To ensure security, developers need to anticipate potential issues and design their code to minimize the software's - and, therefore, the system's - exposure to threats. Secure coding involves constructing software in such a way as to resist potential vulnerabilities that malicious actors could exploit to gain unauthorized access, disrupt operations, or otherwise compromise a system's security.
The need for such proactive security measures has been underlined by numerous high-profile breaches and is reinforced by authoritative guidelines such as those provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). Secure coding is the practice of designing and implementing software that's resistant to attack by malicious users.
