Build a defensible software-security program and prove it operates
Assessment, evidence, and validation for the program behind the software. Not a policy binder, and not a compliance exercise.
Assess Your Software Security ProgramOwning the tools is not the same as running a program
Most engineering organizations we meet have the pieces. There is a scanner in CI. There is a policy that says threat models get done. There is a ticket queue with security labels on it. What there usually is not is a way to answer a direct question: does this work, consistently, and can you show it?
That question arrives from outside, on someone else's timeline. A customer's security team sends a questionnaire. A procurement process asks for an attestation. A board member reads about a supply-chain incident and wants to know whether it could happen here. The honest answer is often that nobody has checked recently, and assembling the answer takes a week of archaeology across four teams.
Questions a Defensible Program Can Answer
If any of these produce a pause, that is where we start.
Are security responsibilities clearly assigned?
Not in an org chart. For a given service, who decides whether it is safe to release, and does that person know it is their call?
Are secure development practices consistently performed?
Threat modeling that happens on the flagship service and nowhere else is a practice on one team, not a program.
Are security tools integrated into development workflows?
A scanner producing findings nobody triages is a cost center with a dashboard.
Are vulnerabilities handled consistently?
Same severity, same class, two different teams: do they get the same treatment and the same deadline?
Can you demonstrate that controls are operating?
Operating is different from existing. Demonstrating is different from asserting.
Can evidence be produced when someone asks?
Within days, from a maintained source, without pulling four engineers off their work.
Are requirements implemented in practice, not only in policy?
The gap between the written standard and the shipped release is the thing an assessor, a customer, and an attacker all find.
Who this is for
- Software and SaaS companies selling into enterprise or government
- Organizations subject to software-security expectations from regulation or contract
- Security leaders building an AppSec or product security program
- Engineering leaders asked to evidence practices they believe are in place
- Companies preparing for diligence in an acquisition or funding round
Common triggers
- A deal is blocked on a security review you cannot answer quickly
- A secure software attestation or procurement requirement has landed
- The board asked a question nobody could answer with data
- Tooling spend has grown and the risk picture has not visibly improved
- A new market or geography brings software-security obligations with it
- An incident, near miss, or supplier compromise prompted a wider look
Software Security Evidence Readiness Assessment
The engagement most organizations start with. It examines governance, secure development practice, tooling, supply chain, incident response, and measurement, then tells you where the program is strong, where it is thin, and which gaps are evidence problems rather than control problems.
You finish with a scored picture, a mapping to public frameworks, and a sequenced roadmap you can fund.
Discuss an AssessmentServices in this Practice
Grouped by what you need done. Most engagements start with an assessment and continue into the work it identifies.
Assess the program
Where you actually stand, scored and mapped to public frameworks.
Software Security Evidence Readiness Assessment
Our flagship engagement. Examines how software security is governed, performed, and evidenced across roughly thirty areas, then scores it and maps the gaps to public frameworks.
Secure Development Program Assessment
A narrower read on the development lifecycle itself: requirements, design review, coding standards, testing gates, and how a vulnerability actually travels from discovery to closed.
NIST SSDF Readiness
Assessment against the NIST Secure Software Development Framework practices, with the evidence each one implies. Relevant to federal software attestation obligations and increasingly to enterprise procurement.
OWASP SAMM Assessment and Operationalization
A SAMM assessment across the governance, design, implementation, verification, and operations domains, then the harder part: choosing which streams to actually move and by how much.
Design and govern
The lifecycle, the decision rights, and the function that owns them.
Secure SDLC Program Design
Designing the lifecycle rather than grading it. Where the gates go, who owns each one, what blocks a release, and what the exception path looks like so it does not become the default path.
Software-Security Governance
Ownership, decision rights, risk acceptance, and escalation. Who decides that a release ships with a known high, on what basis, and where that decision is recorded.
Product Security Program Development
Standing up a product security function: charter, scope, staffing shape, tooling, intake, and the first year of measurable objectives.
Prove it to others
What customers, regulators, and purchasers ask for, and the evidence behind each claim.
Customer Security Assurance Readiness
The work of answering enterprise security questionnaires and diligence requests without a fire drill: a maintained evidence set, consistent answers, and a named owner.
Regulatory Software-Security Readiness
Translating software-security expectations from regulation and procurement into the practices and evidence that satisfy them. We work on the engineering translation, not the legal interpretation.
Secure Software Attestation Readiness
Preparing for a self-attestation on secure development practices: confirming the practices are real, the evidence exists, and the person signing has a basis for signing.
Run and validate
Keeping the program current between assessments, and confirming controls still operate.
Fractional Product Security Advisory
Senior product security judgment on a recurring basis for organizations that need the decisions but not a full-time hire. Standing time, direct access, and continuity across quarters.
Internal Assessment and Validation
Independent verification that a control does what the documentation says. Sampling releases, tracing findings to closure, and testing whether a gate can be bypassed.
Executive and Board Reporting
Turning software-security activity into something a board can act on: a small number of measures that move, with the context that makes them mean something.
Executive and Engineering Workshops
Working sessions rather than slideware. Threat modeling with the engineers who own the system, or a scoped briefing for leadership on what the obligations actually require.
Software-Security Expectations Now Arrive from Everywhere
Ten years ago, software-security obligations mostly came from your own risk appetite. Now they arrive through contracts, procurement processes, and regulation, and they increasingly ask for evidence rather than assurances.
- Enterprise customers running vendor security reviews before and during the contract
- Software procurement processes that score security practice as part of selection
- Federal purchasing requirements covering how software is developed, not only what it does
- Secure software attestations that put a name against a set of practice claims
- EU Cyber Resilience Act obligations for products with digital elements placed on the EU market
- Supply-chain requirements flowing down from customers to you, and from you to your suppliers
- Contractual security terms with specific practice, notification, and audit commitments
- Board oversight asking for a defensible account of software risk
- M&A diligence where software-security debt changes valuation or delays close
- Investment due diligence treating product security as an operational risk
Our job is the translation: taking a requirement written in procurement or regulatory language and turning it into practices your engineers can perform and evidence you can produce on request.
717 DEV provides technical and program advice on software security. We are not a law firm and we do not provide legal advice. Whether a specific regulation applies to your organization, and what it requires of you as a matter of law, is a question for your counsel. We work on the engineering and evidence side of that answer.
What Happens Once Gaps Are Identified
An assessment that ends at a report has done half the job. The roadmap exists to be executed, and we can execute it with you or hand it to your team and validate the result.
Can you show how your software is secured?
If that question would take a week to answer, it is worth a conversation. The first one is short and costs nothing.
Assess Your Software Security Program