The MJ Developer Security Toolkit
Empower Your Team to Deliver More Secure Software
Are you managing or supporting a software development team?
Does their development have security or privacy requirements? If
so, read on:
Software developers, whether programmers, testers, designers or
product managers, typically make hundreds of decisions every
day. Very few of those decisions have security implications. So,
it is vital to help developers spot security-relevant decisions
as they are encountered, to develop their sense of when security
is needed and why: to sensitise them to security.
Based on
ground-breaking
research by the
Motivating
Jenny project, we offer here four packages, all
designed to help sensitise development teams towards
security issues in their workplace. Each has simple and complete
instructions for you to use. Click to learn more and download
the materials for each, or read on or explore our tweets to find
out more.
Developers like to solve problems. When they identify a
security problem in their environment, most developers
will actively try to solve it, whether by drawing
attention to a security impact in a product management
meeting, by using secure functions and constructs while
coding, by thinking up tests of security, or by consulting
an expert. The vital step, therefore, is to help team
members develop their sense of when security activity is
needed and why: to sensitise them to
security.
Teams and departments can improve this security awareness
in their developers by having them work together. So,
these four packages use various kinds of discussion
between developers to sensitise them to the many security
issues they will encounter. Security in the World
uses a structured discussion of a real-world security
incident seen from two different points of view to promote
discussion of the impact security issues have and how they
may be avoided. Security
in the Community teaches how normal discussions on
Stack Overflow and similar forums can be a way of learning
about security issues, especially when there are no
security experts available. Security and Me uses
a profiling questionnaire to prompt discussion about
individual attitudes to security. And Security between Us
uses 'Serious Play' techniques to focus discussion on
active security issues between team members and between
different teams.
