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🔗PracticesTasks
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Prepare the Organization (PO)PO.1Define Security Requirements for Software Development (PO.1): Ensure that security requirements for software development are known at all times so that they can be taken into account throughout the SDLC and duplication of effort can be minimized because the requirements information can be collected once and shared. This includes requirements from internal sources (e.g., the organization’s policies, business objectives, and risk management strategy) and external sources (e.g., applicable laws and regulations).PO.1.1Identify and document all security requirements for the organization’s software development infrastructures and processes, and maintain the requirements over time.
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PO.1.2Identify and document all security requirements for organization-developed software to meet, and maintain the requirements over time.
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PO.1.3Communicate requirements to all third parties who will provide commercial software components to the organization for reuse by the organization’s own software. [Formerly PW.3.1]
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PO.2Implement Roles and Responsibilities (PO.2): Ensure that everyone inside and outside of the organization involved in the SDLC is prepared to perform their SDLC-related roles and responsibilities throughout the SDLC.PO.2.1Create new roles and alter responsibilities for existing roles as needed to encompass all parts of the SDLC. Periodically review and maintain the defined roles and responsibilities, updating them as needed.
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PO.2.2Provide role-based training for all personnel with responsibilities that contribute to secure development. Periodically review personnel proficiency and role-based training, and update the training as needed.
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PO.2.3Obtain upper management or authorizing official commitment to secure development, and convey that commitment to all with development-related roles and responsibilities.
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PO.3Implement Supporting Toolchains (PO.3): Use automation to reduce human effort and improve the accuracy, reproducibility, usability, and comprehensiveness of security practices throughout the SDLC, as well as provide a way to document and demonstrate the use of these practices. Toolchains and tools may be used at different levels of the organization, such as organization-wide or project-specific, and may address a particular part of the SDLC, like a build pipeline.PO.3.1Specify which tools or tool types must or should be included in each toolchain to mitigate identified risks, as well as how the toolchain components are to be integrated with each other.
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PO.3.2Follow recommended security practices to deploy, operate, and maintain tools and toolchains.
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PO.3.3Configure tools to generate artifacts of their support of secure software development practices as defined by the organization.
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PO.4Define and Use Criteria for Software Security Checks (PO.4): Help ensure that the software resulting from the SDLC meets the organization’s expectations by defining and using criteria for checking the software’s security during development.PO.4.1Define criteria for software security checks and track throughout the SDLC.
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PO.4.2Implement processes, mechanisms, etc. to gather and safeguard the necessary information in support of the criteria.
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PO.5Implement and Maintain Secure Environments for Software Development (PO.5): Ensure that all components of the environments for software development are strongly protected from internal and external threats to prevent compromises of the environments or the software being developed or maintained within them. Examples of environments for software development include development, build, test, and distribution environments.PO.5.1Separate and protect each environment involved in software development.
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PO.5.2Secure and harden development endpoints (i.e., endpoints for software designers, developers, testers, builders, etc.) to perform development-related tasks using a risk-based approach.
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Protect the Software (PS)PS.1Protect All Forms of Code from Unauthorized Access and Tampering (PS.1): Help prevent unauthorized changes to code, both inadvertent and intentional, which could circumvent or negate the intended security characteristics of the software. For code that is not intended to be publicly accessible, this helps prevent theft of the software and may make it more difficult or time-consuming for attackers to find vulnerabilities in the software.PS.1.1Store all forms of code – including source code, executable code, and configuration-as-code – based on the principle of least privilege so that only authorized personnel, tools, services, etc. have access.
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PS.2Provide a Mechanism for Verifying Software Release Integrity (PS.2): Help software acquirers ensure that the software they acquire is legitimate and has not been tampered with.PS.2.1Make software integrity verification information available to software acquirers.
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PS.3Archive and Protect Each Software Release (PS.3): Preserve software releases in order to help identify, analyze, and eliminate vulnerabilities discovered in the software after release.PS.3.1Securely archive the necessary files and supporting data (e.g., integrity verification information, provenance data) to be retained for each software release.
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PS.3.2Collect, safeguard, maintain, and share provenance data for all components of each software release (e.g., in a software bill of materials [SBOM]).
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Produce Well-Secured Software (PW)PW.1Design Software to Meet Security Requirements and Mitigate Security Risks (PW.1): Identify and evaluate the security requirements for the software; determine what security risks the software is likely to face during operation and how the software’s design and architecture should mitigate those risks; and justify any cases where risk-based analysis indicates that security requirements should be relaxed or waived. Addressing security requirements and risks during software design (secure by design) is key for improving software security and also helps improve development efficiency.PW.1.1Use forms of risk modeling – such as threat modeling, attack modeling, or attack surface mapping – to help assess the security risk for the software.
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PW.1.2Track and maintain the software’s security requirements, risks, and design decisions.
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PW.1.3Where appropriate, build in support for using standardized security features and services (e.g., enabling software to integrate with existing log management, identity management, access control, and vulnerability management systems) instead of creating proprietary implementations of security features and services. [Formerly PW.4.3]
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PW.2Review the Software Design to Verify Compliance with Security Requirements and Risk Information (PW.2): Help ensure that the software will meet the security requirements and satisfactorily address the identified risk information.PW.2.1Have 1) a qualified person (or people) who were not involved with the design and/or 2) automated processes instantiated in the toolchain review the software design to confirm and enforce that it meets all of the security requirements and satisfactorily addresses the identified risk information.
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PW.4Reuse Existing, Well-Secured Software When Feasible Instead of Duplicating Functionality (PW.4): Lower the costs of software development, expedite software development, and decrease the likelihood of introducing additional security vulnerabilities into the software by reusing software modules and services that have already had their security posture checked. This is particularly important for software that implements security functionality, such as cryptographic modules and protocols.

PW.4.3: Moved to PW.1.3
PW.4.1Acquire and maintain well-secured software components (e.g., software libraries, modules, middleware, frameworks) from commercial, open-source, and other third-party developers for use by the organization’s software.
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PW.4.2Create and maintain well-secured software components in-house following SDLC processes to meet common internal software development needs that cannot be better met by third-party software components.
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PW.4.4Verify that acquired commercial, open-source, and all other third-party software components comply with the requirements, as defined by the organization, throughout their life cycles.
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PW.5Create Source Code by Adhering to Secure Coding Practices (PW.5): Decrease the number of security vulnerabilities in the software, and reduce costs by minimizing vulnerabilities introduced during source code creation that meet or exceed organization-defined vulnerability severity criteria.PW.5.1Follow all secure coding practices that are appropriate to the development languages and environment to meet the organization’s requirements.
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PW.6Configure the Compilation, Interpreter, and Build Processes to Improve Executable Security (PW.6): Decrease the number of security vulnerabilities in the software and reduce costs by eliminating vulnerabilities before testing occurs.PW.6.1Use compiler, interpreter, and build tools that offer features to improve executable security.
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PW.6.2Determine which compiler, interpreter, and build tool features should be used and how each should be configured, then implement and use the approved configurations.
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PW.7Review and/or Analyze Human-Readable Code to Identify Vulnerabilities and Verify Compliance with Security Requirements (PW.7): Help identify vulnerabilities so that they can be corrected before the software is released to prevent exploitation. Using automated methods lowers the effort and resources needed to detect vulnerabilities. Human-readable code includes source code, scripts, and any other form of code that an organization deems human-readable.PW.7.1Determine whether code review (a person looks directly at the code to find issues) and/or code analysis (tools are used to find issues in code, either in a fully automated way or in conjunction with a person) should be used, as defined by the organization.
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PW.7.2Perform the code review and/or code analysis based on the organization’s secure coding standards, and record and triage all discovered issues and recommended remediations in the development team’s workflow or issue tracking system.
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PW.8Test Executable Code to Identify Vulnerabilities and Verify Compliance with Security Requirements (PW.8): Help identify vulnerabilities so that they can be corrected before the software is released in order to prevent exploitation. Using automated methods lowers the effort and resources needed to detect vulnerabilities and improves traceability and repeatability. Executable code includes binaries, directly executed bytecode and source code, and any other form of code that an organization deems executable.PW.8.1Determine whether executable code testing should be performed to find vulnerabilities not identified by previous reviews, analysis, or testing and, if so, which types of testing should be used.
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PW.8.2Scope the testing, design the tests, perform the testing, and document the results, including recording and triaging all discovered issues and recommended remediations in the development team’s workflow or issue tracking system.
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PW.9Configure Software to Have Secure Settings by Default (PW.9): Help improve the security of the software at the time of installation to reduce the likelihood of the software being deployed with weak security settings, putting it at greater risk of compromise.PW.9.1Define a secure baseline by determining how to configure each setting that has an effect on security or a security-related setting so that the default settings are secure and do not weaken the security functions provided by the platform, network infrastructure, or services.
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PW.9.2Implement the default settings (or groups of default settings, if applicable), and document each setting for software administrators.
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Respond to Vulnerabilities (RV)RV.1Identify and Confirm Vulnerabilities on an Ongoing Basis (RV.1): Help ensure that vulnerabilities are identified more quickly so that they can be remediated more quickly in accordance with risk, reducing the window of opportunity for attackers.RV.1.1Gather information from software acquirers, users, and public sources on potential vulnerabilities in the software and third-party components that the software uses, and investigate all credible reports.
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RV.1.2Review, analyze, and/or test the software’s code to identify or confirm the presence of previously undetected vulnerabilities.
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RV.1.3Have a policy that addresses vulnerability disclosure and remediation, and implement the roles, responsibilities, and processes needed to support that policy.
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RV.2Assess, Prioritize, and Remediate Vulnerabilities (RV.2): Help ensure that vulnerabilities are remediated in accordance with risk to reduce the window of opportunity for attackers.RV.2.1Analyze each vulnerability to gather sufficient information about risk to plan its remediation or other risk response.
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RV.2.2Plan and implement risk responses for vulnerabilities.
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RV.3Analyze Vulnerabilities to Identify Their Root Causes (RV.3): Help reduce the frequency of vulnerabilities in the future.RV.3.1Analyze identified vulnerabilities to determine their root causes.
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RV.3.2Analyze the root causes over time to identify patterns, such as a particular secure coding practice not being followed consistently.
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RV.3.3Review the software for similar vulnerabilities to eradicate a class of vulnerabilities, and proactively fix them rather than waiting for external reports.
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RV.3.4Review the SDLC process, and update it if appropriate to prevent (or reduce the likelihood of) the root cause recurring in updates to the software or in new software that is created.
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