TL;DR: Storing code safely is essential to protect operations, prevent financial loss, and maintain client trust. This guide explores code storage risks, best practices, and solutions like source code escrow to help businesses safeguard mission-critical applications and ensure business continuity.
- Insecure code storage can halt operations, cause financial harm, and damage customer trust.
- Best practices include version control, automated backups, encryption, and documenting dependencies.
- Common solutions like cloud storage or local backups often lack legal protections.
- Source code escrow adds legal and technical safeguards for code access and continuity.
- Escrow services offer verification, encryption, and customizable agreements to de-risk software dependency.
Your source code is the engine that’s powering your mission-critical operations, and custom applications are often central to business continuity. Accidental data loss or unexpected shutdowns can leave companies stranded without access to essential solutions. When it comes to securing these crucial assets, the stakes are high.
How can companies make sure their source code is secure and accessible in case of emergencies?
To prevent these risks, businesses need a proactive approach to storing code that emphasizes ongoing business continuity. In this guide, we’ll explore some of the ways organizations can approach source code storage and achieve peace of mind.
Continue reading to learn how to keep mission-critical code assets safe and retain ongoing client trust.
The Importance of Storing Code Safely
Companies stranded without access to essential software face a number of potentially damaging risks. For businesses that rely on custom-developed applications, losing access to the source code could:
- Halt operations. Critical systems can crash or become unusable, bringing operations to a standstill.
- Cause financial damage. Downtime can lead to significant unplanned expenses and revenue loss.
- Compromise customer trust. Customers may lose confidence in a company’s reliability if disruptions expose weaknesses in data security.
A proactive approach to code storage can prevent or mitigate these issues and ensure ongoing business continuity.
Best Practices for Secure Code Storage
The following industry best practices can strengthen your organization’s code security strategy.
Use Version Control
Version control tools like Git help track every change made to your codebase. That makes it much easier to revert code or collaborate across teams. Version control is important for maintaining a reliable development history. It’s key to reducing the risk of accidental code loss or overwrites.
Enable Automated Backups
Automated backups ensure that even if your primary code repository is compromised, your data won’t be completely lost. Backups should be stored in multiple locations. Consider storing backups both on-site and in the cloud for added redundancy.
Encrypt Sensitive Repositories
Encryption helps protect your code from unauthorized access. Ensure code is encrypted both during storage (at rest) and transmission (in transit).
This is especially important for proprietary or regulated software. Your mission-critical solutions often contain sensitive business logic or personal data. If lost, it can lead to reputational damage and even a loss of revenue.
Document Dependencies
Keeping an up-to-date list of code dependencies is key to maintaining a healthy codebase and environment.
Be sure to document:
- Build tools
- Libraries
- Third-party integrations
- Configuration files
Careful and complete documentation ensures others can compile and run the software if necessary.
Use Source Code Escrow When Applicable
Source code escrow adds a layer of legal and technical protection. It works by placing your code with a trusted third party under contractually defined terms. Software escrow ensures clients or stakeholders can access the code following an adverse event. We’ll discuss more about this critical code storage solution later in this guide.
Common Online Code Storage Solutions and Their Limitations
Common code storage solutions serve everyday development needs. However, they can fall short when it comes to long-term reliability. Many standard storage solutions lack legal protection, for example, which can ultimately compromise business continuity.
Below, we’ll discuss the most common ways teams manage and store source code, and why they may not be enough.
Cloud-Based Code Storage
Online code storage platforms offer convenience, but typically aren’t built to address contractual or legal contingencies. That becomes an issue when proprietary code is tied to service-level agreements or licensing deals. If a vendor discontinues support, for example, your organization could be left without recourse.
Local Backups
Internal or local backups might not offer enough validation or legal structure. While local storage provides physical control over data, it lacks off-site protection. Two-site secure storage may be necessary for high-stakes enterprise use. Without it, something as simple as insufficient documentation can potentially render your local backups useless.
Private Version Control Systems
Some companies with in-house development teams may use private version control systems for storing code. Like the others, these systems lack a legal mechanism to ensure third-party access if internal stakeholders are unavailable. With no such mechanism in place, you’ll have no way to retrieve the source code under defined release conditions.
Why Source Code Escrow is a Smarter Code Storage Solution
When storing code, you also must consider whether your code storage solution will satisfy your stakeholders. They may demand more verifiable proof of your code’s security. Likewise, they may wish to know that your code will be accessible under defined conditions.
As a result, you may need to implement a more secure, legally defensible code storage solution.
Source Code Escrow is a service that allows a third-party escrow agent to hold the source code in trust. An escrow agent works on behalf of both the software developer and the licensee. The escrow agreement defines specific conditions under which the code can be released, such as if:
- The vendor goes out of business
- The vendor fails to meet support obligations
- The vendor violates key contract terms
By leveraging a trusted escrow agent, businesses can establish confidence that their critical software assets are recoverable.
What Do Source Code Storage and Escrow Solutions Offer?
Using source code storage services can help de-risk software dependency. They offer:
- Secure, encrypted repositories designed for both manual and automated deposits.
- Custom escrow agreements tailored to meet your operational and legal requirements.
- Verification services that validate the completeness and usability of deposited source code.
- Support for cloud-based and on-premise applications, as well as intellectual property protection.
Are you interested in leveraging source code escrow for your business or organization? Securely store your source code with our online code storage services today.