In this twentieth century, someone stealing your idea or source code is the most appropriate dispute you could face to build a sustainable business. So, is there actually any possible way to produce the source code? Won’t it be great to have the code only to yourself so that you can be the sole master to it?
Well, when you become an entrepreneur, the business comes with an endless number of challenges and your source code being stolen for the software or your product is on the top of the list.
You have a team of developers working on a code. But have you ever thought that if a person from that team suddenly decides to leave the company, he or she could take away a copy of the code along with it? If not, it is high time you should think over it.
In this article, we are going you to guide through some preventive measures that can safeguard your Tech IP and can stop leakage of your important information outside your office premises.
- Always practice source control that is simple to track and control any illegal access. You can also revoke the access of a person if someone resigns from the company.
- The most important step is to sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) that will clearly state that the source codes are a complete property of the client or company and whenever they leave the place, they will have no rights to the code created by them. In this way, you can always take a legal step against the employees if anyone tries to violate the contract.
- If you can, offer laptops to each of your employees along with security. They will be bound to do all the official work only on those machines.
- If your entire devices have Microsoft windows installed in them, TFS can be used as a ticketing system for the source control.
- Token-based systems like Cisco VPNs can be enforced as security policies of the company. Through this, the users can access only the internal networks and servers to write the code.
- If you think that anyone can breach this security on the platform level, you can imply distributed source controls like SVN or GIT.
- Software Management system can also be used for ticketing and to help the link code based on its features. Some of these systems are VersionOne and Jira.
- If not today, then in the near future you can also employ permanent integration and TDD.
- You can divide the programming of the source code in a modular form. For example, if someone is doing the starting part of the code, give another employee to do the ending codes. In this way, not a single person will have the entire programming code of the product.
- You can prevent the entry of your employees with any types of removable media like cell phones, pen drives, etc.
- Always run a source code analysis program to secure the SDLC and testing to measure the prevention of malicious attackers on the source code.
- You can give admin access only to the managers of the project to avoid any discrepancies in the codes.
- Always limits your access to the code repository. Except for you and your manager, there is no need to allow admission to everyone.
- If you suddenly see a spike in the traffic in your DNS, then most probably your source code is getting infiltrated by an attacker. You could secure your internal network to prevent this type of invasion.
- You can use tools like Digital Guardian to transfer all the files and block the entry of USB devices into the machines. This software also prevents the sending of any coded file through an email.
- Another way to prevent the leakage of the source code is the use of versioning. The codes that you would have in your software (TFS, VSS, NetBeans etc.) can have branch and versions attached. Which means, if anyone makes any change in the code, you would be able to track the details.
Hence, all of the above key pointers will assist you to put yourself in a secure position from the extraction of your precious source code and will remove all your paranoia away. By maintaining all the necessary steps, copying anything from you would not be a viable solution for all your opponents.
