It is a fact that cyber crime is increasing at an immense rate with every passing day due to which software security has become the most important concern of the corporate world. IT experts keep on looking for various tools and techniques to safe the corporate data and system from unauthorized access. These days, the most preferable tools are source code analysis tools. These tools focus on the quality processing of combined analytical tools that can be beneficial to reduce the cyber crime. The basic aim of these tools is to detect the defects of codes with ease, which is only possible if the coder will consider few important factors, which are as follows:
Who will Use the Codes?
Who will use these codes is the most important and foremost factor to consider to make the source code analysis tools’ application successful. Keep in mind that to achieve your goals both your security team as well as your developer team should have the access to the codes at the same time. In few organizations, the developers introduce the tools without taking the opinion of security team into consideration, which is not the right approach, as security team can be useful while assessing the tools critically.
When to Assess the Tools?
Once the developers in the collaboration with the security team will design the desired tools then the next step will be making a decision about the right time for assessing the tools. According to many researches, the best time to run the tools for assessment is the time when the coder is writing the codes. Now you must be thinking that why this is the right time for assessment. The answer is simple. You also have to focus on cost and budgeting. Thus, it is of immense importance to figure out the bug at the initial stages without wasting time.
Beside these, there are various other considerations, which one should focus before implementing any of the source code analysis tools. These considerations are as follows:
- Proper research should be conducted to find out the right estimated time that will be required for the adoption of these tools
- Implementation of tools on the pilot group for better assessment before their final implementation
- Use of two source code analysis tools simultaneously for the better results
- What will you prefer to use, static tools, dynamic tools, or both?
- How will you focus software quality control?
- Budgeting and cost control
- Amendments on time
- Focus on other factors apart from the software security tools
Evaluation Criteria for source code analysis tools
To evaluate the source code analysis tools is not a rocket science. For this, you just have to focus few things, which are as follows:
- It should be supportive to the programming language you use.
- It should be well-integrated tool to provide details on the software defects and remedies to remove them.
- It should be capable of finding bugs effectively and efficiently.
- It should detect already reviewed parts to save time and effort.
- The enforcement of internal coding policy should be possible.
- It must have a reliable and systematic reporting module.
Author Bio: This guest post is written by Muhammad Azam who is a professional technology blogger. He has extensive experience in writing quality posts on different technology related topics such as source code analysis tools, static codes, etc.