Why Do Businesses Need Security by Design?

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, the importance of robust cybersecurity cannot be overstated. Security breaches can lead to significant financial losses, reputational damage, and legal consequences. 

To mitigate these risks, businesses must adopt a proactive approach to cybersecurity. Security by Design proactively integrates security into every phase of the software development lifecycle, starting from the planning and design stages. 

Let’s explore the key benefits and how to build a compelling business case for security by design.

Building a Business Case for Security by Design

Security by Design is a paradigm shift for most organizations. Switching mentalities from finding and fixing defects to building security requires organizational change management. We need to help answer the question, “Why do businesses need security by design? In our experience, it’s crucial to quantify benefits to gain buy-in from business stakeholders. Using your organization’s data to build the business case is ideal, but in many cases, organizations may lack the necessary data points. 

Figure 1: Actual results of analysis from implementing a Security by Design program

Here, we provide metrics, formulas, and industry data to help you quantify a business case.

1. Reduce Operational Costs

Security by Design often offers the highest Return on Investment (ROI) among cybersecurity programs. While other initiatives aim to reduce the likelihood of a breach, Security by Design also reduces the costs of securing software compared to reactive approaches. 

Here are three primary ways it achieves this:

• Avoid Vulnerability Remediation

Data from our customer base indicates that fixing an average vulnerability costs $50,156. Given that the average application has 38 high or critical-risk vulnerabilities. Implementing Security by Design can conservatively reduce vulnerabilities by 79% compared to simply testing for security issues after software has been built.. This results in significant cost savings per application. For example, a global company that adopted Security by Design could see estimated savings such as below:

Figure 2: Savings achieved with Security by Design implementation

• Decrease Time Spent on Compliance

Responding to audits and building artifacts to demonstrate compliance can be onerous for software teams. Taking a by-design approach with built-in audit trails allows organizations to reduce the time and effort required for compliance. This proactive approach ensures that security and compliance requirements are met from the outset, avoiding the need for extensive rework and penalties associated with noncompliance.

Figure 3: Detailed breakdown of the cost savings achieved through the implementation of Security by Design

• Reduce Costs with Automation

While some security-by-design activities, such as threat modeling and security requirements generation, can be done manually, automation significantly enhances ROI. Automated tools reduce the person-hours needed to perform these tasks, leading to substantial cost savings. For instance, a company that automated its Security by Design processes saved $2.86 million over three years.

Figure 4: Detailed breakdown of cost savings achieved through Security by Design automation in the first year

2. Reduce Risk

Another key benefit of Security by Design is a lower risk due to software due to preventing vulnerabilities in software. Risks are notoriously difficult to measure and communicate to business stakeholders. Many security organizations report on measures like the number of vulnerabilities and Mean Time To Remediation (MTTR) for security, but these aren’t necessarily meaningful to non-technical stakeholders.

An alternative method to measure risk in a way that’s more intuitive to a non-technical stakeholder is a window of exposure: The number of days that a high or critical risk vulnerability is in production. Since more than one vulnerability may be exposed simultaneously, it’s best to consider this a unit of measure rather than calendar days.

Figure 5: Edgescan 2023 Vulnerability Statistics Report: https://www.edgestan.com/intel-hub/stats-report/

Quantitative Risk Analysis

FAIR provides a richer mechanism for expressing risk in business terms. Using quantitative methods, FAIR allows practitioners to express risk regarding loss exposure in dollars. In practice, FAIR has a learning curve and sometimes faces resistance from practitioners skeptical of quantitative risk management for cybersecurity. Using FAIR is outside the scope of this document, but we encourage you to consider it as a method of measuring risk to be presented to executives and boards. 

3. Improve Software Security at Scale

Security by Design ensures that security practices are scalable and sustainable across multiple applications and projects. You can assess the impact of scalability in two ways:

1. Determine the time saved per application using security by design vs. more reactive methods. This results in faster time to market. 
2. Determine how many applications a security architect, application security analyst, or other role can effectively serve with and without the security by design program.

Finally, if the program uses automation, you can also assess the speed of using automation compared to manual methods.

Figure 6: Time Savings Achieved with Security by Design Implementation

4. Grow Revenue by Demonstrating Compliance

Adopting Security by Design can open new market opportunities and enhance revenue growth by demonstrating compliance with regulatory standards. You can calculate the impact of demonstrating compliance to grow revenue in two ways:

1. Estimated sales as a result of demonstrating compliance (or loss of revenue as a result of not showing compliance)
2. Understanding the impact on the Total Addressable Market (TAM) as a result of obtaining compliance

Note that in many cases, compliance is not optional. In these cases, you may want to show how the security-by-design method of demonstrating compliance is more efficient than building software, finding audit defects, and fixing them. These calculations are already captured in the “Reduce Operational Costs” driver.

The Cost of Inaction

Implementing Security by Design is a strategic initiative often competes with more tactical, urgent cybersecurity or IT projects. To effectively prioritize Security by Design, it’s useful to articulate the opportunity cost of not implementing this program.

One effective way to communicate this is by quantifying the value drivers and expressing them in monthly terms. For example:

• Remediation Savings: If the anticipated remediation savings for 100 applications amount to approximately $5,102,400 annually, delaying the Security by Design program by one month represents an opportunity cost of $425,200.
• Window of Exposure: If the total window of exposure for 100 applications is 39,000 days in aggregate over a year, a one-month delay equates to an additional exposure of 3,250 days.

Quantifying the opportunity cost in this manner helps drive urgency and facilitates a more concrete and quantitative analysis of the benefits, making it easier to prioritize Security by Design over other initiatives.

Qualitative Drivers

Quantitative measurements are critical to any business case. However, in our experience, qualitative drivers are often important in motivating people to change.

One powerful qualitative driver is reputation. It asks, “When a breach occurs from a vulnerability in our software, do we want to show that we practiced security by design?” Given the rising global awareness of security by design, this is a difficult question for business leaders to say no to. 

Other qualitative drivers include improved collaboration between security and software development, turning unplanned work (i.e., vulnerabilities) into planned work, and development teams feeling empowered to make security decisions.

Conclusion

Security by Design is a technical initiative and a strategic business imperative. By reducing operational costs, mitigating risks, improving software security at scale, and enabling revenue growth through compliance, Security by Design offers comprehensive benefits that resonate with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. 

Building a compelling business case with quantifiable benefits is essential for securing executive buy-in and ensuring the successful implementation of Security by Design initiatives. As cybersecurity threats evolve, adopting a proactive approach will be crucial for building resilient, secure, and compliant software systems.