Secure code review is the act of examining the source code of an application to find and fix vulnerabilities that could have been introduced accidentally while it was being developed. It entails carefully analyzing a software or application’s core code to identify any security holes, faults, or potential improvement areas. By ensuring the software is reliable, safe, and efficient, this approach helps reduce its susceptibility to cyber attacks and gives users a better-quality final result. It contributes to the overall improvement of software quality and security and is fast becoming an essential component of the software development life cycle (SDLC).
Secure code review can be carried out automatically by secure code review tools that scan the code and highlight errors, or manually by a human person going over each line of the code.
The following areas should be the focus of security code reviews:
- Authentication and authorization
- Data validation
- Error handling
- Session management
- Security configuration
- Logging
- Encryption