How to Give Software Developers Flexibility without Creating Security Risks

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How to Give Software Developers Flexibility without Creating Security Risks

There has long been a tug of war between software developers and IT security. Developers want the freedom to download and run whatever applications they want. IT teams are concerned with ensuring that systems are secure.

A lot of organizations walk a fine line between locking down developer machines in the name of security and making it too difficult for developers to get the tools they need. They also question how they can give developers without affecting their ability to get their code to function in a production-like environment where those security controls are in place.

Organizations can eliminate this dichotomy using local virtual machine instances that give developers flexibility while locking down the operating system they use on a day-to-day basis. Developers can download and use software without having to worry about compromising the security of the rest of the IT environment. The virtual machines can also encapsulate a developer environment that closely matches the build specifications for production systems.

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Utilizing Virtual Machine and Approved Code

DeSeMa understands the needs of developers as well as enterprise IT security. Developers don’t want to reinvent the wheel for every function in their code. There are many instances in which developers want to build off of code that already exists.

The DeSeMa team can help organizations create a set of images developers can download and operate on their machines within their developer environments. We have well-understood methodologies that give the developer the sense that they have full admin rights over their machines even though they don’t.

In addition, we can get them access to different kinds of approved code so that they can very easily go through rapid assembly on some of these components. There are libraries out there that we’re familiar with, and we work with a lot of source code repository tools. We’re already vetted many well-known objects, and can also ensure that objects with vulnerabilities are rapidly detected and repaired.

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Performing Code Analysis in Real Time

We can also implement tools that perform source code analysis on the fly. The software development environment plugs into those tools, which look for ill-advised coding behaviors as the developer writes into the source code engine. The tools won’t stop the developer from bad practices but will issue an alert. For example, the platform would advise the developer if the code were vulnerable to a SQL injection attack.

Finally, we can set up the CI/CD pipeline in a way that ties code commits to the bug repository. If the committed code has a bug or does not follow best practices, the alert is documented for later review.

It all comes down to setting up the environment in a way that’s functional for developers but secured against threats. Local virtual machines can provide developers with an environment in which they have the freedom to download the tools and libraries they want to use to write their code efficiently. The environment is encapsulated in a way that prevents threats from reaching other systems.

The development environment can also protect against bugs and poor coding practices. Ultimately, the entire organization becomes more secure.

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