Summary:
Discover five crucial strategies to protect your source code in 2024, ensuring business continuity and safeguarding against technological threats and vendor bankruptcy.
- Source Code Escrow
- IP Escrow
- Code Obfuscation
- Access Controls
- Regular Security Audits and Updates
In 2024, protecting your source code has become more crucial than ever.
As technology advances, the methods used to access and exploit unprotected code are also becoming more sophisticated. Likewise, the unpredictable nature of business means vendors are increasingly facing bankruptcy.
Source code is the backbone of any software application. Its security is vital not only for safeguarding intellectual property but also for maintaining the integrity of software products. Losing access to source code due to vendor failure can compromise the continuity of your business.
How are you protecting your mission-critical source code?
This blog explores 5 effective strategies for source code protection. We aim to provide you with the best practices and modern solutions needed in today’s tech and business environment.
Keep reading to learn how to ensure business continuity in a volatile and rapidly evolving world.
In 2024, protecting your source code has become more crucial than ever.
As technology advances, the methods used to access and exploit unprotected code are also becoming more sophisticated. Likewise, the unpredictable nature of business means vendors are increasingly facing bankruptcy.
Source code is the backbone of any software application. Its security is vital not only for safeguarding intellectual property but also for maintaining the integrity of software products. Losing access to source code due to vendor failure can compromise the continuity of your business.
How are you protecting your mission-critical source code?
This blog explores 5 effective strategies for source code protection. We aim to provide you with the best practices and modern solutions needed in today’s tech and business environment.
1. Source Code Escrow
Many contemporary businesses rely on mission-critical software applications to maintain their daily workflows, manage customer data, and ensure business continuity. If that software were to fail due to vendor bankruptcy or a breach, operations would halt in their tracks.
Source code escrow allows vendors and licensees to enter into a legal agreement to ensure continuous access to crucial source code. In such arrangements, an escrow agency functions as a neutral third party. Their role is to store the source code and any associated materials.
You will meet with a legal professional to create your escrow agreement. The customized agreement will include a list of mutually agreed-upon trigger events. These are events that might compromise a licensee’s access to the designated software or application.
The vendor will submit deposit materials, including the source code in question. It will be held in two secure, off-site, high-security facilities. The code will undergo regular updates to ensure it’s always accurate and up to date. In the event of a triggering event, the licensee will gain access to the source code in escrow.
Source code escrows fall under source code protection best practices for licensees. This practice ensures a level of commitment on both sides of the agreement.
2. IP Escrow
According to Reuters, while software is not considered intellectual property, source code is. If you are a vendor, your proprietary source code is your most valuable asset. How do you protect source code from being copied, especially if it is in some way novel?
IP escrow creates an IP audit trail. This provides third-party verification of your source code’s existence on a given date. You’ll include your source code and other associated IP as part of your escrow deposit materials.
Once submitted, the escrow agency will date and confirm the receipt of the source code. As a result, they can independently corroborate their existence and content as of the date of deposit. You can update your deposit materials regularly to ensure an accurate and up-to-date audit trail.
Because IP escrow involves legal oversight, it is legally defensible. Often, your audit trail can be determinative of the outcome of litigation challenging your ownership of IP. It’s a proactive way to protect website source code, software source code, and other IP.
3. Code Obfuscation
According to Tech Target, code obfuscation is a way to make source code indecipherable to prevent breaches or theft. It makes it difficult, if not impossible, to reverse engineer proprietary source code.
There are several different ways to obfuscate data to protect your source code, including:
- Stripping metadata
- String encryption
- Opaque predicate insertion
- Code packing
- Removal of debug data
- Aggregation
- Renaming
- Randomizing virtual addresses
All of the above methods aim to distract anyone attempting to decipher your source code. They all rely on redundant logic and roundabout phrasing to make the code confusing to humans or machines. The original code will remain unchanged, but you will make the presentation of the code as difficult to parse as possible. It’s a very common way to protect JavaScript source code.
4. Access Controls
One of the simplest ways to protect source code is to limit who has access to it in the first place. There are two best practices in implementing access controls to prevent unauthorized access:
Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)
MFA requires individuals to prove they are who they say they are when attempting to access sensitive data online. They will need to provide two or more verification factors before they can gain access to your code. Authentication methods can be as simple as entering a code sent to an email address or as complex as providing biometric data. You will gain access to a trail of all successful and unsuccessful log-in attempts.
Least-privilege User Access (PoLP)
PoLP gives users the minimum level of access necessary to complete their job functions. It ensures the average team member does not have access to the most sensitive data or assets. Likewise, non-human tools will have access limited to what they need to function and nothing more. Thus, such tools cannot be used as backdoors for breaches or other malicious actions.
5. Regular Security Audits and Updates
Be sure to audit your access control methods semi-regularly. You may wish to employ a third-party security auditor for this process. It’s important to understand how the source code in question is used and by whom.
An experienced team can easily find vulnerabilities in the way source code is protected and help close any backdoors. Update security measures and software regularly to guard against new and evolving threats.
Now is the time to review and update your current source code protection strategies for 2024. Ready to take the next step? Head to our IP protection page now.
