Hello!

In one of my previous posts, "The best application security tool is education", I discussed why educating yourself or your engineers about security can yield the highest return on investment, especially if you have a limited budget. However, I understand that learning or teaching security is not as straightforward as it sounds. Every organization has its unique characteristics, and every engineer has their own distinct qualities. Moreover, internalizing secure coding practices is a time-consuming process. If you're just starting on this journey, I'm here to share two very simple rules that are easy to remember and have the potential to significantly enhance the security of the code you or your colleagues write. So, let's dive in!

Hello!

Last week, I kicked off the new "Q4 2023 – Oct-Dec" development and research iteration for Secutils.dev, the open-source toolbox designed for developing and testing secure applications. In this post, I'll take you through the significant features and changes that will be the focus of my work in the coming weeks and months: tracking arbitrary web content, user-specific webhook subdomains, inherited CSP, and more. Let's dive in!

Hello!

Earlier this week, I wrapped up the "Q3 2023 – Jul-Sep" iteration and cut a new 1.0.0-alpha.3 release of Secutils.dev. In this post, I would like to quickly walk you through the major changes since 1.0.0-alpha.2: notifications, more powerful web page resource tracker, sharing capabilities and more. Let’s dive in!

Hello!

In my previous post, I shared the update regarding the upcoming "Q3 2023 - Jul-Sep" milestone. While I briefly covered how I implemented the notifications subsystem in Secutils.dev, there are a few other important changes I've been working on for this milestone. One of these changes is related to the fact that I’m preparing to allow Secutils.dev users to inject custom JavaScript scripts into the web pages they track resources for (yay 🎉). As a result, I've spent some time hardening the Web Scraper environment's security and wanted to share what you should keep in mind if you’re building a service that needs to scrape arbitrary web pages.

Hello!

With just one month remaining in the "Q3 2023 - Jul-Sep" milestone (this is how I structure my roadmap), I wanted to provide a quick progress update. A significant deliverable for this milestone includes adding support for email notifications and other transactional emails.

Notifications, in general, and email notifications, specifically, are integral to any product that involves any monitoring or tracking activities. Secutils.dev already includes, and will continue to expand, features that require the ability to send notifications. Two notable examples include sending notifications for changes detected by the web page resources trackers and changes detected in the tracked content security policies (CSP).

Hello!

As you might have guessed, I spend a lot of time thinking about application security - almost every day, in fact. At my day job, I'm constantly pondering how to enhance Kibana's security in a scalable manner without overburdening my already hardworking team. Outside of work, I'm equally dedicated to making Secutils.dev even more valuable to fellow engineers looking for better security tools.

While I'd love to tell you there's a magic tool or a combination of tools that can make your application completely secure, I don't believe it's quite that simple - at least not yet. If you're working within tight budget constraints, resist the urge to spend it all on solutions like Veracode, Snyk, Secutils.dev, or any other security tool. Also, don't obsess over supply chain security and penetration testing just yet. Instead, focus your initial investment on something absolutely critical - educating your engineers about security. You'll reap the rewards, and so will your team. Only once you have a solid educational program or processes in place should you consider investing in additional security-oriented tools.