In the 2022 report by CISQ, they highlighted that the cost of poor software quality in the US has grown to at least $2.41 trillion. The accumulated software Technical Debt (TD) has grown to ~$1.51 trillion.
The 3 main problem areas that were focused on in the report are:
- Cybercrime losses due to existing software vulnerabilities,
- Software supply chain problems with underlying 3rd party components and
- Technical debt.
Code audits addresses these key problems with a comprehensive analysis of the source code, identification of outdated tools used, and determine security risks and vulnerabilities. Making sure that the code is standard and follows best practices are valuable results for both existing and launching projects.
What does a Code Audit look like?
At reinteractive, before we start any code audit, we talk with the client to find out areas of concern they might have, be it performance, security, UX or all of the above. Each code audit is customised for each client and application. Below are the stages for code audit:
Manual Code Review
Multiple expert developers review the application code. A bottom-to-top and file-by-file review of the entire application to evaluate it for best practices, visible security issues, code quality and maintainability.
Front-end UX Review
UX is crucially important to the success of any application. Our UX team reviews the application against best-practice and up-to-date UX guides. They will prepare a report or complete a full UX prototype.
Back-end Code Review
Expert developers inspect how the application interacts with other devices and integration to other 3rd party systems to look for security vulnerabilities. This also covers the performance and tech stack analysis.
Infrastructure Code Review
A detailed review of the architecture, scalability, system, hardware, processes and responsibilities to make sure these components are upgraded to the latest versions and follows the security standards.
Security Audit
Here we collect engagement information and analyse and evaluate it. A report includes an information security assessment, possible threats to integrity of data, confidentiality and availability of the data.
How Code Auditing Can Benefit Your Organisation
A good code audit will bring significant insights on how to improve application performance and mitigate security-related incidents. Below are other main reasons why you need code audit for your company:
Locate Weak Points
An audit brings out existing and potential bugs, identify outdated technologies due for upgrade and revisions to technology stacks more suitable for the application.
Determine Scalability
Preparations are needed to ensure potential problems of scaling an application. Code audit can determine whether the application can scale up, handle greater workloads and updates for future expansions.
Ensure Security
A weak code base can lead to application security issues. This may lead to breaches, vulnerabilities, leaks of personal information and fraud. A proper code audit will determine and fix this issues. Get OpsCare for around the clock server monitoring and support for your application.
Improve Maintainability
Code riddled with bugs and of low quality is very difficult to maintain. Aside from the cost, this can also lead to breaches and vulnerability issues. Code audits will address these by implementing development and security standards with the best practices. Get CodeCare for your application’s maintenance and improvement service.
When Do You Need A Code Audit?
If your application is experiencing performance issues, the product is outdated or making major changes in the system it is time for a Code Audit audit. Mikel Lindsaar, founder of reinteractive, itemised 9 indications when you might need an audit:
- It’s been more than a year since last code audit
- Your rate of development is slowing down
- You have upgraded versions of dependent software
- Your application ‘feels’ bloated
- You are expanding your development team
- You are shrinking your development team
- You are raising funds
- You are applying for PCI or other compliance-based certifications
- You have any sort of security breach
Get your code inspected by reinteractive today!
The reinteractive Code Inspect service is done by some of the top industry Ruby on Rails developers. The key merit of the Code Inspect service is more than one person reviews your code and application.
Find out more about our Code Inspect Service and how it can benefit your organisation!
