9.1 Secure SDLC Governance and Requirements

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1 Chapter 1: CISSP Orientation, CAT, and Official Source Control

1.1 Credential Scope, CISSP Mindset, and Search Language 1.2 Exam Outline Effective Date and Eight-Domain Map 1.3 CAT Format, 100-150 Items, and Forward-Only Rules 1.4 Passing Grade, Results, Feedback, and Retake Policy 1.5 Experience, Endorsement, and Associate of ISC2 Path 1.6 Pricing, AMF, CPE, and Maintenance Overview

2 Chapter 2: Security and Risk Management

2.1 Professional Ethics, CIA, and Security Governance 2.2 Policies, Standards, Procedures, Guidelines, and Control Ownership 2.3 Legal, Regulatory, Privacy, and Investigation Context 2.4 Risk Identification, Analysis, Treatment, and Reporting 2.5 Business Continuity, BIA, and Recovery Prioritization 2.6 Personnel Security, Training, Awareness, and Culture 2.7 Threat Modeling, Supply Chain Risk, and Third-Party Governance 2.8 Security and Risk Management Case Lab

3 Chapter 3: Asset Security and Data Lifecycle

3.1 Asset and Data Classification, Ownership, and Roles 3.2 Handling Requirements, Labeling, Privacy, and Cross-Border Data 3.3 Data States and Protection Methods: DLP, DRM, and CASB 3.4 Data Lifecycle, Retention, Remanence, and Destruction 3.5 Secure Provisioning, Inventory, and Asset Management 3.6 Asset Security Case Lab

4 Chapter 4: Security Architecture, Engineering, and Cryptography

4.1 Secure Design Principles and Security Models 4.2 Control Selection, System Security, and Architecture Risk 4.3 Cryptography Foundations: Symmetric, Asymmetric, Hashing, and PKI 4.4 Cryptographic Lifecycle, Key Management, and Attack Patterns 4.5 Cloud, Container, IoT, Edge, and Shared Responsibility Architecture 4.6 Physical Site, Facility, and Environmental Security 4.7 Information System Lifecycle Engineering and Retirement 4.8 Architecture and Engineering Case Lab

5 Chapter 5: Communication, Network Security, and Zero Trust

5.1 Network Architecture, OSI/TCP/IP, and Secure Design 5.2 Secure Protocols, Encryption in Transit, and Channel Protection 5.3 Segmentation, Microsegmentation, SDN, VPC, and Zero Trust 5.4 Wireless, Cellular, Remote Access, and Third-Party Connectivity 5.5 Network Components: NAC, IDS/IPS, Firewalls, and Endpoints 5.6 Monitoring, Observability, Capacity, and Resilient Communications 5.7 Communication and Network Security Case Lab

6 Chapter 6: Identity and Access Management

6.1 Identity Proofing, Authentication, Authorization, and Accountability 6.2 Access Control Models: RBAC, MAC, DAC, ABAC, and Risk-Based Access 6.3 Federation, SSO, MFA, Passwordless, and Session Management 6.4 Provisioning, Deprovisioning, JML, and Access Reviews 6.5 Service Accounts, Non-Human Identities, and Privilege Management 6.6 Physical, Logical, Cloud, and Hybrid Access Boundaries 6.7 IAM Case Lab

7 Chapter 7: Security Assessment, Testing, and Audit Strategy

7.1 Assessment, Test, and Audit Strategy Selection 7.2 Control Testing, Vulnerability Assessment, and Penetration Testing 7.3 Log Review, Code Review, Misuse Cases, and Compliance Checks 7.4 Security Process Data, KPIs, KRIs, and Reporting 7.5 Remediation, Exceptions, Risk Acceptance, and Evidence Quality 7.6 Security Assessment and Testing Case Lab

8 Chapter 8: Security Operations, Incident Response, and Resilience

8.1 Investigations, Evidence, Forensics, and Legal Readiness 8.2 Logging, Monitoring, SOC, and Alert Triage 8.3 Configuration, Change, Patch, and Vulnerability Operations 8.4 Incident Management, Containment, Eradication, and Recovery 8.5 Disaster Recovery, Backup, Availability, and Resilience 8.6 Physical Security Operations and Safety 8.7 Security Operations Case Lab

9 Chapter 9: Software Development Security and DevSecOps

9.1 Secure SDLC Governance and Requirements 9.2 Architecture, Threat Modeling, and Design Review 9.3 Secure Coding, Code Review, and Application Testing 9.4 CI/CD, Source Control, and Environment Separation 9.5 Software Supply Chain, Third-Party Components, and Deployment 9.6 DevSecOps Vulnerability Management and Release Risk 9.7 Software Development Security Case Lab

10 Chapter 10: Integrated CISSP Governance Scenario Labs

10.1 Enterprise Risk Committee Decision Lab 10.2 Cloud Migration Security Architecture Lab 10.3 Ransomware Incident and Business Continuity Lab 10.4 Identity Modernization and Zero Trust Lab 10.5 Third-Party Breach and Contract Governance Lab 10.6 Secure SDLC Transformation Lab 10.7 Full CISSP Manager Simulation

11 Chapter 11: Final Review, Endorsement, CPE, and Test-Day Strategy

11.1 Final 45-Day CISSP Study Plan 11.2 CAT Timing and Forward-Only Decision Workflow 11.3 Mixed-Domain Remediation and Manager Mindset Review 11.4 Test-Day Checklist and Pearson VUE Readiness 11.5 Endorsement, Associate Path, and Work Experience Documentation 11.6 CPE, AMF, and Three-Year Maintenance Plan 11.7 CISSP Final Mixed Review

9.1 Secure SDLC Governance and Requirements

Key Takeaways Explain This Topic AI

Secure SDLC governance makes security expectations explicit before design and coding begin.

Security requirements should be traceable to business risk, regulatory duties, architecture decisions, testing evidence, and release acceptance.

A CISSP-level answer usually assigns ownership and decision authority rather than treating security as an informal developer preference.

The strongest SDLC programs integrate privacy, resilience, data handling, identity, logging, and third-party risk into normal delivery work.

Last updated: May 2026

Security Belongs In The Lifecycle

Software security is a management system before it is a testing activity. The secure SDLC defines how the organization identifies risk, writes requirements, reviews designs, builds software, tests controls, approves releases, and learns from incidents. A CISSP should think in terms of repeatable decision points, accountable owners, and evidence that supports risk acceptance.

The current CISSP outline treats Software Development Security as a domain focused on application security governance, SDLC practices, secure design and coding, environments, source control, CI/CD, deployment, vulnerability management, supply chain, threat modeling, and DevSecOps. That breadth matters. A narrow answer such as run a scanner at the end is usually incomplete because it does not address requirements, ownership, or residual risk.

Secure requirements translate business obligations into verifiable controls. If a product processes health, payment, export-controlled, or employee data, the application team needs requirements for authentication, authorization, encryption, retention, logging, privacy, error handling, resilience, and administrative access. These requirements should be clear enough for design review and test planning. Vague phrases such as make it secure do not create acceptance criteria.

• SDLC point Security leadership question Useful evidence
• Concept What business process and data are in scope? Data flow, business impact, owner approval
• Requirements Which risks must the product control? Security requirements, privacy requirements, abuse cases
• Design Is the architecture defensible? Threat model, design review notes, control rationale

Build Are coding and dependency practices controlled? Code review records, secure coding standard, dependency policy

• Test Did testing cover likely failure modes? SAST, DAST, SCA, unit tests, misuse tests
• Release Who accepts residual risk? Release risk memo, exceptions, rollback plan
• Operate How will issues be detected and fixed? Logging plan, vulnerability SLA, incident playbook

Requirements should be risk-based, not copied blindly. A public marketing site, a hospital medication workflow, and an internal billing platform should not receive identical treatment. The difference is not whether security matters; the difference is the level of assurance, evidence, and approval required. A manager should align controls to business criticality, data classification, legal duties, threat exposure, and operational dependency.

Governance also defines roles. Product owners own business outcomes and help prioritize risk treatment. Data owners define classification, retention, and permitted use. Architects select patterns that meet requirements. Developers implement controls. Security engineers advise, test, and set standards. Operations teams monitor and recover. Legal, privacy, procurement, and compliance teams may be required when contractual, third-party, or regulated data issues exist.

A useful secure SDLC policy does not need to be heavy, but it must be specific. It should define which work items require threat modeling, what security reviews are mandatory for high-risk changes, which tools are required in pipelines, how exceptions are approved, how release blockers are defined, and how production defects are tracked. It should also distinguish mandatory standards from guidance so teams know what can be tailored.

Security requirements need traceability. When a requirement says all administrative actions must be logged, the team should know why it exists, where it is implemented, how it is tested, and who accepts a deviation. Traceability becomes important during audits, incidents, and acquisitions. It also prevents a common failure: a control is promised in a policy, partially built in code, missed in testing, and never owned in operations.

Consider a team building a customer portal that allows address changes and refund requests. A security manager should ask about identity proofing, session management, authorization checks, fraud signals, transaction logging, customer notification, rate limiting, and support staff access. The manager should also ask whether customer data is used for analytics, whether data retention matches policy, and whether third-party services receive personal information. These are requirements questions before they are code questions.

DevSecOps does not remove governance. It changes where governance is implemented. Instead of a security board manually approving every small change, approved standards, automated checks, reusable secure templates, and risk-based escalation can make delivery faster and more consistent. The organization still needs accountable control owners and documented exceptions. Automation without policy authority is only a collection of scripts.

Use this requirements checklist before a feature enters design:

Identify data types, data owners, and classification.

Identify user roles, privileged actions, and service identities.

Define authentication, authorization, logging, encryption, retention, and error handling expectations.

Define abuse cases and misuse conditions, not only normal user stories.

Map requirements to tests and release criteria.

Record unresolved risk with an owner, expiration date, and compensating controls.

At the CISSP level, the best SDLC decision is often the one that preserves both delivery and accountability. Blocking a release without explaining business impact is weak governance. Approving a release with untracked critical defects is also weak governance. Mature programs make risk visible early, let the right owners decide, and retain evidence that decisions were informed and authorized.