Writing secure source code is fundamental to prevent potential exploits and attacks that could undermine your software applications.
Here’s a short list of best practices to help you write secure code and minimize the risk of security vulnerabilities.
1. Validate input and sanitize data
- Check data length and format
- Validate characters set
- Escape inputs
2. Manage authentication and authorization
- Use TLS (transport layer security) client authentication
- Implement authentication error messages
- Safely store, control, transmit, and manage your passwords
3. Adopt the principle of least privilege
- Give only the minimum privileges and permissions
- Validate permissions on every request
- Create tests to validate permissions before the release
- Review permissions frequently
4. Make the architecture secure
- Use subsystems
- Use only secure plugins and libraries
- Use a simple and user-friendly design
5. Create multiple security layers
- Configure the security settings of each application
- Focus on secure programming and secure runtime environments
- Use authentication checkers
- Use strong encryption
- Protect your database
- Use trusted security certificates
6. Check your code quality and follow coding standards
- Review your code
- Use coding standards
- Prevent attacks with threat modeling
Do you know other secure code best practices? Share them with us