.

Securing your project from cyberattacks requires a multifaceted approach. Start with risk assessment to identify vulnerabilities and threats. Implement strict access controls, encryption, and regular software updates. Educate your team on cybersecurity and establish an incident response plan. Frequent vulnerability scanning, backup, and third-party assessment enhance security. Maintain compliance with regulations, monitor activities, and ensure a secure network. User awareness against evolving threats is crucial as cybersecurity is an ongoing commitment.

All those pieces of advice are practiced, but vulnerabilities still arise. To change this situation, we must shift security all the way to the left, back to the beginning of the development process, before someone becomes a developer. We need to instill secure coding principles from the very first line of code, starting in school and continuing through college.

Threat modeling has a vital role in any business process, not only for a software development project or a simple infrastructure change. Even serving coffee to customers has its own risks. A threat modeling with the closest integration with risk assessment will highlight weak spots to protect.

Threat modeling is essential in the beginning of any project before any line of code is written plus any risk identified should be treated in the context of the project at hand. Generic implementation of countermeasures in a project might not solve issues identified.

Securing your project from cyber attacks is like safeguarding your home. Imagine your project as your house. Just as you'd identify which windows, doors, or areas burglars might target, you must understand the threats to your project. Know where you're vulnerable: is it through emails, certain software, or online interactions? By identifying these 'entry points', you can better protect them, much like locking a door or installing an alarm system in your home.

To secure your project from cyberattacks, follow a comprehensive approach. Identify vulnerabilities, control access, update software, and deploy firewalls. Encrypt data, conduct security audits, and train your team. Develop an incident response plan, back up data, and enforce policies. Evaluate third-party security, monitor logs, and practice secure coding. Segment networks, manage patches, and ensure physical security. Educate users, stay compliant, and use security tools. Regular reviews and adaptability are essential for ongoing protection.

Threat modelling before starting any project is best part. Then during development phase (SDLC) we should integrate and configure SAST,DAST and SCA tools. This will help a lot to know more about vulnerability and threats

To achieve this, it's essential to leverage trusted and validated secure frameworks and libraries that have undergone rigorous testing by the cybersecurity community. Furthermore, your code should incorporate robust security features and controls, including encryption, authentication, authorization, comprehensive logging, and error handling mechanisms. By integrating these practices, you fortify your project against potential security threats and bolster its resilience.

To be more practical lets focus on secure from scratch core principles PREVENT: P - Priority. Security is the first priority R - Reporting and logging correctly is crucial to application security E - Easy to use securely. Easy to use safely. Always prefer safe by default to safe through action. V - Verify if the components you use and your implementation are safe and follow current best practices. E - Errors and exceptions - Never ignore them, always manage them. N - Neat code. Security through clarity. Neat code is not just easy to maintain but also reduces undetected vulnerabilities. T - Trust boundaries. Transferring data or control between entities with different trust levels requires proactive action.

As part of ISO compliance we should have security code guidelines in a company. We should keep it updated because threats and attacks can happen anytime. So accordingly we have to keep eye on security guidelines docs and also security team should train developers with security awareness and general security code standards.

This involves the use of both automated tools and manual methods to meticulously inspect your codebase for bugs, flaws, and vulnerabilities that could potentially jeopardize your project's security. By conducting penetration testing and vulnerability assessments, you can simulate real-world attack scenarios to gain insights into your system's defenses and overall security posture. Furthermore, it's imperative to maintain a proactive stance by promptly updating and patching your code whenever security issues are identified.

1. Peer Secure Code Review 2. Static Code Analysis - a tool that checks your code 3. SCA - a tool that validates how secure the components you use are. 4. Supply Chain Tool - thoroughly checks the maintainers involved in the components you use. 5. PT The maintenance aspect is another step that should occur regularly, regardless of the development process. You should place it in a separate section.

Integration, configuration of SAST, DAST and SCA tools help us to protect application and tell us loopholes in codebase. So we should plan testings accordingly and keep eye on critical bugs on priority

See Secure From Scratch core principles PREVENT. The last principle is T for Trust boundaries. Transferring data or control between entities with different trust levels requires proactive action.

Data and PII data protection is very primary need of customers now a times. So data at transit, data at flow and data at rest should be encrypted and have hash and salt mechanisms. Also database security should be their with proper access control system and role based access control.

You've mixed many things together. Phishing, malware, and social engineering attacks are more related to the organization's security culture than to a specific product. To educate your team to code securely effectively, it's advisable to go back in time and teach them secure coding principles alongside programming. Since it's not possible to do so, consider sending them to secure coding training.

An often under looked and undervalued portion of cybersecurity is the human element. Social engineering is a complex and ever changing threat to data assets and data integrity. Social engineering attacks, like similar but misspelled email domain names pretending to be from a companies internal tech department or hr department, can cause an instant and devastating hole to appear in the security of a network. Events like this can be countered by a simple printed page with company domain names listed on employees desks. This is a wide example of just one such event that can happen, the key to it all is communication between the security team and the rest of the departments for ever changing, and evolving social engineering threats.

Awareness among employees and development teams is necessary. They should take interest in cyber security topics not forcefully but happily and curiously. And this can only happen if security teams will take interactive sessions and quizzes.

This article focus on what developer can do but forget to cater any of infrastructure and data stores security. Regarding what developer can do, it missed key process such as input sanitisation, functional segregation, and transactional logging but all abstract into coding best practices. On other hand, there are some key architecture decisions, such as 2 factor authentication or adopt open authentication are very important. And if using cloud services, the list became even longer. AWS, Azure, GCS all offer security integrations, that include but not limited to key management, cloud HSM, Secure API, MFA, token management, Attack Surface Management.

Some steps you can take to enhance of your project: Security policy and planning Strong access control Risk assessment Regular software updates Firewall protection Data encryption Regular backups Security awareness training Incident response plan Monitoring, logging and auditing Penetration Testing Vendor security assessment Vulnerability management Secure development practices

Something to consider is insider threats, employees, who for one reason or another, decide it is in their best interests to betray company trust and either steal or sell data assets. The human element to business can not be ignored, so its important that the communication between departments stays concise and clear and that expectations are meaningful and set in stone. As a final parting suggestion, keep an actionable and easy to follow security plan for internal emails and document / file sharing with all departments. The risk of an incident is never zero, but it can be minimized and recovered with well crafted and documented action plans.

Accountability 2030 Awareness is crucial alongside proper know-how threw the entire ecosystem, from legal to technical to educational to governance. What else, normally lacking, yet present in medicine for example, that is pivotal is accountability throughout the entire ecosystem. With accountability follows ownership and the ever important traceability! If not for validation, and thus a scientific work methodology, then for fruitful audit processes. For the risk mitigating approach the regulators demand, segmented accountability is the key vector for compliance. Senior mgmt accountability, the governance genesis and genetics begins here. By any means is this a new wheel to invent, good old fashioned accountability is as old as mankind.