Everyone with a role in creating software code must understand secure-coding principles
and cybersecurity risks of poorly engineered code

DES MOINES, IA, UNITED STATES, December 21, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ — The U.S. White House issued Executive Order (EO) 14028, “Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity,” to require modernization of cybersecurity practices. This order includes an emphasis on the need to engineer and implement critical software with more rigorous and predictable mechanisms for ensuring that software products are coded securely and execute as intended. Increasing numbers of cybersecurity incidents and privacy breaches demonstrate that secure coding still is not widely practiced.

Software engineers, developers and coders must build secure code and security controls into the code they create. They need to make security by design and security by default software-design requirements. It is not realistic or acceptable to leave software security only up to those using the software because most software consumers assume the software they purchase is already secure and they will not implement security themselves.

To have widely implemented secure software to meet EO 14028, software professionals must understand the fundamentals of secure coding.

“The occurrences of cybersecurity incidents and privacy breaches continue to skyrocket,” said Privacy & Security Brainiacs CEO, Rebecca Herold. “I’ve interviewed many software developers over the past five years, and the majority of them had never taken a course to learn the core concepts necessary to understand how to build secure software code and products. Many of them told me they learned how to create secure code simply by coding and seeing if the code works. With increasingly more developers who lack awareness and education about secure coding, organizations using their software are heading towards an epidemic of security incidents despite the White House EO to improve cybersecurity.”

To help eliminate the drought of secure-coding practices, cybersecurity expert, educator, and NSA-accredited university-program creator, Dr. M. E. Kabay, is creating and delivering courses for the online education platform Privacy & Security Brainiacs (PSB).

Dr. Kabay explains why IT professionals and those thinking about being an IT professional will benefit from his Secure Coding course. “Computer programs are increasingly important in all aspects of modern society. Errors in designing and implementing code can have catastrophic effects. For example, mistakes that allow criminals to modify functions or gather private information can result in massive frauds. Weaknesses in SCADA (supervisory control and data-acquisition) and ICS (industrial control systems) can result in power outages, car crashes, aviation disasters and patient deaths. Even non-critical systems with errors can ruin organizations’ reputations – and those of the analysts and programmers responsible for the bugs.”

Secure Coding provides software architects, engineers, developers and coders with the information they need to understand how to code software to help prevent as many cybersecurity incidents as possible through the use of secure code. The course provides information that supports the White House EO goals, and also supports compliance with the CISSP criteria for Domain 8 of the Common Body of Knowledge, Software Development Security. The course images are engaging and the narratives are clearly spoken. The course includes student notes that include references for further study.

The Secure Coding course includes a 20-question online exam, certificate for passing the course exam that contains information to support continuing professional education (CPE) requirements for a wide range of certifications, and access to communicate directly with Dr. Kabay through the course-messaging portal to ask him questions related to the course topics and to engage in professional discussions.

“I am excited to provide everyone with the opportunity to learn from one of the preeminent data and computer security pioneers, and creator of the Norwich University Master of Science in Information Security and Assurance program, as a PSB Master Expert,” explained Ms. Herold. “This course will support the goal for improving national cybersecurity by helping more IT professionals to create applications using secure code.”

About Privacy & Security Brainiacs

Rebecca Herold launched Privacy Security Brainiacs in partnership with her son Noah Herold on Data Privacy Day 2021. The online platform offers IT, security, privacy and compliance education, training and awareness tools to help organizations of all sizes and in a wide range of industries throughout the world. Privacy & Security Brainiacs provides online Software as a Service (SaaS) education services, with business admin capabilities for organizations to assign and manage training and other educational activities for their employees. They also provide policies and procedures templates, forms, videos, podcasts, e-books, paperback books, custom training, awareness events, supplemental materials and learning activities. To learn more, visit privacysecuritybrainiacs.com.

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Media Contacts:

Rebecca Herold (for Privacy & Security Brainiacs), [email protected]

Noah Herold (for Privacy & Security Brainiacs), [email protected]

Rebecca Herold
Privacy and Security Brainiacs
+1 515-491-1564
[email protected]
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