The Secure Design: Framework for Resilient Systems

This article outlines a comprehensive secure design framework, providing actionable guidance and industry best practices to help developers build software systems that are inherently resilient to evolving cyber threats.
lets consider a hypothetical example to understand this process,

Design a e-commerce Web Application that handles Sensitive Customer Data, including Payment Information.

Design Process: Step-by-Step

1. Security Requirements Elicitation & Analysis
   Objective: All sensitive data, including Personally Identifiable Information (PII), payment card data (PAN, CVV, expiry), and transaction details, must be encrypted in transit and at rest. We shall also consider controls and principles of:
   - Confidentiality
   - Integrity
   - Availability
   - Authentication & Authorization
   - Compliance
2. Threat Modeling
   Objective: Systematically identify potential security threats that could exploit vulnerabilities in the application and compromise its security goals.
   - Methodology: STRIDE
   - DFD and Threat Enumeration
   - Threat Analysis & Mitigations
3. Security Architecure and Design
   Objective: To translate security requirements and threat models into a concrete, secure system design. This involves making architectural decisions, selecting appropriate security controls, and documenting the design in sufficient detail for implementation and review.
   Output: This phase produces the design artifacts which will be reviewed in next step. We can have Detailed Design Documents showing authntication, authorisation, encryption, Input validation, Output encoding, Error handling, logging procedure used.
4. Secure Design Review
   Objective: To independently and critically assess the security of the design artifacts created in above Step 3. This is a crucial quality gate to ensure that the design is sound and meets the security objectives.

• Input: The design artifacts produced in Step 3 (architecture diagrams, DFDs, detailed design documents, updated threat model, security requirements traceability matrix).
• Process: The review team (independent of the design team) examines the design artifacts, using checklists (e.g., based on OWASP ASVS), threat models, and their security expertise to identify potential vulnerabilities, weaknesses, or gaps in the design.
• Output: A report detailing the findings of the review, including:
  - Identified vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
  - Risk assessment of the identified issues.
  - Specific and actionable recommendations for remediation

5. Remediation and Iteration
Address the security vulnerabilities identified during the secure design review and continuously improve the security posture of the application.

• Prioritized Remediation
• Actionable Recommendations:
  — Examples:
  — “Implement parameterized queries in the order processing module to prevent SQL injection vulnerabilities.”
  — “Configure the web application firewall to block requests that match known attack patterns for cross-site scripting.”
  — Update the encryption library to the latest version as recommended by NIST framework to address known vulnerabilities.”
• Verification:
  — After the development team implements the remediation measures, conduct a follow-up review to verify that the vulnerabilities have been effectively addressed.
  — Use a combination of manual review, code analysis, and security testing to confirm the fixes.

Conclusion

In simple terms, the article for “Secure Design” argues that instead of thinking about security as an afterthought, we need to make it a core part of the design process from the very beginning. This provides technical guidelines and references to help Security Professionals achieve this.

Ultimately, the message is that building secure software isn’t just about protecting individual programs. It’s about making the entire digital world a safer place. It’s a continuous journey that requires constant learning and improvement, just like how security systems for houses keep getting better and more sophisticated. The references we used in the article are like trusted guides, helping us build software that’s as “hack-proof” as possible, keeping our information safe and making sure everything works as it should.

References

NIST Special Publications (SPs):

• NIST SP 800–30: Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments
• NIST SP 800–52 Rev. 2: Guidelines for the Selection, Configuration, and Use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) Implementations
• NIST SP 800–53: Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations
• NIST SP 800–57: Recommendation for Key Management
• NIST SP 800–63B: Digital Identity Guidelines: Authentication and Lifecycle Management
• NIST SP 800–218: Secure Software Development Framework

OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project):

• OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS)
• OWASP Top 10
• OWASP API Security Top 10
• OWASP Threat Modeling Cheat Sheet

Other Standards and Frameworks:

• PCI DSS v4.0: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard Requirements and Security Assessment Procedures
• GDPR (Regulation (EU) 2016/679): General Data Protection Regulation

Note: My goal is to make “The Secure Design Framework for Resilient Systems” as helpful as possible. To that end, I invite you to leave a comment if you’d like me to elaborate on any of the concepts, references, or practical applications discussed in this article. Your feedback will help me improve and expand upon this important topic.