CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is spearheading a national initiative to comprehensively understand, manage, and mitigate risks to both cyber and physical infrastructure. In addition to regularly issuing alerts and advisories to help defenders address current threats and vulnerabilities, CISA is launching a groundbreaking series called Secure by Design Alerts. These alerts aim to shift the focus from reacting to the latest attacks to identifying and rectifying recurring classes of defects in software development practices.
The goal is to address vulnerabilities at their root by conducting root cause analyses and implementing systemic changes to eliminate these classes of vulnerability. The Secure by Design Alerts will spotlight instances where insecure technology products directly harm critical infrastructure, small businesses, local communities, and American families. Instead of assigning blame to specific vendors, the alerts aim to illuminate the consequences of “anti-security” decisions, urging software manufacturers to align with secure design principles. The first publication in this series focuses on malicious cyber activity against web management interfaces, emphasizing how manufacturers implementing security best practices could shield customers from such threats.
The core principle of taking ownership for customer security outcomes underscores the urgency for software manufacturers to evaluate and align their development lifecycles with customer security in mind. CISA emphasizes the importance of the journey towards building products that are secure by design, acknowledging its complexity and the time it will require. The Secure by Design Alerts serve as a crucial tool to assist software manufacturers in evaluating their development processes and their impact on customer security outcomes, highlighting areas that demand urgent attention in the ongoing battle against cyber threats.
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