How to Build a Product Security Program

Across many industries, product security teams traverse similar journeys when they start out as they work to build their understanding of the risks associated with the legacy software and products they encounter. Initially, these teams often begin in reactive mode, responding to newly discovered vulnerabilities as they emerge.

This reactionary approach, although necessary at first, is costly, time-consuming, and exhausting. Imagine a company whose first investment in product security may have been the creation of a product security incident response team (PSIRT). Now, assume that newly formed team is charged with taking active vulnerability alerts and figuring out where, if anywhere, their organization is impacted by the vuln. Then, they must stand up a plan to respond to the risk and mitigate, or at least manage, it. 

This whole exercise tends to evolve into a lot of work, which develops in short time, into the impetus to shift from reactive to proactive product security strategies. 

Organizations quickly see that the more proactive you can be in product security, the more secure your products will be, and the higher your ROI will grow.  

Finite State's Six Steps to Product Security

This transition to proactive security is significantly enhanced by adopting Finite State's structured six-step lifecycle approach. The approach, modeled on several leading frameworks, including the NIST cybersecurity framework, frames what organizations should do when building a product security function. 

Discovery

This begins with the 'Discovery' phase, where the creation of a comprehensive Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) provides detailed insights into the components of each product.

In the Discovery stage, it's important that product security teams understand all the products for which they have responsibility, and what is in them, down to the component level. 

This is where the value of an SBOM comes in. If you have an accurate, comprehensive SBOM for each of your products, you then have a lot of visibility into what's happening in your product portfolio. 

The Next Generation Platform offers early detection tools that keep vulnerability intelligence updated, exposing threats and enabling swift responses. With its robust Binary SCA capabilities, it provides a comprehensive view into your connected device ecosystem and all its components, which aids in informed decision-making.

What's the fastest way to go from an immature product security program to a very mature one? Keep that list of products and components updated, with up-to-date SBOMs and a strong SBOM management plan. 

Assessment

Following Discovery, the 'Assessment' phase involves rigorous testing of products at various stages of their lifecycle, identifying vulnerabilities early on. Here, it's important to get good coverage over what is being developed as well as what is being shipped, and that you're pulling in the test results you receive across your ecosystem of tools into your single source of truth where you can see all of your risk, synthesized at once, and actionable. 

Here, Finite State introduces a powerful solution with its Next Generation Platform, designed to elevate the capabilities of product security teams. The Next Generation Platform integrates and manages findings from over 150 security testing tools, to deliver an all-encompassing perspective of your security posture, from vulnerabilities to compliance status.

Managing security data from a large number of sources - internal and external - is complicated. Our centralized platform consolidates all your product security data for streamlined assessment of your security findings.  

Prioritize

In any product security program, more findings will be generated than those that are able to be fixed. This is where prioritization becomes important.

Organizations want to be sure that product security teams, product teams, and engineering teams are focused on fixing the highest priority issues. This is why it's important to pull all the data into one place. 

That's another way that the Finite State Next Generation Platform can help. Our platform pulls all of your test results into one place, enabling your product security function to have the visibility it needs to prioritize product security findings into an actionable strategy, based on quantifiable risk scores, which conveys a product's or system's risk levels through a robust scoring methodology, backed by sophisticated risk prioritization. 

Remediate

With your findings prioritized, remediation becomes much more efficient. Your product security team can start at the top, and work its way down the list of prioritized findings.

Having strong prioritization data at this stage is key. While your product security team might know how to detect the vulnerabilities, they need the time and resources to build actionable insights that they then can provide to the engineers who will fix the problems. 

Knowing which vulnerabilities are most in need of this level of effort makes it easier to find the time to develop the messaging that helps frame the work needing to be done by other teams.

Respond

All of the data you've collected from earlier stages, from discovery, assessment, prioritization, and remediation can inform your response as you work through issues as fast as possible.

A fast, efficient response recognizes impacts, and communicates this information to stakeholders, executive stakeholders, and customers. They will want quick answers because they will want to understand their risk.

You want a system that you can search through all this data, manage it, and get those answers quickly.

Improve

The best product security teams use all of this data to generate insights about their program. They monitor how long it takes to respond to issues, how vulnerable their products are, and the trending of risk over time. They monitor their investments in different tools and whether they are generating meaningful returns.

That's why it's important to be able to leverage your data to drive those insights so that you can look at your exposures and see how your team is driving down risk, find areas where you might need to improve different teams, and identify potential investments in new tools that will help you manage your risk across your entire portfolio.

Learn More - Read the Guide 

Want to learn more about Finite State's six-step guide to securing products and software supply chains? Read our full guide today:

Finite State - For Your Product Security Program

Early Detection Tools

Finite State's platform revolutionizes the initial stages of product security by employing updated vulnerability intelligence. This powerful feature exposes potential threats to an organization's product portfolio, providing detailed risk scoring and exploitability insights. This allows product security teams to respond swiftly and effectively, addressing vulnerabilities before they can cause significant damage.

Comprehensive Impact Analysis 

At the core of Finite State's capabilities is its advanced Binary SCA capabilities. These tools offer an extensive and continuously updated view of vulnerabilities, enhancing product security teams' abilities to make informed security decisions. With risk scoring and prioritization tools integrated into the platform, teams can gain a holistic view of risks across their entire product portfolio, facilitating proactive security measures and strategic decision-making.

Built-in Vulnerability Triage

Finite State simplifies the complex process of vulnerability management with its built-in triage capabilities. The platform automates the scoring, prioritization, and status updates of vulnerabilities, streamlining the workflow for responding to critical security issues. These functionalities are designed to align with the Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX) standards, ensuring that the vulnerability documentation process is both efficient and compliant.

Vulnerability Documentation

A standout feature of Finite State's platform is its ability to seamlessly integrate vulnerability statuses with VEX standards. This integration not only simplifies the generation of VEX documents but also enhances the export capabilities of VEX and Vulnerability Disclosure Report (VDR) documents along with SBOMs. This ensures efficient communication and documentation sharing with internal teams, customers, and regulators, reinforcing trust and transparency in product security practices.

By incorporating Finite State's platform, product security teams are equipped with advanced tools that not only detect and manage vulnerabilities more effectively but also enhance overall security governance. This proactive approach supported by Finite State's comprehensive capabilities ensures that teams can not only respond to immediate threats but also anticipate and mitigate potential vulnerabilities before they impact the business.