Coded for Safety: Zero Trust App Development

Ready to secure government applications? Start with Zero Trust.

Trust is the foundation of successful relationships. We want to trust our friends, companies, government, etc., and be trusted in return. But, sometimes mistrust better serves us.

A few years ago, the cyber world adopted an approach to security known as trust-but-verify. A simplistic approach, it delivered innovative digital services to consumers – securely and efficiently. Yet as cyber threats intensified, security demands shifted.

Today’s cyber security mantra is Zero Trust. This comprehensive IT security model allows organizations to restrict access controls to networks, applications, and environments without impacting the performance of applications or the user experience. The bedrock principle of Zero Trust – trust no one – is rapidly becoming the norm in IT security.

In the public sector, the government is shifting the security of digital services to Zero Trust. It’s a big undertaking – and an important one. Every day, billions of lines of code get executed in government systems. Citizens accessing digital services must have confidence that the applications are secure. 

The challenge of instilling citizen confidence in the security of government digital services is a big reason that I joined Veracode.  During my years in the public sector, my peers and I in government constantly looked for best-of-breed solutions.  We built comprehensive network security architectures, operating systems security architectures, and shared critical threat information. 

I saw at close range many application security approaches. The issues I encountered as a government leader are the challenges being addressed by Veracode’s application security scanning environment solutions. 

Software Security Must Be Pervasive, Not Invasive

The cost and complexity of developing modern software requires a comprehensive, fully integrated security platform in lieu of many disparate tools. A high-functioning platform supports pervasive, continuous security because it:

1. Shifts security left by introducing threat modeling in the design phase and ensuring that the design incorporates only secure components. By shifting security even further left, DevSecOps reconfigures into SecDevOps. And applications become ‘secure by design.’
2. Provides comprehensive coverage; analyzes every dimension of the code; is fully integrated; and is capable of receiving new technology plugins. A user-friendly ‘single pane of glass’ interface makes it easier for security professionals and developers to assess risk, prioritize remediation, define progress objectives, and monitor them across multiple dimensions.
3. Delivers a frictionless developer experience, enabling security analysis to occur where developers work – within the IDE (Integrated Development Environment), CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Development) pipelines, code and container repositories, and defect tracking systems.

Veracode is more than an application security scanning product. Veracode is a family of devoted technologists whose application tools secure sensitive information held by government agencies and private-sector partners. When citizens use an application to complete a confidential government form, they should know that the system capturing their data has been tested – and that no security vulnerabilities exist.

Interested in learning more?

Check out our government-specific page.