The goals of the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL), now embraced by Microsoft, are twofold: to reduce the number of security-related design and coding defects, and to reduce the severity of any defects that are left. This follows our oft-cited motto, "Secure by Design, Secure by Default, Secure in Deployment and Communication" (also known as SD3+C). SDL focuses mainly on the first two elements of this motto. Secure by Design means getting the design and code secure from the outset, and Secure by Default is a recognition that you never will. To be realistic, you never will get the code 100 percent correct, but more on this later when I discuss attack surface reduction.

At Microsoft.

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