Domain 1: Secure Software Concepts
1.1 Core Concepts
Confidentiality (e.g., covert, overt, encryption)
Integrity (e.g., hashing, digital signatures, code signing, reliability, modifications, authenticity)
Availability (e.g., redundancy, replication, clustering, scalability, resiliency)
Authentication (e.g., multifactor authentication (MFA), identity & access management (IAM), single sign-on (SSO), federated identity)
Authorisation (e.g., access controls, permissions, entitlements)
Accountability (e.g., auditing, logging)
Nonrepudiation (e.g., digital signatures, blockchain)
1.2 Security Design Principles
Least privilege (e.g., access control, need-to-know, run-time privileges)
Separation of Duties (e.g., multi-party control, secret sharing, and split knowledge)
Defense in depth (e.g., layered controls, input validation, security zones)
Resiliency (e.g., fail safe, fail secure, no Single Point of Failure (SPOF))
The economy of mechanism (e.g., Single Sign-On (SSO), password vaults, resource)
Complete mediation (e.g., cookie management, session management, caching of credentials)
Open design (e.g., Kerckhoffs’s principle)
Least common mechanism (e.g., compartmentalisation/isolation, safe listing)
Psychological acceptability (e.g., password complexity, screen layouts, Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA), biometrics)
Component reuse (e.g., common controls, libraries)
Diversity of defense (e.g., geographical diversity, technical diversity, distributed systems)
Domain 2: Secure Software Requirements
2.1 Define Software Security Requirements
Functional (e.g., business requirements, use cases, stories)
Non-functional (e.g., operational, deployment, systemic qualities)
2.2 Identify and Analyse Compliance Requirements
2.3 Identify and Analyse Data Classification Requirements
FData ownership (e.g., data owner, data custodian)
Labelling (e.g., sensitivity, impact)
Types of data (e.g., structured, unstructured data)
Data life cycle (e.g., generation, retention, disposal)
2.4 Identify and Analyse Privacy Requirements
Data anonymisation
User consent
Disposition (e.g., right to be forgotten)
Data retention
Cross borders (e.g., data residency, jurisdiction, multi-national data processing boundaries)
2.5 Develop Misuse and Abuse Cases
2.6 Develop Security Requirement Traceability Matrix (STRM)
2.7 Ensure Security Requirements Flow Down to Suppliers/Providers
Domain 3: Secure Software Architecture and Design
3.1 Perform Threat Modeling
Understand common threats (e.g., Advance Persistent Threat (APT), insider threat, common malware, third-party/supplier)
Attack surface evaluation
Threat intelligence (e.g., Identify credible, relevant threats)
3.2 Define the Security Architecture
Security control identification and prioritisation
Distributed computing (e.g., client-server, peer-to-peer (P2P), message queuing)
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) (e.g., Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), web services
Rich internet applications (e.g., client-side exploits or threats, remote code execution, constant connectivity)
Pervasive/ubiquitous computing (e.g., Internet of Things (IoT), wireless, location-based, Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), near field communication, sensor networks)
Embedded (e.g., secure update, Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) security features, microcontroller security)
Cloud architectures (e.g., Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS))
Mobile applications (e.g., implicit data collection privacy)
Hardware platform concerns (e.g., side-channel mitigation, speculative execution mitigation, embedded Hardware Security Modules (HSM))
Cognitive computing (e.g., Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI))
Control systems (e.g., industrial, medical, facility-related, automotive)
3.3 Performing Secure Interface Design
Security management interfaces, Out-of-Band (OOB) management, log interfaces
Upstream/downstream dependencies (e.g., key and data sharing between apps)
Protocol design choices (e.g., Application Programming Interface (APIs), weaknesses, state, models)
3.4 Performing Architectural Risk Assessment
3.5 Model (Non-Functional) Security Properties and Constraints
3.6 Model and Classify Data
3.7 Evaluate and Select Reusable Secure Design
Credential management (e.g., X.509 and Single Sign-On (SSO))
Flow control (e.g., proxies, firewalls, protocols, queuing)
Data loss prevention (DLP)
Virtualisation (e.g., software-defined infrastructure, hypervisor, containers)
Trusted computing (e.g., Trusted Platform Module (TPM), Trusted Computing Base (TCB))
Database security (e.g., encryption, triggers, views, privilege management)
Programming language environment (e.g., Common Language Runtime (CLR), Java Virtual Machine (JVM))
Operating System (OS) controls and services
Secure backup and restoration planning
Secure data retention, retrieval, and destruction
3.8 Perform Security Architecture and Design Review
3.9 Define Secure Operational Architecture (e.g., deployment topology, operational interfaces)
3.10 Use Secure Architecture and Design Principles, Patterns, and Tools
Domain 4: Secure Software Implementation
4.1 Adhere to Relevant Secure Coding Practices (e.g., standards, guidelines, and regulations)
Declarative versus imperative (programmatic) security
Concurrency (e.g., thread safety, database concurrency controls)
Output sanitisation (e.g., encoding, obfuscation)
Error and exception handling
Input validation
Secure logging & auditing
Session management
Trusted/Untrusted Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and libraries
Type safety
Resource management (e.g., compute, storage, network, memory management)
Secure configuration management (e.g., parameter, default options, credentials)
Tokenising
Isolation (e.g., sandboxing, virtualisation, containers, Separation Kernel Protection Profiles (SKPP))
Cryptography (e.g., payload, field level, transport, storage, agility, encryption, algorithm selection)
Access control (e.g., trust zones, function permissions, Role Based Access Control (RBAC))
Processor microarchitecture security extensions (e.g., Software Guard Extensions (SGX), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Secure Memory Encryption(SME)/Secure Encrypted Virtualisation(SEV), ARM TrustZone)
4.2 Analyse Code for Security Risks
Secure code reuse
Vulnerability databases/lists (e.g., Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE))
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (e.g., automated code coverage, linting)
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Manual code review (e.g., individual, peer)
Look for malicious code (e.g., backdoors, logic bombs, high entropy)
Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST)
4.3 Implement Security Controls (e.g., watchdogs, File Integrity Monitoring (FIM), anti-malware)
4.4 Address Security Risks (e.g., remediation, mitigation, transfer, accept)
4.5 Securely Reuse Third-Party Code or Libraries (e.g., Software Composition Analysis (SCA))
4.6 Securely Integrate Components
Systems-of-systems integration (e.g., trust contracts, security testing, and analysis)
4.7 Apply Security During the Build Process
Anti-tampering techniques (e.g., code signing, obfuscation)
Compiler switches
Address compiler warnings
Domain 5: Secure Software Testing
5.1 Develop Security Test Cases
Attack surface validation
Penetration tests
Fuzzing (e.g., generated, mutated)
Scanning (e.g., vulnerability, content, privacy)
Simulation (e.g., simulating production environment and production data, synthetic workloads)
Failure (e.g., fault injection, stress testing, break testing)
Cryptographic validation (e.g., Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG), entropy)
Regression tests
Integration tests
Continuous (e.g., synthetic transactions)
5.2 Develop Security Testing Strategy and Plan
Functional security testing (e.g., logic)
Nonfunctional security testing (e.g., reliability, performance, scalability)
Testing techniques (e.g., the white box and the black box)
Environment (e.g., interoperability, test harness)
Standards (e.g., International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual (OSSTMM), Software Engineering Institute (SEI))
Crowdsourcing (e.g., bug bounty)
5.3 Verify and Validate Documentation (e.g., installation and setup instructions, error messages, user guides, release notes)
5.4 Identify Undocumented Functionality
5.5 Analyse Security Implications of Test Results (e.g., impact on product management, prioritisation, break build criteria)
5.6 Classify and Track Security Errors
Bug tracking (e.g., defects, errors, and vulnerabilities)
Risk Scoring (e.g., Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS))
5.7 Secure Test Data
Generate test data (e.g., referential integrity, statistical quality, production representative)
Reuse of production data (e.g., obfuscation, sanitisation, anonymisation, tokenisation, data aggregation mitigation)
5.8 Perform Verification and Validation Testing
Domain 6: Secure Software Lifecycle Management
6.1 Secure Configuration and Version Control (e.g., hardware, software, documentation, interfaces, patching)
6.2 Define Strategy and Roadmap
6.3 Manage Security Within a Software Development Methodology
Security in adaptive methodologies (e.g., Agile methodologies)
Security in predictive methodologies (e.g., Waterfall)
6.4 Identify Security Standards and Frameworks
6.5 Define and Develop Security Documentation
6.6 Develop Security Metrics (e.g., defects per line of code, criticality level, average remediation time, complexity)
6.7 Decommission Software
End-of-life policies (e.g., credential removal, configuration removal, license cancellation, archiving)
Data disposition (e.g., retention, destruction, dependencies)
6.8 Report Security Status (e.g., reports, dashboards, feedback loops)
6.9 Incorporate Integrated Risk Management (IRM)
Regulations and compliance
Legal (e.g., intellectual property, breach notification)
Standards and guidelines (e.g., International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), Payment Card Industry (PCI), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), OWASP, Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code (SAFECode), Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM), Building Security In Maturity Model (BSIMM))
Risk management (e.g., mitigate, accept, transfer, avoid)
Terminology (e.g., threats, vulnerability, residual risk, controls, probability, impact)
Technical risk vs. business risk
6.10 Promote Security Culture in Software Development
Security champions
Security education and guidance
6.11 Implement Continuous Improvement (e.g., retrospective, lessons learned)
Domain 7: Secure Software Deployment, Operations, Maintenance
7.1 Perform Operational Risk Analysis
Deployment environment
Personnel training (e.g., administrators vs. users)
Safety criticality
System Integration
7.2 Release Software Securely
Secure Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline
The secure software toolchain
Build artefact verification (e.g., code signing, checksums, hashes)
7.3 Securely Store and Manage Security Data
Credentials
Secrets
Keys/certificates
Configurations
7.4 Ensure Secure Installation
Bootstrapping (e.g., key generation, access, management)
Least privilege
Environment hardening
Secure activation (e.g., credentials, safelisting, device configuration, network configuration, licensing)
Security policy implementation
Secrets injection (e.g., certificate, Open Authorisation (OAuth) tokens, Secure Shell (SSH) keys)
7.5 Perform Post-Deployment Security Testing
7.6 Obtain Security Approval to Operate (e.g., risk acceptance, sign-off at the appropriate level)
7.7 Perform Information Security Continuous Monitoring (ISCM)
Collect and analyse observable security data (e.g., logs, events, telemetry, and trace data)
Threat intel
Intrusion detection/response
Secure configuration
Regulation changes
7.8 Support Incident Response
Root cause analysis
Incident triage
Forensics
7.9 Perform Patch Management (e.g., secure release, testing)
7.10 Perform Vulnerability Management (e.g., scanning, tracking, triaging)
7.11 Runtime Protection (e.g., Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP), Web Application Firewall (WAF), Address Space Layout Randomisation (ASLR))
7.12 Support Continuity of Operations
Backup, archiving, retention
Disaster Recovery (DR)
Resiliency (e.g., operational redundancy, erasure code, survivability)
7.13 Integrate Service Level Objectives (SLO) and Service Level Agreements (SLA) (e.g., maintenance, performance, availability, qualified personnel)
Domain 8: Secure Software Supply Chain
8.1 Implement Software Supply Chain Risk Management
Identify
Assess
Respond
Monitor
8.2 Analyse the Security of Third-Party Software
8.3 Verify Pedigree and Provenance
Secure transfer (e.g., interdiction mitigation)
System sharing/interconnections
Code repository security
Build environment security
Cryptographically hashed, digitally-signed components
Right to audit
8.4 Ensure Supplier Security Requirements in the Acquisition Process
Audit of security policy compliance (e.g., secure software development practices)
Vulnerability/incident notification, response, coordination, and reporting
Maintenance and support structure (e.g., community versus commercial, licensing)
Security track record
8.5 Support contractual requirements
Intellectual Property (IP) ownership, code escrow, liability, and warranty
End-User License Agreement (EULA)
Service Level Agreements (SLA)
