Here's how you can enhance your Information Security career by improving your skills in secure coding.

To enhance your information security career through secure coding, start by mastering the basics like SQL injection prevention and understanding XSS vulnerabilities. Engage in hands-on coding exercises focusing on secure practices. Regularly participate in code reviews with a focus on security, stay updated with the latest security trends and threats, leverage security tools designed to assist in writing secure codes such as SAST tools, and consider obtaining certifications that focus on secure coding practices from recognized institutions. Lastly, adopt a holistic approach considering not just the code but also the environment it's deployed in , like DevOps, containerization, and OS settings hardening

Before diving into complex secure coding techniques, it's essential to first become a proficient programmer. While understanding basic security concepts like SQL injection and XSS is important, one must also master the fundamentals of coding and software design. This includes understanding how JavaScript executes, how the DOM renders the UI, how APIs work, and how browsers manage sessions and storage. Secure coding isn’t just about preventing vulnerabilities; it’s about recognizing design flaws. This level of insight comes from substantial experience in writing and understanding software applications. A strong foundation in general programming and software design makes advanced security concepts easier to grasp and apply effectively.

Engage in hands-on coding exercises that focus on secure programming practices. Websites like Hack The Box, TryHackMe, and OWASP's Juice Shop provide practical challenges. Contribute to open-source projects with a focus on security. Review and improve the security aspects of these projects. Familiarize yourself with the SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Errors and practice coding defensively against these errors. Ensure your development environment is set up to enforce these standards through linters and automated checks. Regularly participate in code reviews with a focus on security. Learn to identify and mitigate security issues in code written by your peers. Integrate security into every phase of the software development lifecycle.

To enhance your information security career through secure coding, start by mastering the basics like SQL injection prevention and understanding XSS vulnerabilities. Engage in hands-on coding exercises focusing on secure practices. Regularly participate in code reviews with a focus on security. Stay updated with the latest security trends and threats. Leverage security tools designed to assist in writing secure code, such as static application security testing (SAT) tools. Consider obtaining certifications that focus on secure coding practices from recognized institutions. Lastly, adopt a holistic approach considering not just the code but also the environment it's deployed in, like DevOps, containerization, and OS settings hardening

To enhance your information security career through secure coding, start by mastering the basics like SQL injection prevention and understanding XSS vulnerabilities. Eng age in hands-on coding exercises focusing on secure practices. Regularly participate in code reviews with a focus on security, stay updated with the latest security trends and threats, leverage security tools designed to assist in writing secure codes such as SAST tools, and consider obtaining certifications that focus on secure coding practices from recognized institutions. Lastly, adopt a holistic approach considering not just the code but also the environment it's deployed in, like DevOps, containerization, and OS settings hardening

Criar ambientes onde possa ser aplicados conceitos e técnicas de segurança é um bom ponto de partida para aprimorar conhecimentos. Ambientes de testes tendem a ajudar e muito o aprendizado.

Code review can be manual or automated. Automated is where a tool scans the code & provides results. And you can review the results and filter out false positives and identify actual real issues to fix as next steps for remediation. This maybe time consuming & has dependence on the tool. Manual code review is labor intensive, but we can identify specific areas of the code for review, like: outcomes from threat model, specific flows which deal with sensitive data or critical transactions, or areas of code which are aimed to meet compliance requirements. It involves tracing the flow from source to sink, the logic for all different use-cases, flows and outcomes, user experience, data handling, etc. This provides great value during development

Static application security testing (SAST) tools (like Checkmarx or Veracode) help in automated testing and reduce manual effort required to a great extent. They have extensive rulesets and pattern matching to check for syntax and semantics within the source code to identify potential weaknesses and vulnerabilities. They offer good ready-made analysis, show the path of the weakness from source to sink and also highlight strategic points where you can apply fixes to reduce the vulns to a large extent. However, most of these are commercial tools, require continuous maintenance, requires expertise to use and analyze and throw a lot of false positives. SAST requires lot of time and effort for analysis and deriving value from the exercise.

There are many certifications which focus on topics related to secure coding, like CSSLP, API security, CASP, etc. These focus on the software development aspect and touch upon security aspects related to secure coding. It is important to note that learning JUST secure coding is not sufficient. It is also important to consider certifications which address the environment in which code is deployed, like DevOps, Containers, Kubernetes, OS settings, hardening, security configurations, IaC, etc Because even if your code is fully secure, but your environment is not - then you are still vulnerable to attacks. And since your code is directly dependent on the environment, your application will also be compromised. Hence, adopt a holistic approach

Knowledge of secure coding helps to address the defensive or remediation side of things and only covers half the story. The other half includes the offensive side of things. This involves understanding the attacker mindset, learning how to break things and how attacks happen through vulnerabilities introduced by insecure coding. Having knowledge and understanding of such attack vectors will greatly contribute towards how you should write code in a more secure manner. This will help to reduce the attack surface immensely, since insecure coding is one of the leading causes of how attackers gain initial access into the victim's network. So you can design your code and implement preventative strategies right within the code itself.