Hardening Your Software Development Environment: A Beginner's Guide

The concept of software supply chain security has become increasingly important in the rapidly changing development ecosystem over the past five years. With remote work becoming widespread due to the pandemic, companies have had to adapt their security measures to control access from outside sources. Developers and their environments are part of the software supply chain, making them potential entry points for malicious code or credential theft. A zero trust approach can help secure development environments more effectively by enforcing explicit permissions over implicit ones and following the principle of least privilege. This involves verifying users every time they try to access a resource and granting minimal permissions necessary for their tasks, while continuously checking these permissions. Key components of this approach include endpoint security, Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), access management, anomaly detection, and misconfigurations scanning.