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How long have we been told that cybersecurity starts with the programmer? And what does that mean exactly? What can we do about it? An official document released in April by the cybersecurity agencies of several tech-savvy nations attempts to answer these questions. "Shifting the Balance of Cybersecurity Risk: Principles and Approaches for Security-by-Design and -Default" is an attempt to distill some practical principles and guidelines for safer coding. The document, which is jointly sponsored by the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands, is an effort to codify some of the best practices often discussed at coding conferences and in publications like this one. The guidelines are quite general (they all fit on a 15-page PDF [1]), but the document is still an encouraging effort by national governments to define what the terms "secure by design" and "secure by default" really mean.

According to the authors, products that are secure-by-design "are those where the security of the customers is a core business goal, not just a technical feature." Secure-by-default refers to the practice of making the software secure "out of the box," without the need for additional security configuration and with all security features available in the basic package – without additional cost.

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