Catalog
concept#Security#Software Engineering#DevOps#Governance

Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC)

Concept for systematically integrating security across all phases of the software lifecycle.

The Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) embeds security activities across every phase of development, from requirements and design to deployment and operations.
Established
Medium

Classification

  • Medium
  • Organizational
  • Organizational
  • Intermediate

Technical context

CI/CD systems (e.g. Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI).Static/Dynamic analysis tools and SCA scanners.Issue trackers and ticketing for remediation workflows.

Principles & goals

Integrate security early and continuously (shift‑left).Assign clear responsibilities: security by role.Use automation for checks and feedback loops.
Build
Enterprise, Domain, Team

Use cases & scenarios

Compromises

  • Apparent security from superficial checks (false sense of security).
  • Excessive bureaucracy slows delivery cadence.
  • Insufficient skills of participants lead to gaps.
  • Perform threat modeling early and iteratively.
  • Introduce security gates in the pipeline with clear acceptance criteria.
  • Complement automated tests with manual reviews.

I/O & resources

  • Requirements, threat models, and security policies.
  • Accessible CI/CD pipelines and test environments.
  • Skilled personnel for development, security, and QA.
  • Secure, tested, and auditable software releases.
  • Documented security requirements and test results.
  • Improved runbooks and lessons‑learned records.

Description

The Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) embeds security activities across every phase of development, from requirements and design to deployment and operations. Its goal is to detect risks early and prevent vulnerabilities rather than fix them later. It includes processes, roles, tools, and reviews to continuously secure software.

✔

  • Early reduction of security risks and costs.
  • Improved compliance and traceability.
  • Higher release stability through repeatable controls.

✖

  • Increased initial effort for processes and tooling.
  • Requires disciplined integration into existing workflows.
  • Not all risks can be fully eliminated.

  • Time to remediate critical vulnerabilities

    Average time from discovery to remediation of critical security issues.

  • Share of secured releases

    Percentage of releases that passed all security checks.

  • False positive rate of security scans

    Ratio of non‑relevant findings to total findings in automated scans.

Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL)

An established model prescribing security activities along the development cycle.

OWASP SAMM as a framework

A maturity model to measure and improve software security practices.

NIST SSDF recommendations

Concrete practices and controls for integrating security into SDLC processes.

1

Analyze current processes and identify gaps.

2

Define minimal security requirements and checklists.

3

Automate scans and integrate into CI/CD.

4

Train teams and establish continuous improvement.

⚠️ Technical debt & bottlenecks

  • Legacy modules without tests and outdated dependencies.
  • Missing automation for recurring security checks.
  • Insufficient documentation of security decisions.
Manual reviews as bottleneckInsufficient test coverageLack of security specialists
  • Enable only automated scans but ignore reviews.
  • Reduce security checks to a low level to save time.
  • Not defining metrics, making improvements unmeasurable.
  • Relying on individual tools instead of process integration.
  • Ignoring organizational and cultural barriers.
  • Unclear acceptance criteria lead to inconsistent checks.
Security architecture and threat modeling.Automated testing and CI/CD configuration.Code review and secure coding practices.
Compliance requirements (e.g. data protection, industry standards).Minimization of exploit risks and attack surface.Scalability of checks in CI/CD pipelines.
  • • Budget and time constraints for additional measures.
  • • Legacy code without tests increases integration effort.
  • • Tool compatibility with existing CI/CD pipeline.