January 28, 2026 ⏱️ 8 min
By Cristi P. (RnD – BacknDB Group)
When you think of software, security naturally comes to mind, especially as AI becomes more capable of helping us but also posing new risks.
A security-first mindset takes a proactive approach, guided by three principles: sensible defaults, least privilege, and understanding system data movement. Security should remain non-negotiable.
This article presents software security best practices organizations can adopt without slowing development or disrupting planned work.
Security First in the Age of AI
Today’s software operates in multiple environments because it requires cloud access and API functionalities, with its capability to handle personal user information while working with numerous external services.
Modern software systems exist as interconnected networks, which create both their operational strength and their security weaknesses. The existence of one security vulnerability can generate widespread effects that impact all users and businesses, and entire business ecosystems. The current security environment requires all organizations to treat security as their fundamental requirement instead of a nice-to-have or optional feature.
The current situation now includes AI as an additional element. The same tools that help developers write code more quickly while identifying bugs and executing automated tests are also accessible to attackers. AI can examine applications to find security weaknesses, which it can use to create exploitation codes and execute attacks while adjusting them during battle. Development has become faster, but the danger has increased at the same time.
The distance separating “working software” from “secure software” now poses a security risk for organizations. The most enduring false belief about software development holds that security measures can be added after the development process reaches completion. Organizations interpret “later” as “never” while they treat “after damage has already been done” as their most optimistic timeline. Security retrofitting into completed systems proves to be both expensive and highly complicated because system designers did not include risk assessment in their foundational design work.
The Security-first approach does not allow for development pauses because it requires protection against security threats. Designers must treat security as an essential design element that requires equal treatment with performance, usability, and scalability.
The process requires early identification of essential protective elements, the determination of potential harm from component misuse, and the establishment of safe failure procedures. Security architecture enables organizations to develop systems that are easier to understand and operate while maintaining their ability to protect against threats.
Security Doesn’t Have to Slow You Down
In most cases, security functions as an obstacle, which should not be the case.
This happens because implementation is required at the time when people most need to prepare for product release. There are audits that need to be done and updates that require urgent attention, and the team must now decide how to manage risk. The security problem arises from people deciding to implement security measures at their own chosen times and in particular situations instead of starting with the security-first mindset from day one.
Most delays occur because people must manually review work while not knowing who owns which tasks, and they find security flaws during the final stages of development.
Security defects that need to be fixed during the design or early development stages become easy to resolve. The process of resolving the same security problem after product launch requires various activities such as hotfixes, data migration, and incident response, which result in trust issues. The cost difference between the two things follows an exponential growth pattern instead of following a straight-line relationship.
Automation changes this dynamic. Security checks in CI pipelines, code scans, and dependency management create opportunities for developers to identify problems at an early stage in the development process. The development team receives immediate feedback about their work while the security process becomes predictable, and product delivery dates remain intact. As a result, security functions as a protection mechanism instead of causing obstacles to development work.
Key Risks
in Modern
Software
Security breaches in today’s world occur because people fail to properly handle routine security tasks more often than they happen through advanced hacking attempts. Unchecked default settings and untested basic beliefs, together with excessive trust in automated systems, create critical vulnerabilities in application software and its operating environments and deployment processes, which can lead to major security breaches from minor errors.
The following areas, application code, environments, and deployment pipelines, serve as locations where minor mistakes create serious problems that result in actual incidents and news coverage:
Application risks (where bugs turn into breaches)
- Weak or inconsistent authentication and authorization
- Missing or incomplete input validation
- Accidental data exposure through APIs, logs, or error messages
- Common pattern: internal assumptions leaking into public-facing systems
- Seen repeatedly in headlines involving exposed user data or abused endpoints
Environment risks (where configuration becomes the vulnerability)
- Cloud resources left publicly accessible
- Overly permissive roles and service accounts
- Secrets stored in code, configs, or CI variables without rotation
- Common pattern: defaults and speed over visibility and ownership
- Often behind large-scale data leaks and mass account compromises
Deployment risks (where trust is misplaced)
- CI/CD pipelines with broad permissions and long-lived secrets
- Unverified or compromised dependencies in the supply chain
- Lack of visibility into what actually gets deployed
- Common pattern: production is locked down, pipelines are not
- Frequently linked to incidents involving poisoned updates or malicious packages
The key takeaways can be summarized as:
-
- The teams rarely fail by missing “advanced” attacks.
- The system fails most of the time because the two main components struggle to work together from code to cloud and from automation to ownership.
- The organization should dedicate its primary efforts to protect these high-risk areas as the main strategy for preventing incidents.
First Practices
The path to superior security requires multiple deliberate decisions rather than a single major choice. The development of secure systems depends on organizations selecting safe default settings together with predictable system operation methods from the beginning of their work. The developers who make security a standard part of their daily work, instead of treating it as an extra duty or emergency solution, develop continuous risk reduction habits.
The principles below focus on simple, repeatable choices that compound into strong security:
- Security is cumulative, not singular – Secure systems require multiple security decisions that should be executed continuously instead of depending on a single security measure.
- Secure-by-default configurations – Safe system configurations start with secure baselines, which enable developers to write code without any security risks.
- Least privilege everywhere – The organization implements least privilege access control to restrict user and service access to decrease potential security breaches.
- Input validation and safe defaults – The organization implements a secure input validation process that treats all inputs as untrusted in order to protect against vulnerabilities.
- Proper secrets management – Protected systems should handle secret information, while organizations must avoid using configuration files and source control for secret storage.
- Security as a coding standard – The organization needs to integrate secure development practices into daily operations instead of using security patterns as emergency solutions.
- Habits that compound over time – Security routines create continuous defense improvements, which enable organizations to maintain team productivity.
Automation and DevSecOps
Security professionals should find problems during the development process because it provides a period when issues can be resolved at lower costs and higher efficiency.
- Security checks are conducted during daily development work instead of waiting for audit periods and security incident occurrences.
- The process becomes achievable through automation. The CI/CD pipelines utilize static analysis, dependency scanning, and container scans to detect problems during the coding and building process.
- The build process provides explicit reasons for its failure because it delivers specific feedback to users instead of delivering ambiguous alerts.
- The system establishes security as a mechanism that provides developers with immediate feedback instead of creating a barrier that prevents their work.
- The development team, together with security and operations personnel, share responsibility while working with the same monitoring indicators and operational tools.
Organizations achieve faster delivery through this process because it reduces unexpected events while increasing their confidence in all software releases.
Conclusion
Security-first approach strengthens your systems because it creates stronger protection systems. Security as a core software design element enhances software reliability while making it easier to maintain and develop.
The final takeaway points are:
- Security as a multiplier: Security should become part of development work because it protects systems while decreasing potential future problems.
- Start small: You can begin your security work by protecting one specific pipeline or service or security routine.
- Build over time: Small security choices that people make every day will build up to create systems that people trust, and that can grow and work reliably.
- Competitive advantage: Teams who use security as a design principle will protect their systems from threats while creating software that users and businesses can trust.
Îndemnul nostru
Efortul pus în programele pentru studenți completează teoria din facultate cu practica care “ne omoară”. Profitați de ocazie, participând la cât mai multe evenimente!
În cei 3 ani am lucrat la proiecte diverse ce au contribuit decisiv la evoluția mea profesională. Am colaborat strâns cu echipe remarcabile, a căror dedicare și sprijin au fost fundamentale în buna dezvoltare a lucrurilor. Cu fiecare proiect, am învățat nu doar aspecte tehnice, ci și abilități esențiale de comunicare și colaborare, reflectate în experiența mea privind interacțiunile cu clienți și modul în care o echipă eficientă operează. Aceasta este cultura companiei, de la ritmul uneori alert al zilei de lucru și practicile Agile, până la momentele relaxante de socializare cu colegii în pauzele de cafea și activități recreative precum darts și ping pong.
Am făcut cunoștință cu echipa NetRom prin intermediul programelor Internship și NetRom Software Academy, in care am descoperit că noțiunile învățate acasă au totuși aplicabilitate, chiar în cadrul unor aplicații reale. Acele experentie m-au convins să aplic pentru un job.
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Am aflat de programele NetRom de la o prezentare organizată în facultate de companie. Am decis să mă înscriu la Summer Camp din dorința de a înțelege ce anume ar presupune o cariera în IT. În urma acestui stagiu de practică, am reușit să dezvolt propria aplicație cu ajutorul mentorilor care mi-au oferit informații teoretice, dar mai ales practice, pe care nu aș fi putut sa le găsesc într-un tutorial aleatoriu de pe internet. Modul meu de abordare a aplicaților s-a schimbat odată ce am înțeles în ce constă mai exact procesul, ce presupune un mediu real de lucru și importanța muncii în echipă.
NetRom Software Testing Academy a fost punctul de plecare pentru o carieră pentru mine. Pe parcursul sesiunilor am avut oportunitatea să cunosc bazele necesare pentru asigurarea calității unui produs, urmate de o zi în companie unde am văzut teoria pusă în practică.
Recomand tuturor celor care își doresc o carieră în QA să ia în considerare această academie, fiind destinată atât celor din domeniu, dar nu numai.
Am descoperit NetRom prin intermediul unui program de internship și am fost impresionată încă de la început de mediul de lucru plăcut, de susținerea și angajamentul colegilor. A fost o oportunitate deosebită de a lucra într-o echipă de proiect, cu roluri specifice, și de a înțelege mai bine cultura companiei. Întreaga perioadă s-a dovedit o experiență valoroasă, atât din punct de vedere al cunoștințelor acumulate, cât și prin prisma relațiilor dezvoltate. În momentul în care mi s-a propus să continui ca angajat permanent, a fost o decizie ușor de luat, bucuroasă fiind să pot aplica cele învățate, dar și să adaug cunoștințe noi în fiecare zi.
