Today, software development is a fast-paced environment. The need to ship features and meet deadlines often comes at the expense of security.
Unfortunately, with the arbitrary evolution of cyber threats, developers are now expected to integrate cyber hygiene in their thought processes.
I mean to imply the day-to-day practices that protect codes, systems, and data from breaches. Just as good personal hygiene keeps an individual healthy, cyber hygiene ensures the health and security of the digital environments that we build and maintain.
Over the years, I have found that often it is these small, consistent practices that make a tremendous difference in shielding properly secure information from vulnerabilities.
One of the most important practices of cyber hygiene is keeping the software up to date along with its dependencies.
Outdated libraries, frameworks, and tools constitute typical entry points for attackers. Routine updates to your source control and third-party packages shield you from known risks.
Tools such as Dependabot or Snyk, which notify about updates and security patches, can automate this process.
For example, an outdated library proved a critical vulnerability on one of our projects. We started automating some dependency checks in our workflow in response to this kind of concern.
Good password management is another pillar of cyber hygiene. Weak or reused passwords pose excessive risks, especially when getting control access to version control systems, cloud platforms, or development tools.
Password managers can significantly lessen this risk, making sure the password manager generates strong, random passwords and securely saves them. Meanwhile, having multi-factor authentication (MFA) further secures access and nullifies unauthorised access even in situations when the password might have been compromised.
Next to that, secure coding practices are equally important. The fundamental aspects of secure code, such as input validation, data sanitisation, or avoiding hard coded credentials, protect against SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS).
For instance, in a recent project where we introduced input validation as a secure coding practice, we prevented an injection of malicious data that would otherwise have exploited vulnerabilities in our application. When developers embrace secure coding from the outset, it fortifies the system they build with security in mind.
Another crucial practice is regular backup. Any data can get lost through either accidental deletion, ransomware attack, or hardware failure, these minimal impacts can easily be counter-mitigated through a proper backup scheme.
It is always best practice to automate the backing up of all critical data to secure, safe, and offsite locations; this ensures that recovery post-incident can be done quickly.
I have seen so many teams lose days because of bad backups, a weakness that could have so easily been avoided by implementing a proper backup plan.
Monitoring and logging are then equally important. Watching system logs while keeping track of unusual activity would help to identify possible breaches at an early stage.
The likes of Application Insights and ELK Stack are great tools to get insight into system behaviour and security events. For instance, you may spot a sudden spike in failed logins as being a sign of a brute force attack, allowing you to react before any damage.
Building a security culture among your team should be a very high priority. Cyber hygiene, by no means, is a solo endeavour; it is an ever-collaborative one. Regular training, knowledge-sharing sessions, and security drills will keep everyone in tune with the latest in terms of awareness.
Wide-open discussions about possible risks and incidents encourage the team to be able to face together and harmoniously along with efficacy any emerging issues.
Cyber hygiene means the day-to-day practices that shield the codebase, systems, and data from threats. Updates, passwords, secure codes, backup, monitoring, and security culture are ways to enforce cyber hygiene, which further minimises risks of breaches for developers to work around.
Although small, these consistent practices are the foundation of a secure and resilient development culture, and the consequences are more pronounced in a world where we face threats almost every day.
After all, prevention is better than cure!
*Faith Sodipe is a forward-thinking Software Engineer with a passion for developing user-centric, secure, and scalable solutions. Expertise in Flutter for cross-platform mobile applications and .NET for backend systems is complemented by a Master’s degree in Cybersecurity. Faith excels in leading and collaborating within teams to transform visions into functional systems.
He is dedicated to using technology for social good, particularly at the intersection of human-centered design and AI, to make technology accessible and impactful for all.
