How can you foster security awareness and responsibility through code review?

1 Benefits of security-focused code review

Code review can offer many benefits for security, such as detecting and preventing security bugs and flaws before they become costly and risky issues. It can also be used to educate and mentor developers on security best practices, principles, and tools. Furthermore, code review encourages a security mindset and shared ownership of security among the team members. Additionally, it promotes a consistent and high-quality code base that follows security standards and guidelines, while enhancing the team's communication and collaboration on security matters.

2 How to conduct security-focused code review

Conducting an effective and efficient security-focused code review requires defining clear and specific security goals and criteria, such as the types of vulnerabilities, threats, and risks you want to avoid or mitigate. Utilize a combination of automated and manual code review methods, including static analysis tools, dynamic analysis tools, code scanners, linters, and peer review. It's important to provide constructive and respectful feedback to the code authors, highlighting the security strengths and weaknesses of their code. Encourage them to respond to your feedback, ask questions, and discuss the security implications and trade-offs of their code choices. Follow up on the feedback and make sure that the security issues are resolved and verified before merging the code.

3 How to prepare for security-focused code review

To prepare for security-focused code review, you should first review your own code and check for common security errors, such as injection attacks, broken authentication, insecure data storage, and cross-site scripting. Additionally, use secure coding guidelines and best practices to write your code in a secure and consistent manner. It's also important to document your code and explain your security decisions and assumptions. This includes what security requirements, threats, and risks you considered, what security measures and controls you implemented, and what security tests and tools you used. Lastly, provide relevant and sufficient information to your code reviewers that outlines what security goals and criteria you followed, what security challenges and trade-offs you faced, and what security feedback and suggestions you expect.

4 How to learn from security-focused code review

Learning from security-focused code review requires seeking feedback from multiple sources and perspectives, being open-minded and curious about the security feedback you receive, asking questions for clarification, applying the security feedback to your code, and sharing your security knowledge with your peers. It is important to be receptive to the logic and value behind the security feedback, request examples and resources to help you learn more, monitor the results of your security improvements, and help others improve their security skills and awareness.

5 How to foster a security culture through code review

Fostering a security culture through code review requires making security a priority and habit for the team, and integrating it into each stage of the software development lifecycle. Team members should be involved and empowered in security decisions and actions, while communication and collaboration on security issues should be encouraged. Recognizing and rewarding team members for their security efforts is essential, as is continuously learning and improving security skills and knowledge. Ultimately, this will help keep the team updated on the latest security trends, threats, and best practices.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?