Secure Software Development Lifecycle

For software development projects, Unique has implemented a secure software development lifecycle (SSDL), providing a framework for training, tools, and processes. As security is in the vital interest of anyone who is using Unique products and services to run critical business processes and to store and process sensitive data, secure developed software is a prerequisite for secure operations.

Uniques process bases on and integrates https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/securityengineering/sdl/ in every development stage, ensuring top-notch security from design to deployment.

Phases in Unique Secure Software Development Lifecycle v1.0

Unique is proudly committed to robust cybersecurity and therefore regularly trains employees on secure design essentials: Threat Modeling, Secure Coding, Security Testing, and Privacy. Through creative ideation, Unique tailors its customer-centric solutions to meet and exceed customer needs, ensuring a top-notch experience with every change. Once agreed, Unique blends customer insights, market analysis, and team brainstorming to gather requirements for selected ideas and turns feedback into action. Unique crafts their products with user-friendly UX and cutting-edge software design. With robust security measures, Unique implements the change securely whereafter it undergoes rigorous validation. Uniques process includes extensive tests and detailed code analysis, guaranteeing reliability and excellence. Using continuous integration, deployment and release, the change is then progressively rolled out to Uniques customers. Not being done and continuously monitoring the changes and system, Unique's incident response swiftly tackles software hiccups to minimise downtime.

Turning the idea of a lifecycle into action, the Unique SDL processes below implement these phases…

1 Process
- 1.1 Changes to the process
- 1.2 RACI / Stakeholders RACI
- 1.3 Process Definition
  - 1.3.1 TRAINING
  - 1.3.2 IDEATION
  - 1.3.3 REQUIREMENTS
  - 1.3.4 DESIGN
  - 1.3.5 IMPLEMENTATION
  - 1.3.6 VALIDATION
  - 1.3.7 ROLLOUT
    - 1.3.7.1 Continuous rollout
    - 1.3.7.2 Regular rollout
      - 1.3.7.2.1 Single-Tenant model
      - 1.3.7.2.2 Customer-Managed tenant model
      - 1.3.7.2.3 On-Premise model
  - 1.3.8 RESPONSE
    - 1.3.8.1 Regular
    - 1.3.8.2 Incident
2 Resources

Process

With the philosophy and phases in mind, Unique has designed and implemented the Secure Software Development Lifecycle in its process(es).

Changes to the process

The processes are governed and can't be changed at will. While some of them are part of legally binding contracts changes to the process must always undergo intense review. Therefore the following rules apply to all changes of Uniques SDL processes.

All processes are visibly versioned
We constantly evolve our process implementation internally but if changes or a collection of them affects customers, a new version of the Unique Secure Software Development Lifecycle gets published
Changes must be reviewed and agreed by all stakeholders
Changes must be communicated to affected customers with a considerable notice period, whereafter amendments can be made before the new, changed version gets published

RACI / Stakeholders RACI

Unique SSDL process involves all relevant teams and thus they all become stakeholders. Namely:

Team	RACI

Team

RACI

Development

Accountable and responsible for process and its implementation

Operations

Customer Success

UI/UX Design

Security

Consulted when implementing and changing the process

Company

Informed upon changes

Process Definition

TRAINING

Uniques training activities are documented and outlined in

Security Manual for Development and Operations (internal Reference)
Awareness Campaigns (internal Reference)
Threat Modeling Resources (internal Reference)

IDEATION

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls

Activity

Role: Tasks

Outcome

Security Controls

v1.0

Collect ideas

Any source: Submit and vote on ideas

Product: Triage ideas incl. security impact

List of ideas, some over threshold

Ideas get triaged with a clear security focus in mind

Prepare selected ideas

Product: Prioritise ideas above threshold and inform Customers

Prioritised selection of ideas that should go into requirements specification

Selected ideas undergo a first risk assessment, probably insecure changes are rejected

REQUIREMENTS

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls
v1.0
Appoint project lead and team	Product: Select responsible team for the feature	Implementing team and responsible PL selected	Subject matters experts are preferred leads or at least consulted
Gather requirements	PL: Convert idea from sketch to change with concrete requirements and a specification	Product specifications as specs, story or tickets as well as KPIs to measure value	Acceptance criteria incl. security criteria
Explore product fit	PL: Consult UI/UX and Customer Success to determine whether the drafted change matches the overall product	Specifications on how the change is to fit E2E into the product
Determine feasibility	PL: Consult subject matter experts and architects to determine feasibility of change and get first effort estimations	First estimations for the roadmap	Reliability of the system is vital, thus changes absorbing too many resources for a longer period must be revisited or broken down
Perform risk assessment	PL: Consult security and perform risk assessment	Accepted change, Accepted change with mitigation or logged risk or Rejected change	Risks get assessed as defined in ISMS Risk Management

DESIGN

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls
v1.0
Design UX/UI	UX/UI: Design visual parts and E2E experience/flow of the change	Design specifications, linked to the tickets
Design technical implementation	Architecture: Define implementation, investigate need for threat modelling (security, privacy or cryptography)	Software design specifications, scheduled threat modelling workshop	Workshops scheduled if needed for security, privacy and/or cryptography
Threat modelling workshop for changes that affect security posture (confidentiality, integrity and/or availability)	Product, Architecture: Provide architecture diagram of design Dev: Provide input during workshop Security: Moderate workshop	Threat modelling workshop report Tasks to reduce identified threats or logged risks	Change has a threat modelling workshop report and tasks to reduce threats defined which was moderated by security
Define necessary documentation	PL: Specify with Customer Success which documentation is expected	Defined formats of documentation, e.g. how-to articles, tutorials, descriptions etc.
Draft rollout plan	PL: Decide, how this change will later be rolled out	Rollout plan as in: immediately GA, with preview testers, just for certain companies first, no one at first etc.	Unique does progressively rollout/release changes to customers, this reduces the overall risk as a change reaches a smaller audience first so the impact is smaller
Assess tenant scalability	Operations: Determine if current change is applicable to all tenant models	List of required design changes to accomodate all tenant models	The change must fit the security-wise tightest tenant model so that it can later rollout to all models equally
Define resilience and monitoring criteria	Operations: Specify, which requirements have to be met so that the change can resiliently run and be monitored later on	Specifications on how the change must be made resilient and gets monitored	As Availability and Integrity are security goals, designing changes resiliently is a must ISMS Master Security Policy

IMPLEMENTATION

The word pull request for a change is avoided on purpose. The process shall not state a tool and while a change at GitLab is a merge request at GitHub it is a pull request. Thus Uniques changes are simply change requests but they clearly talk about source code.

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls
v1.0
Provide documentation	Dev: Write documentation on the newly provided change Dev: Write concise change request body	Documentation, Release notes content
Write automated tests	Tester: Write relevant tests to cover the new functionality especially edge cases	New test cases added to the automated test suite	Test are reviewed to not only test the new changes happy flow but also insecure or privacy-violating cases
Static Code Analysis	Security/Automation: Perform code scan	Code scan results	Changes with failed code scans are not allowed to proceed, exceptions are possible if risks get logged in ISMS Risk Management
Dynamic Code Analysis	Security/Automation: Perform security test	Security test results	Unique does not perform DAST scans per change or quarterly but continuously via a Bug Bounty program
Validate changes locally	Dev: Testing their changes locally to ensure all requirements are met Reviewer: Equally validates and tests the code locally trying to break it or even out of it	Functional change request	Local testing provides a first set of barriers to not ship completely untested code
Implement change from Design phase	Dev: Repeatedly iterate the change. Where possible code is written with pair-programming Reviewer: (Repeatedly) review (functional and non-functional) the change until all gates are passed	Change Request including tests, documentation, monitoring and alerting, release notes and referenced ticket	Change Requests without 4-eye approval are rejected and the change cannot proceed, see Pull Request Guideline. Break-glass exceptions are possible but the incident gets logged and we notify necessary parties, see SOC2 Overview.
These steps get repeated so often, until all requirements pass! Changes can be broken down into smaller changes (shift-left and change small, change often paradigms of Secure DevOps) - the process then applies to each child-change itself.

VALIDATION

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls
v1.0
Run all test suites	Automation: Verify change once more to ensure that no breaking code has made it through	Green pipeline and product that passes all unit, request, e2e and regression tests	If any suite fails, the change is not progressing and the team must with urgency find the culprit as the continuous delivery is blocked
Deploy change to quality assurance environment(s)	Automation: Deploy change	Product with latest change is deployed to QA environment(s)	No manual deployments are performed at Unique, all deployments are done via automations, infrastructure or configuration as code
Smoke test the environment	Automation: A small smoke test fleet is ran against the environment to ensure it is still running	Upon failure, the change gets reverted and the pipeline blocked	If they fail, the change is not progressing and the team must with urgency find the culprit as the continuous delivery is blocked
Perform User Acceptance Tests	PL: Validate the product change Customer Success: If desired, test the product changes as well	Change validated against all specifications and requirements
Perform penetration tests	Tester: Penetration test	Test results and action items to fix eventually found issues	Unique does not perform penetration tests per change or quarterly but continuously via a Bug Bounty program

ROLLOUT

Uniques different tenant models allow for more granularly controlled rollout processes in the most secure setups.

Continuous rollout

The continuous rollout applies to all Unique multi-tenant systems, especially unique.app.

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls
v1.0
Deploy to production	Dev: Deploy the change to Uniques production system(s)	Change is deployed
Update SBOM	Automation: Update Software Bill Of Materials	SBOM is updated	The SBOM is the base for external/client/3^rd party vulnerability scanners.
Smoke test the environment	Automation: A small smoke test fleet is ran against the environment to ensure it is still running	Upon failure, the change gets reverted and the pipeline blocked	If they fail, the change is not progressing and the team must with urgency find the culprit as the continuous delivery is blocked
Release change to planned audience	PL: Release the deployed change (make it available) for the planned audience	The destined subset of users can see/use the change	Unique does progressively rollout/release changes to customers, this reduces the overall risk as a change reaches a smaller audience first so the impact is smaller
Publish documentation	PL: Publish documentation about the new feature, how-to guides, tutorials and similar as they were previously selected	Documentation is publicised	Publishing documentation requires a peer-review as well as once a feature is documented it becomes more visible
Validate change or its result against Definition of Done	Dev: Cycle back and validate, that the Definition of Done is met PL: When writing the release notes, iterate the DoD and request changes where needed	Either follow-up tickets or ticket moves to done.	The Definition of Done fosters and demands that secure coding practises, threat modelings and scans are performed.

Regular rollout

Regular rollouts are performed towards the tenant models single-tenant, customer-managed tenant and on-premise installations.

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls
v1.0
Pin release	Automation upon request: Forge current state of product into a Unique release	A pinned version of the product, melted into one release	Pinning the version ensures that customers only receive a specific version that has been previously tested against Uniques QA and Production environment and not the lastet changes
Publish release to delivery repository	Automation upon pinning: Promote pinned Unique release to delivery repository and artifactories	One Release Process	The delivery repository ensures, that only code that passed the complete validation pipeline leaves Unique permises
Deploy pinned release to Unique single-tenant quality assurance environment	Automation upon request: Deploy latest Unique release and inform teams	Latest Unique release deployed so it can be validated	Unique single-tenant quality assurance environment underlies the same PIM permissions as other tenants and thus duties are segregated per role so no developer can deploy without further approval
Perform User Acceptance Tests	PL: Validate the product change against single-tenant Customer Success: If desired, test the product changes as well	Change validated against all specifications and requirements with focus on the regulary-shipped tenant models
Publish release notes	Automation: Gather changes since the last regular release PL: Compose release notes from automation output Customer Success: Pair-review the notes to ensure target audience understands	Release notes
Communicate release	PL: Inform Customer Success Customer success: Signal customers if needed, that their requested changes are available in the latest release	Informed affected or requesting customers

Single-Tenant model

This partial process gets repeat for each single-tenant once per release!

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls
v1.0
Rollout changes to single-tenant deployment	Deploying Dev: Request PIM profile Approver: Approve PIM request Deploying Dev: Upgrade deployment by triggering automation	Single-tenant deployment is updated to the latest release	Each tenant is isolated via its own PIM-enabled roles and thus duties are further segregated so it needs at least two humans to upgrade a tenant
Validate availability of single-tenant deployment	Deploying Dev: Check that at least login page replies, survey logs and alerts to ensure as well as possible without a profile, that the product is still available	Partial test, that the product is still available	Also checking the logs requires PIM-enabled roles (they are combined in the Deploying role for simplicity in that case though)
Inform Customer representative	Deploying Dev: Inform responsible Customer representative	Customer (via representative) is informed that their tenant was upgraded

Customer-Managed tenant model

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls
v1.0
Inform Customer representative	Product: Inform responsible Customer representative	Customer (via representative) is informed that a new Unique bundle is available

On-Premise model

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls
v1.0
Inform Customer representative	Product: Inform responsible Customer representative	Customer (via representative) is informed that a new Unique bundle is available

RESPONSE

Regular

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls

Activity	Role: Tasks	Outcome	Security Controls
v1.0
Validate threat modelling findings	PL, Security: Check if tasks are done within defined due dates	Reprioritisation in case of deviations

Incident

tbd

Resources

Many other processes or (S)SDLCs were used to compose Uniques own lifecycle and process.

Author	@Dominik Meyer