Secure Coding: Best Practices for Building Compliant Software

As software powers more of our digital lives, the need for secure, compliant code has never been greater. From preventing data breaches to meeting GDPR obligations, secure coding practices are now essential—not optional.

But writing secure software isn't just about protecting data from hackers. It's also about ensuring that data stays where it's legally meant to stay.

Data sovereignty refers to the concept that digital data is subject to the laws and governance structures within the nation it is collected or stored. When paired with growing threats from cyberattacks, misconfigured systems, and privacy breaches, it becomes essential to discuss the often-overlooked aspect of secure coding within the broader data sovereignty landscape.

Table of contents

1. What are secure coding standards?
2. Secure coding best practices and guidelines
3. Security checklists for developers
4. Embedding security into the SDLC
5. Digital Samba’s role in secure software development
6. FAQs

What are secure coding standards?

Secure coding, also known as secure programming, refers to the practice of writing software in a way that protects against the introduction of security vulnerabilities. It focuses on anticipating how software might be exploited and implementing code that mitigates these risks. Secure coding practices ensure that software behaves correctly and safely, even in the face of malicious inputs or user behaviour.

At its core, secure code development involves adhering to secure code standards that aim to prevent common vulnerabilities from being introduced in the first place. These standards provide developers with a clear framework for writing safer, more reliable code. Following these standards helps organisations meet security and compliance expectations.

Secure coding standards are documented guidelines that help developers write code that avoids known security pitfalls. Standards such as OWASP, CERT, or NIST offer frameworks to prevent vulnerabilities like XSS, SQL injection, and buffer overflows. By following these, development teams can enforce consistency and reduce the risk of compliance issues or costly rework.

When asking "what is secure coding?", it's important to understand that it's not merely a set of rules but a development mindset that prioritises security at every stage. Developers must consistently apply secure coding principles across all codebases and components. This proactive stance significantly reduces the risk of exploitable flaws.

Secure coding best practices and guidelines

Implementing secure coding best practices is crucial to ensuring application integrity and compliance with jurisdictional regulations. These practices help safeguard user data, prevent breaches, and maintain business continuity. They are a fundamental part of building secure and trustworthy applications.

Practical insights: 

• Input validation: Never trust user input. Implement strict validation to prevent injection attacks. Input validation ensures only correctly formatted data enters the system, reducing the risk of XSS, SQL injection, and buffer overflows.
  
  
• Authentication and authorisation: Use secure frameworks for user management and enforce least privilege access. Properly managing who can access what ensures sensitive actions and data remain protected from unauthorised users.
  
  
• Error handling: Avoid exposing system details in error messages. Revealing stack traces or system information can aid attackers in discovering vulnerabilities.
  
  
• Session management: Secure cookies, set expiration, and invalidate sessions on logout. Proper session handling reduces risks such as session hijacking and fixation.
  
  
• Data encryption: Encrypt data in transit and at rest using industry standards. Encryption ensures that even if data is intercepted, it cannot be read or misused.     

Real-world secure coding practices examples:

• Example 1: Sanitising user input in a comment form to avoid XSS attacks. This ensures that embedded scripts cannot be executed in the browser, protecting other users. By validating input at both the client and server levels, developers can prevent harmful content from being processed or displayed on web pages.
  
  
• Example 2: Hashing passwords using bcrypt instead of storing them in plaintext. In case of a breach, attackers cannot easily retrieve the original passwords. This method adds complexity by incorporating salt, making each hash unique and difficult for attackers to reverse-engineer.
  
  
• Example 3: Using prepared statements in SQL queries to eliminate injection vulnerabilities. This approach separates data from commands, preventing malicious inputs from altering query logic. Prepared statements also ensure that user input is treated strictly as data, eliminating risks associated with dynamically generated queries.

These practices form the foundation of any robust secure coding guidelines and are essential for achieving secure coding compliance. They not only improve code quality but also demonstrate a commitment to privacy and security.

Security checklists for developers

To foster consistent, secure development, developers need access to actionable checklists. Checklists serve as reminders and references for best practices that must be applied during coding and review. A comprehensive secure coding practices checklist ensures that secure code standards are upheld across the board.

Actionable software security checklist:

1. Validate all input and output data. This prevents unexpected or malicious data from causing errors or security flaws. By ensuring that data is correctly formatted and within expected ranges, developers can significantly reduce the risk of attacks like XSS or SQL injection.
2. Use parameterised queries and avoid dynamic SQL. This practice defends against SQL injection attacks by treating user inputs as data, not code. By using parameterised queries, the database can differentiate between executable code and data, ensuring that user inputs never interfere with the query structure.
3. Implement robust authentication mechanisms. Strong authentication helps confirm user identities and prevent unauthorised access. By using multi-factor authentication (MFA) or single sign-on (SSO) protocols, businesses can further strengthen their user access controls.
4. Encrypt sensitive data. Encryption protects information from being read by unauthorised parties, even if intercepted. Using end-to-end encryption ensures that the data remains secure as it travels across networks and is only accessible by authorised users or systems.
5. Implement logging and monitoring. Continuous monitoring helps detect and respond to security incidents promptly. Automated alerts triggered by suspicious activity can assist security teams in taking immediate action to mitigate potential breaches.
6. Handle exceptions securely. Concealing technical details in errors prevents attackers from gaining insights into the system architecture. By providing generic error messages and logging specific error details on the server side, organisations can limit the exposure of sensitive information.
7. Avoid hardcoding secrets. Store credentials in secure, encrypted environments to reduce exposure risk. Secrets management tools such as Vault or AWS Secrets Manager can help securely store and retrieve sensitive information without exposing it in the source code.
8. Perform regular dependency checks. Third-party components may contain vulnerabilities that need frequent assessment and patching. Regular updates and checks for known vulnerabilities in dependencies reduce the attack surface of your software.

Software security requirements checklist:

1. Does the software use secure authentication protocols? Protocols like OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect ensure secure user verification. Implementing these protocols helps prevent issues like password leaks by using token-based access.

1. Are APIs secured using tokens or OAuth? Token-based authentication adds a layer of security to application integrations. By using bearer tokens or OAuth, the application ensures that requests are authenticated without exposing sensitive credentials.

1. Is user data encrypted both in transit and at rest? Encryption ensures that data remains protected regardless of how it's accessed. It also ensures compliance with data protection regulations like GDPR, which mandate encryption for certain types of personal data.

1. Are security headers configured? Headers like Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options enhance browser-side security. These headers help protect against attacks such as clickjacking and content injection.

1. Is the codebase tested for vulnerabilities before deployment? Pre-release testing helps identify and resolve flaws early. Automated static and dynamic security testing tools, as well as manual penetration testing, ensure that no major vulnerabilities are overlooked before deployment.

A well-defined application security review checklist can dramatically increase the security maturity of your development process. It also improves collaboration across teams by setting clear, shared security expectations.

Embedding security into the SDLC

A step-by-step approach to embedding secure coding techniques into the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) ensures that security is not an afterthought. Integrating security at every phase reduces the likelihood of vulnerabilities and compliance failures.

Step 1: Requirements phase

• Define clear security goals. This sets expectations and guides all subsequent development activities. Additionally, it’s crucial to involve stakeholders early in discussing security objectives to ensure alignment between technical and business goals.
• Include regulatory compliance requirements such as GDPR. Ensuring legal adherence from the start avoids costly retrofitting later.

Step 2: Design phase

• Conduct threat modelling. This helps identify potential attack vectors and plan mitigations. Also, incorporating security architecture reviews at this stage can help in identifying potential flaws before the system is built.
• Plan for secure architecture. Design decisions should include layers of defence, encryption, and access controls.

Step 3: Development phase

• Adhere to secure coding best practices. Developers should write code with security as a core consideration. Implementing code reviews and pair programming during development can also help catch potential vulnerabilities early in the process.
• Use code analysis tools to catch vulnerabilities. Static and dynamic analysis tools help detect issues early.

Step 4: Testing phase

• Conduct security-focused tests such as penetration testing. These tests simulate attacks to uncover hidden vulnerabilities. Additionally, static analysis tools are used during this phase to identify vulnerabilities within the code itself before deployment.
• Validate against the secure coding practices checklist. Ensure all coding standards and security goals have been met.

Step 5: Deployment phase

• Configure infrastructure securely. Secure settings and permissions help limit exposure. Conducting security audits of the deployed environment to ensure configurations are in line with security policies is also essential.
• Monitor applications in production. Ongoing observation helps detect and address emerging threats.

Step 6: Maintenance phase

• Regularly patch systems. Updating software fixes known vulnerabilities. Moreover, it’s critical to have an ongoing process for monitoring vulnerabilities in the deployed systems and addressing them swiftly with patches and updates.
• Review logs and audit trails. Logging supports incident detection and response, while audits ensure accountability.

This lifecycle-centric approach encourages developers to learn how to write secure code from the ground up. It embeds security into the culture of software development rather than treating it as a final step.

Digital Samba’s role in secure software development

At Digital Samba, we understand that secure software development is essential to data sovereignty and user trust. As a leading provider of video conferencing solutions, we take a security-first approach to product design and deployment. Our architecture and development practices reflect the highest standards in data protection.

• GDPR-first architecture: Built to ensure compliance with European data protection standards. This design supports clients in meeting their own compliance obligations. By prioritising GDPR from the start, we ensure that all data handling practices align with the stringent requirements of European law, reducing compliance risks.
• Secure hosting: Data is stored in EU-based, ISO-certified data centres. These facilities follow strict controls for access, monitoring, and physical protection. Our hosting solution also offers redundancy and disaster recovery protocols to ensure data availability and security at all times.
• Privacy by design: Encryption, access control, and user authentication are core features. Our platform integrates security features at the architectural level to reduce risk. These features are designed to protect sensitive communications, ensuring that personal and business data remain private and secure.

Security-conscious development:

• Our developers follow strict secure coding guidelines. These include internal policies aligned with industry best practices like OWASP. Continuous training and awareness programmes help our development team stay up-to-date with the latest security threats and mitigation strategies.
• We regularly conduct internal and external application security review checklists. These assessments help maintain a robust security posture and identify areas for improvement. Our proactive approach ensures that security is never an afterthought but an integral part of the software development lifecycle.
• Secure coding compliance is a standard part of our SDLC. Security is embedded in every development phase, from planning to deployment. We also regularly audit our development process to ensure adherence to evolving best practices and compliance requirements.

Real impact:

• Organisations using Digital Samba benefit from tools designed with secure code development in mind. Our solutions offer peace of mind for privacy-conscious users. We also provide ongoing support to ensure that organisations can adapt their systems to emerging security challenges.
• Our API and SDK offer embedded security features to support privacy-focused integration. Developers can confidently build on a secure foundation. Our commitment to providing clear documentation and support helps ensure that security features are implemented effectively across different applications.

By encouraging secure coding best practices and providing reliable, privacy-first video conferencing technology, Digital Samba sets the standard for trusted, secure communication in the digital age. We support businesses in their journey toward secure, sovereign data management.

Want to see how Digital Samba helps you implement secure coding practices from day one? Request a demo or explore our developer docs to start building secure video features today.

FAQs

1. What’s the difference between secure coding and normal coding?

Secure coding goes beyond making code work—it ensures that it’s resistant to attacks like injection, data leaks, or unauthorised access. It’s about building with security in mind from day one.

2. Do secure coding standards really make a difference?

Yes. Following standards like OWASP or NIST helps developers avoid known mistakes that hackers often exploit. It also keeps your organisation on the right side of compliance and reduces the risk of costly security incidents.

3. Is secure coding only relevant to big enterprises?

Not at all. Small businesses and startups are just as vulnerable to cyberattacks. Secure coding is essential for any organisation that collects user data or operates online.

4. How do I start learning secure coding as a developer?

Start by studying OWASP’s secure coding guidelines, then practice with tools like static analysis scanners and sandbox environments. You don’t need to be a security expert—just develop good habits early on.

5. What tools help enforce secure coding?

Common tools include static code analysis tools like SonarQube or Checkmarx, and secret scanners like TruffleHog. Many IDEs also have security plugins to flag risky code in real-time.

6. Can I apply secure coding in a low-code or no-code platform?

Yes, but your control may be limited. Focus on using platforms that follow secure development practices themselves, and always validate inputs, use strong authentication, and follow platform-specific security recommendations.

SOURCES:

1. OWASP Secure Coding Practices
2. NIST Secure Software Development Framework
3. Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF)
4. ISO/IEC 27001 Guidelines
5. ENISA Guidelines for Secure Development
6. GDPR Compliance Explained
7. SSDLC vs SDLC vs SDL: Security Development Lifecycle Explained
8. Mozilla Secure Coding Guidelines
9. Google Developer Web Security Guidelines
10. SANS Secure Coding