Building software is like constructing a house where common sense tells you not to wait for the roof to catch fire to install smoke detectors. Yet, that's often the case when considering security at the end of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). With rapid release cycles, hackers are active at every phase, including planning, coding, and testing-- even during live updates.
The risks are real. Half of security professionals report that developers failed to identify 75% of vulnerabilities in 2023, leaving critical gaps for attackers to exploit. Every unpatched library, exposed API, or minor misconfiguration is a welcome mat for attackers.
OWASP offers a wealth of security guidance, but navigating it can be overwhelming. That's why having a single source of truth---a complete OWASP cheat sheet---can streamline your SSDLC strategy.
What is OWASP, and How Does It Relate to Your SDLC?
OWASP, short for the Open Web Application Security Project, is a global authority on software security. As a nonprofit organization, its mission is to make security visible and empower developers and organizations to make informed decisions about their applications' security.
OWASP provides an extensive collection of free, open-source tools and resources driven by its global community. If you've heard of the OWASP Top 10 or the Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS), you're already familiar with its most popular resources. These tools give developers and security teams the insights they need to address today's most critical security vulnerabilities.
In the context of your SDLC, OWASP's resources integrate security throughout each phase---planning, design, coding, testing, and deployment---by offering clear guidance on relevant risks and best practices to minimize supply chain risks. Much of OWASP's guidance is centered around baking secure practices directly into your CI/CD pipeline, making security a continuous part of the process rather than a last-minute concern.
Why an OWASP Cheat Sheet Supports SDLCs
An OWASP Cheat Sheet is an actionable guide that lists every security practice developers and security teams should consider to protect each stage of their SDLC. These cheat sheets are based on established OWASP guidance, so you know they are reliable and comprehensive, enabling you to target every critical gap and emerging vulnerability.
Having an OWASP Cheat Sheet as part of your SSDLC strategy brings several benefits, especially for security-conscious companies. Some of them are:
1. Comprehensive Security Integration
From day one of planning through to the final stages of deployment, a cheat sheet ensures that critical security controls are implemented at each phase of the SDLC, preventing security gaps that attackers could exploit later in production.
2. Prioritization of Critical Risks
Not all vulnerabilities are equal. This cheat sheet helps you focus on the most dangerous risks---such as the OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities---so you can direct your resources where they'll have the most significant impact.
3. Clear, Actionable Steps
There is no guesswork here. With straightforward, actionable guidelines, developers know exactly how to build secure software. This clarity reduces the chance of mistakes or misinterpretation, speeding up secure development without cutting corners.
4. Early Threat Mitigation
Applying secure coding standards prevents issues like cross-site scripting or insecure deserialization. This proactive approach strengthens security posture and saves valuable time and resources by avoiding costly fixes later in the lifecycle.
5. Attack Surface Reduction
This cheat sheet helps reduce the system's attack surface by guiding teams to lock down unnecessary features, enforce the least privilege, and properly handle sensitive data. Fewer exposed entry points mean fewer opportunities for attackers to exploit.
The Complete OWASP Cheat Sheet for SDLC
1. Planning and Requirements
Planning isn't just about deciding what to build -- it's about figuring out how to build it securely by anticipating potential threats before you write a single line of code. OWASP stresses the need for clear security goals, comprehensive threat modeling, and thorough vetting of third-party components.
- Define security goals (like data protection or compliance) and map them to technical requirements.
- Identify potential attack vectors like unauthorized access or data exfiltration.
- Vet third-party components for known vulnerabilities and licensing concerns.
- Ensure compliance requirements are built into the development process, aligning technical security with regulatory obligations.
Myrror addresses this by assessing third-party components in real-time, enabling teams to identify known vulnerabilities and compliance issues quickly. This reduces the risk of integrating insecure libraries into applications.
2. Design
OWASP's guidance in this phase emphasizes reducing the system's inherent risks by evaluating how data flows, where sensitive information is processed, and how to isolate components to contain potential breaches. The goal is to limit an attack's impact by ensuring that no part of the system is overly exposed or interconnected without reason.
- Apply secure design principles (least privilege, fail-safe defaults, defense in depth) from OWASP's Secure Design Principles.
- Remove unnecessary services and harden all external-facing interfaces.
- Encrypt sensitive data at rest and in transit.
- Ensure that default configurations are secure.
- Design around Zero Trust principles, ensuring that every access request is authenticated, authorized, and encrypted before granting access.
- Conduct architectural reviews using OWASP ASVS, identifying high-risk components and designing to limit lateral movement.
Myrror's Vulnerability Reachability and Exploitability Engine focuses on design by evaluating how potential vulnerabilities can be accessed via different attack vectors. This analysis helps identify critical design flaws, such as insecure data flows or excessive permissions, allowing development teams to implement necessary design changes and embed security into their architecture.
3. Development
Security risks often materialize in development as code becomes the prime attack surface. It's not enough to merely scan for issues like injection flaws or insecure dependencies---the broader goal should be to institutionalize security practices that prevent these vulnerabilities from ever being introduced. Aside from following OWASP's Secure Coding Guidelines to prevent vulnerabilities from being introduced into the codebase, you can also:
- Implement automated static analysis with real-time feedback for every build and commit.
- Mandate secure coding best practices from OWASP Proactive Controls (CWE-Top 25) and enforce them through continuous code quality checks.
- Perform dependency health checks, license audits, and integrity validation.
- Build comprehensive code review policies that target high-risk functions and critical data handling paths.
- Automate sanitization and validation logic, implementing centralized input/output filtering.
- Simulate adverse conditions (network outages, service failures) to validate your security controls.
Myrror enables developers to integrate security checks into their CI/CD pipelines, providing real-time insights into code vulnerabilities and dependencies. By automating security practices and minimizing risks during the development phase, Myrror helps teams adhere to OWASP's Secure Coding Guidelines.
4. Testing
The testing phase should validate the effectiveness of security controls at multiple levels, ensuring that they work as intended and resist sophisticated exploitation tactics. OWASP also recommends actively testing for edge cases that might expose security gaps under high-stress or unusual conditions.
- Integrate DAST tools like OWASP ZAP into the CI/CD pipeline to detect runtime weaknesses.
- Conduct stress testing under peak loads to identify security gaps in real-world, high-traffic scenarios.
- Simulate edge case scenarios, including unexpected input, unusual workflows, or data corruption.
- Perform regular penetration testing targeting high-risk areas, including external-facing APIs and microservice architecture.
- Test for advanced access control bypass techniques, verifying that privilege escalation or lateral movement is impossible even under sophisticated attack attempts.
Teams can enable continuous monitoring of deployed applications and insights into runtime vulnerabilities with Myrror Security. Its tools help validate that security controls are adequate against typical and edge-case scenarios, ensuring a robust defense against sophisticated attacks.
5. Deployment
Misconfigurations are among this phase's most common and dangerous vulnerabilities, especially when deploying across complex cloud or hybrid environments. You should enforce and monitor secure configurations across infrastructure and applications. Tools like Myrror become critical here by cutting through the noise -- prioritizing the vulnerabilities that matter most and offering real-time remediation fixes based on your system's configurations.
- Enforce automated configuration validation in the deployment pipeline to detect and prevent misconfigurations across all environments.
- Implement infrastructure as code (IaC) security checks using tools that validate secure configurations and policies before deployment.
- Integrate real-time monitoring tools like Myrror to track configuration drift, prioritize vulnerabilities, and provide rapid contextual remediation post-deployment.
- Continuously scan deployment pipelines for vulnerabilities in code and infrastructure components.
- Apply role-based access control (RBAC) and network segmentation strategies to limit access to critical deployment components, reducing exposure in case of misconfigurations.
- Ensure that all deployment environments leverage immutable infrastructure patterns.
- Monitor for known and unknown threats with Myrror's Binary-to-Source engine, which detects malicious components before vulnerabilities are publicly disclosed.
6. Maintenance
In the post-deployment stage, your focus shifts to monitoring and improving security. Incident response is expected to be a living process, with each event providing insights that inform future defense strategies. Here, OWASP focuses on fostering a security culture that treats maintenance as an adaptive, forward-thinking discipline rather than a reactive one.
- Schedule recurring security audits that review access logs, configuration changes, and system behavior to identify deviations from baseline security controls.
- Perform dependency audits and set up automated patch management for critical updates.
- Develop a dynamic incident response plan that evolves based on post-incident reviews.
- Conduct attack simulations (like red team exercises) to identify blind spots in detection and remediation workflows.
- Integrate real-time threat intelligence feeds to stay updated on emerging vulnerabilities.
Building a Secure Future
Securing your software isn't a one-and-done task---it's an ongoing commitment that evolves with each deployment, update, and new vulnerability discovered.
OWASP's guidance enables teams to identify, prioritize, and remediate critical vulnerabilities within their SSDL. Being industry-agnostic, it empowers teams to operationalize security as a core function and to standardize their security practices. Plus, teams can address threats confidently and proactively with tools that help them prioritize high-impact vulnerabilities and guide them through actionable fixes.
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