The software security field sometimes feels a bit negative.

The focus is on things that went wrong and people are constantly told what not to do.

Build Security In

One often heard piece of advice is that one cannot bolt security on as an afterthought, that it has to be built in.

But how do we do that? I’ve written earlier about two approaches: Cigital’s TouchPoints and Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle (SDL).

The Touchpoints are good, but rather high-level and not so actionable for developers starting out with security. The SDL is also good, but rather heavyweight and difficult to adopt for smaller organizations.

The Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM)

We need a framework that we can ease into in an iterative manner. It should also provide concrete guidance for developers that don’t necessarily have a lot of background in the security field.

Enter OWASP‘s SAMM:

The Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM) is an open framework to help organizations formulate and implement a strategy for software security that is tailored to the specific risks facing the organization.

SAMM assumes four business functions in developing software and assigns three security practices to each of those:

For each practice, three maturity levels are defined, in addition to an implicit Level 0 where the practice isn’t performed at all. Each level has an objective and several activities to meet the objective.

To get a baseline of the current security status, you perform an assessment, which consists of answering questions about each of the practices. The result of an assessment is a scorecard. Comparing scorecards over time gives insight into evolving security capabilities.

With these building blocks in place, you can build a roadmap for improving your capabilities.

A roadmap consists of phases in which certain practices are improved so that they reach a higher level. SAMM even provides roadmap templates for specific types of organizations to get you started quickly.

What Do You Think?

Do you think the SAMM is actionable? Would it help your organization build out a roadmap for improving its security capabilities? Please leave a comment.