Appendix C: A Designer s Security Checklist

Appendix C

A Designer's Security Checklist

The following checklist, available in the Security Templates folder in the book's companion content, is a minimum set of items a designer, architect, or team lead should ask herself as she is designing the product. Consider this document to be completed as a sign-off requirement for the application design phase.

Check	Category	Chapter
	Education in place for team	2
	Someone on team signed up to monitor BugTraq and NTBugtraq	1
	Competitor's vulnerabilities analyzed to determine if the issues exist in this product	3
	Past vulnerabilities in previous versions of product analyzed for root cause	3
	Application attack surface is as small as possible	3
	If creating new user accounts, they are low privilege and have strong passwords	3, 7
	Safe-for-scripting ActiveX controls thoroughly reviewed	16
	Sample code reviewed for security issues. You must treat sample code as production code.	23
	Default install is secure	3
	Threat models complete for design phase	2
	Product has layered defenses	3
	Security failures logged for later analysis	23
	Privacy implications understood and documented	22
	Plans in place to migrate appropriate code to managed code	23
	End-of-life plans in place for features that will eventually be deprecated	2
	Security response process in place	2
	Documentation reflects good security practice	24