As the years are passing by, the intensity and viciousness faced by the software industry are getting severe. There are innumerable hackers and cyber criminals out there who are like vultures trying to attack their food in the form of information and data.

Consequently, Software Security has become a pretty important subset of any software development organization. It has become merit of success in today’s digitally outgrown world.

All the old software companies and the upcoming ones are slowly beginning to understand the importance of a tight security manifesto for their companies.

If we look closely, there are different elements to this. One has to consider the roles played by AI and the cloud system here. Also, certain technical angles are to be explored. In this article, Let’s have a look at some of these elements.

IoT and Ransomware

Working on the fuel of the clickbait culture, Ransomware is that part of the digital crimes where moneymaking is one of the primary intentions of the hacker. Many hackers rely on it.

A large number of people who use the internet are not aware of good and secure software and applications. This makes the overall usage more vulnerable increasing in cyber-crimes and software hacking cases. Due to this poor techno-literacy, criminals benefit financially. One shouldn’t underestimate the potential threat caused by Ransomware.

Let’s say a group of cybercriminals attack a certain city’s energy grids. If the city refuses to pay the ransom or doesn’t do it on time, the attackers threaten to close the whole circuit and might do it.

Moreover, the world is becoming a more digitally-driven place. With the rise of smart and technological innovations like Smart fridge, Ovens, Smart cars, Television set, the whole affair becomes more delicate.

This is the reason why one shouldn’t underestimate the potential threats coming in from the hackers using the ways of Ransomware and IoT. The upcoming software companies and organizations must consider this while making a business plan as this is going to be an increasing approach in 2020 and the subsequent years.

Artificial Intelligence

Yes, we all know the benefits and the great potential Artificial intelligence has. It can do wonders in the coming future but what we are not seeing is that it can also become a great threat.

As it gets more developed, it will replace humans from many parts of the software work culture. This will make us more dependent on the software to create software. This removes the control of the software from our hands and that might create some severe problems.

Using AI, hackers will be able to threaten the software more intensely and indirectly. QA experts and Security personnel in Software development companies must utilize AI to tackle this before it goes out of control.

If we go deep down in this way, as the risk gets broader, AI might be a bigger tool used by countries to protect themselves and even in some cases attack others. Protectionist policies might be drafted to make the threat more dilute.

Software Update Supply Chain Attack

Another risk one should consider is the software update supply chain attacks. Here, a part of malware is embedded into an authorized software package at the respective delivery area.

It generally takes place in the development stage of the product seller, by redirection or by third party storage area.

This kind of attack takes place due to the rapid increase in the number of infections during the update of the product. Hackers most frequently target specific areas or divisions.

In the coming years, organizations must focus on their most vulnerable and weak areas in the product update supply chains. Many a time, some odd security breach can be counteracted before it happens. It’s rare but security developers and maintainers must be aware.

General Data Protection Regulation

In May 2018, a regulation named the GDPR, i.e. General Data Protection Regulation came into practice. It suggests many imperative changes to the current Data Protection Directive. Expansion of the regional scope, Stricter consent laws, and Raised rights for data subjects are some of them.

With this regulation. The organization doesn’t stand a chance to ignore software security. If any international organization fails to comply with this method, the penalties can go up to 4% of the annual global turnover.

This is a major test for software developers and testers. Some of the motives for a software developer in today’s era are Database testing, Handling of data and storage, adding cookies, etc.

Due to GDPR, the whole affair got more complicated for entrepreneurs, developers, and marketing divisions. But at least it triggers the need for security in all their minds.

Cloud-based security

Security departments of many organizations are walking on a tight rope and struggling to maintain security in old school ways. The new age of security demands a more flexible way to do things and Cloud-based security is one hell of a solution.

Well, it is a solution but not at all times. With the rise of cloud-based systems, the digital attack surface increases resulting in more vulnerable security space. With ignorant protection policies, this space tends to be the primary attack approach taken by hackers and cyber-criminals.

Cloud exploitation is easier and more dangerous than the Legacy management server’s stimulation to the cloud. The forerunners of SRM must consider taking full benefit of staff optimization, API-based access, Cloud scale, increased data telemetry, and other services and products that are problematic to the model.

Botnets and DDOS Attacks

You must have heard about the botnets. These are systems of mediated machines. The primary feature of this is that these can be remotely accessed and managed and mainly utilized to dispatch breaches on a bigger scale.

The Botnet control chain starts from Cyber criminals who control Command and Control networks, which leads the botnets. Mainly they can be used to release attacks named DDOS, i.e. Distributed Denial of service. It makes a certain site so engaged that it doesn’t process the correct requests.

DDOS can also completely crush any given web page. It works on the ransom give and take method.

Similarly, botnets can be used to breach secure frameworks. Here, each bot works at a low intensity to hide from detecting but the sum intensity of all the botnets turns to be a major security threat.

Using antivirus software and regularly updating the software is the best way to avoid such breaches.

Another aspect of this is the regulation of third-party organizations to breach your system. Considering the scale of this, a collaborative methodology involving law enforcement agencies, working with respective ISP, and system software vendors are demanded to resist.

Container Adoption

The infamousness of software container systems is that companies search for different ways to let applications run reasonably when a shift between environments takes place. On the other hand, every application on a respective server gets its environment to drive which shares the OS of a host server if a container is in place.

As there is no need for a container to load an operating system, it can be easily and quickly created. Also, they are movable. They are individual complex software into modular micro-services and are simple to scale.

In either way, the components that give power to the containers to build liveliness subsequently lead to many security-related concerns. The use of a shared OS model suggests a breach in the host OS. This could compromise the security of every container.

But, as containers are easy and quick to make, it is inexplicable for endpoint controls and conventional networks to stay alert of the developments needed to control them.

They create a different attack surface through the APIs and command plane. It presents itself as more delicate in the expression of the actual assessment setting and imperils application internals.

Members of the security must know about ongoing container deployments in the company. A persistent weakness assessment and remedial structure are a must for utilizing the container system.

Also, many suppliers of container security provide various tools for companies that offer full life cycle vulnerability management and application-customized run time security to secure containers from threats.

Preventive measures

Any single micro attack on any given system can make the system collapse. Until now, the article must have been all about the potential digital dangers we are about to face, but now we will focus on the preventive measures one should and must take to tackle the threats.

As we all know, Prevention is better than a cure. Taking immediate and careful actions is a way to tackle such attacks.

Using versatile and updated cyber security systems and solutions, strictly instructing workers, gaining in-depth knowledge of the dangers faced by your system are some of the ways to defend the attacks. These requirements are quite challenging for cyber security administrators.

Conclusion

In this blog, we discussed some very intense potential threats the software development industry might face in the coming years. With the rise of various technical innovations in the modern world, the number and vigorousness of threats will increase and software development organizations must take action against it.

How VTEST can help

With a high-end, regularly updated infrastructure, VTEST is set to change the software security game in the coming years. The cyber-attacks will be on a rise and so will be the defending models of VTEST.

Giving the utmost attention and priority to the security code of any system, VTEST confirms a safe environment for any software.

VTEST it!

About VTEST

VTEST is an independent software testing company catering to product and service teams across the globe. We are a team of software testers who are passionate about quality and love to test. We develop an in-depth understanding of the applications under test and include software testing services strategies that deliver quantifiable results.

In short, we help in building incredible software.