Secure Coding mailing list archives

Positive impact of an SSG


From: chandra at list.org (Pravir Chandra)
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:31:06 -0800

Hey Sammy.

How does that pertain to a software security group (SSG) per se? The
details below seem to indicate that it was the controls over all that
lead to the positive impact.

My main point is that supporting an SSG isn't cost effective for 95%
of the organizations out there that are building code. That's why in
SAMM, we didn't mandate the structure of the organization and instead
concentrated on the functions fulfilled by security guys (regardless
of their placement in the org).

p.

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Sammy Migues <SMigues at cigital.com> wrote:
Hi all,

I've received some private questions about the 110 activities in BSIMM (bsi-mm.com). Since we built the model 
directly from the data gathered, each activity is actually being done in one of the nine organizations interviewed. 
The question is whether there's any evidence the activities are actually effective as opposed to simply being done.

Since we can't publish any private data, I'd like to point folks at this recent article in Information Security 
Magazine. Jim Routh, CISO of DTCC (one of the nine organizations interviewed), is quoted as follows relative to the 
impact of software security group activities:

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/magazineFeature/0,296894,sid14_gci1346974,00.html

"One of Routh's big wins is inserting security controls early into software development lifecycle at the DTCC. 
Vulnerabilities are weeded out well before they appear in functional code that ends up in production and that has 
resulted in close to $2 million in productivity gains on a base of $150 million spend for development, Routh says.

"Those gains are exclusively the result of having mature and effective controls within our system and software 
development lifecycle," Routh says. This is a three-year-old initiative that educates and certifies developers in all 
DTCC environments in security. Developers are also provided with the necessary code-scanning tools and consulting and 
services help to keep production code close to pristine."

--Sammy.

Sammy Migues
Principal, Technology
703.404.5830 - http://www.cigital.com
Software confidence. Achieved.
smigues at cigital.com



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Pravir Chandra                      chandra<at>list<dot>org
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