An IBM 2010 study has shown that by concentrating quality efforts early in the software development life-cycle could considerably reduce your overall costs. This study showed that defects found during the implementation phase cost almost 6.5 times more than those found during the design phase, whereas it was almost 100 times more expensive to find a defect during the maintenance phase.
To optimize quality and cost efficiency, efforts made to collect high quality requirements, perform good quality design and code reviews as well as unit testing can pay dividends and impact the company’s bottom line.
Source:
Dawson, Maurice & Burrell, Darrell & Rahim, Emad & Brewster, Stephen. (2010). Integrating Software Assurance into the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Journal of Information Systems Technology and Planning. 3. 49-53.
This article examines the integration of secure coding practices into the overall Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Also detailed is a proposed methodology for integrating software assurance into the Department of Defense Information Assurance Certification & Accreditation Process (DIACAP).
This method for integrating software assurance helps in properly securing the application layer as that is where more than half of the vulnerabilities lie in a system.
