List of Security Concerns within Continuous Software Evolution
Simone Persson · KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) · 2018
The amount of data being collected is increasing astronomically. Hence questions about privacy and data security are becoming more important than ever. A fast-changing culture is also reflected in the demands and requirements placed on software systems. Products and services need to evolve with the demands and feedback from customers to stay relevant on the market. Working methods and technologies have been refined to afford updating software continuously. However, rapidly changing software cause concern for the quality and level of security in the release. This thesis is a comprehensive literature study, reviewing the challenges of ensuring secure practises for continuously evolving software. The problem solved by the thesis is lack of an overall picture of the security concerns during continuous evolution. The findings are summarised in a checklist of areas of concern for security when maintaining and updating systems with continuous practises in cloud environments. This study shows that ensuring security, while delivering continuous releases, is a daunting task. It requires close collaboration between teams handling different aspects of software. This, in turn, entails a widening of competences to include knowledge about the work of other departments. It is concluded that personnel with this wide range of skill will be hard to acquire.