Saving Money with IT Security Processes. Example 6/26: Reducing Project Delays with Secure Project process

Article number 6 in a series dedicated to giving examples of the way IT security processes can help your company save money.

Projects have a conception phase. In this phase, networks are designed, interactions with users are designed and so on. This is a moment when thinking critically with a security mindset is most valuable.

If you let the conception phase evolve without a security engineer, IT people will think about networks but not about intrusions. They'll think about users but not about attackers. Because that's the security job. So, they will design vulnerable software, networks and/or servers.

Then the vulnerable conception will be implemented and put into production. Then either the Security Audit will spot vulnerabilities and ask for a costly patch (or re-design) or the Security Audit will miss it and a security incident is going to happen soon. Both cases are very expensive for a company.

If you have a sound Secure Project process, with a goal to secure developing projects, this will not happen and the company will save a lot of money.


The whole case in this article is based on two little known asymmetries:

1. You can look for a vulnerability at the conception phase or at the production phase. But doing it in production is longer (more expensive) and is more likely to just fail spotting the vulnerability.
   
   
2. You can patch a vulnerability at the conception phase or at the production phase. But doing it in production is longer (more expensive), may require stopping production (lost business hours) and may trigger side-effects.