Quality Software is Secure Software

The focus on software development is usually getting the system completed on time and hopefully at or under budget.  Some organizations may even add a requirement that few known bugs may ship with the product, though the amount of testing and validation of that can vary greatly.

The security of those systems usually comes some position after that, especially if the organization doesn't have a regulatory requirement for that.  In fact, even those organizations may only pay lip service to the need for secure software until they face a breach of their own.

Much of that is driven by business needs.  The eyes of the leaders is on profit and loss (as it should be) and the new system needs to be available to help with the profit of raising income for the company.

This is as it should be, since a company without income and profits will soon be out of business, but it minimizes the impact of defects and security flaws on the business.  Some organizations are starting to understand that defects can be costly, but only a few of those realize that security flaws are just another kind of dangerous defect.

Realizing this would help make educating people about the value of preventing or quickly fixing defects or security flaws more effective since only one message would need to go out.