Security Responses in Software Development

Lopez, Tamara and Sharp, Helen and Tun, Thein and Bandara, Arosha and Levine, Mark and Nuseibeh, Bashar (2023) Security Responses in Software Development. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 32 (3): 64. pp. 1-29. ISSN 1049-331X

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Abstract

The pressure on software developers to produce secure software has never been greater. But what does security look like in environments that do not produce security-critical software? In answer to this question, this multi-sited ethnographic study characterizes security episodes and identifies five typical behaviors in software development. Using theory drawn from information security and motivation research in software engineering, this article characterizes key ways in which individual developers form security responses to meet the demands of particular circumstances, providing a framework managers and teams can use to recognize, understand, and alter security activity in their environments.