Developing Robust Software (Edexcel GCSE Computer Science)

Developing Robust Software

What is robust software?

• Robust software is software designed to withstand unexpected errors such as an input from a user or a calculation and continue to operate

• Programmers must ensure the software has a way of dealing with the potential errors to ensure their software does not crash

• Common vulnerabilities include:

  • weak authentication

  • lack of encryption

Authentication

• Authentication is the process of ensuring that a system is secure by asking the user to complete tasks to prove they are an authorised user of the system

• Authentication is done because bots can submit data in online forms

• Authentication can be done in several ways, these include

  • Usernames and Passwords

  • CAPTCHA

• Other methods that programmers can do to authenticate the user is include

  • Allowing users to recover passwords via email links and SMS codes

  • Encrypting data

Encryption

• Encryption is a method of scrambling data before being transmitted across a network in order to protect the contents from unauthorised access

Identifying Vulnerabilities

• Two techniques that can be used to help identify vulnerabilities are:

  • Code reviews

  • Audit trails

Code reviews

• A code review can help to identify issues with software source code such as:

  • bad programming practice

  • vulnerabilities within the code itself

  • efficiency of code

Audit trails

• An audit trail is a complete digital record of what has been:

  • opened

  • edited

  • deleted

  • copied

  • transferred etc.

• The purpose of an audit trail is to:

  • aid the restoring of a software to a state before errors were identified

  • investigate security incidents

  • Ensure software compliance