Michael Howard

Secure development

Michael Howard is a software-security engineer and author closely associated with Microsoft's secure-development work. His career has focused on reducing recurring classes of software flaws by making security requirements part of the engineering process.

Writing Secure Code

With David LeBlanc, Howard co-authored Writing Secure Code, a widely used practitioner reference. The book explains common implementation risks and the design and review habits that can prevent them.

Lifecycle thinking

Howard's work is associated with the Security Development Lifecycle approach: security activities planned across requirements, design, implementation, test, release, and response. The lasting contribution is organizational as well as technical—security becomes a repeatable engineering responsibility.

Timeline

• 2002Co-authors the first edition of <em>Writing Secure Code</em> with David LeBlanc.
• 2004Microsoft publicly describes its Security Development Lifecycle approach.
• 2007A second edition of <em>Writing Secure Code</em> is published.