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According to a recent EMA report, 95.3% of organizations utilize code reviews for secure coding, but only 87.6% train their employees on secure coding practices.
At Security Journey, we believe in building your toolkit to produce more secure code. Code reviews, code scanning tools, and secure coding training are all great tools to combine for your development process.
In this article, we'll talk about code reviews and how they can be improved with secure coding training.
What Are the Benefits of Code Reviews?
A code review is a process in software development where a developer's code is examined by one or more other developers. A code review aims to identify and correct issues in the code, improve code quality, and ensure that the code meets the project's requirements and follows best practices.
Code reviews are typically conducted before code is merged into a shared codebase or released to production. Reviewers may provide feedback on the code's design, readability, maintainability, efficiency, security, and adherence to coding standards.
Code reviews are essential for several reasons, including:
- Finding and fixing errors: Code reviews help to identify errors in code before it is merged into a shared codebase or released to production. Catching errors early in the development process can save time and resources in the long run.
- Improving code quality: Code reviews help to improve the quality of code by identifying opportunities for improvement. This can include issues related to code design, readability, maintainability, efficiency, and security.
- Encouraging collaboration: Code reviews can encourage collaboration among developers and help to foster a culture of continuous improvement. By sharing knowledge and ideas, developers can learn from each other and work together to write better code.
- Enforcing coding standards: Code reviews can help enforce coding standards, improving the consistency and maintainability of code. Consistent code makes it easier for developers to work on different parts of a project and reduces the risk of introducing errors or vulnerabilities.
- Ensuring requirements are met: Code reviews can help ensure that code meets the project's requirements. By reviewing code against the requirements, developers can ensure that the code is on track and that the end product will meet the needs of the business or users.
Overall, code reviews are an important part of the software development process, as they can catch errors and improve the quality of code, leading to better software products.
How To Improve Your Code Reviews
The key you should know about code reviews – the review is only as good as the developer. Giving your development team effective, secure coding training is the best way to improve your code review process.
Here are a few ways secure coding training can help improve code reviews:
- Better understanding of security vulnerabilities: Secure coding training can help developers better understand security vulnerabilities and their impact on a system. This knowledge can help developers identify security issues during code reviews and provide more targeted feedback.
- Adherence to coding standards: Secure coding training often emphasizes coding standards that help prevent security vulnerabilities. By following these standards, developers can write more secure code, reducing the number of security issues identified during code reviews.
- Improved code quality: Secure coding training can also improve code quality, making code reviews more efficient. By writing better-quality code, developers can reduce the number of errors and issues that need to be identified and corrected during code reviews.
- Collaboration and communication: Secure coding training can also emphasize collaboration and communication between developers during the code review process. This can help identify issues more quickly and allow for more effective feedback and problem-solving.
Secure coding training can improve code reviews by providing developers with the knowledge and skills to write more secure, higher-quality code. By doing so, developers can reduce the number of security issues that need to be identified and corrected during code reviews, making the process more efficient and effective.
Read More: Secure Code Training vs. Code Scanning Tools
Are You Reviewing Your Next Steps?
When working to develop secure code, the more tools in your toolbelt, the better. In conjunction with thorough code reviews and code scanning tools, secure coding training will lead to safer code development.
With the Security Journey AppSec Education Program, you can leverage the data from your SAST/DAST and bug bounty tools by integrating them with your application security training platform and prioritizing training for the most critical vulnerabilities in your organization.
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