🔒 RDDDITIM — Now With a Security Lens

📚 Syllabus Dot Point

Interpret and apply fundamental software development steps to develop secure code
Including: requirements definition, determining specifications, design, development, integration, testing and debugging, installation, maintenance

In Year 11, you learned the eight software development steps — R-D-D-D-I-T-I-M. You learned what each step does. Now in Year 12, we apply these same steps through a cybersecurity lens — at every stage, security must be considered. This approach is called "Shift-Left Security" — moving security to the earliest stages instead of bolting it on at the end.

⚠️ Why "Bolt-On Security" Fails

Many teams make the mistake of building the entire application first, then trying to add security at the end. This is like building a house and then trying to add a foundation underneath it. The 2022 Optus breach happened because an API endpoint was built without authentication — a security requirement that should have been defined in Step 1, specified in Step 2, and designed in Step 3. By the time it reached production, the flaw was baked in. Fixing security flaws after deployment costs 30x more than fixing them during design (IBM Systems Sciences Institute).