Effective Date: September 15, 2023

CSSLP Certification Exam Outline

View and download the latest PDF version of the CSSLP Certification Exam Outline

About CSSLP

The Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP) validates that software professionals have the expertise to incorporate security practices – authentication, authorization and auditing – into each phase of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from software design and implementation to testing and deployment.

The broad spectrum of topics included in the CSSLP Exam Outline ensure its relevancy across all disciplines in the field of information security. Successful candidates are competent in the following eight domains:

Secure Software Concepts
Secure Software Lifecycle Management
Secure Software Requirements
Secure Software Architecture and Design
Secure Software Implementation
Secure Software Testing
Secure Software Deployment, Operations, Maintenance
Secure Software Supply Chain

Experience Requirements

Candidates must have a minimum of four years cumulative, full-time experience in one or more of the eight domains of the current CSSLP Exam Outline. Earning a post-secondary degree (bachelors or masters) in computer science, Information Technology (IT) or related fields may satisfy up to one year of the required experience. Part-time work and internships may also count towards the experience requirement.

If you don’t have the required experience to become a CSSLP, you may become an Associate of ISC2 by successfully passing the CSSLP examination. You will then have five years to earn the four years required experience. You can learn more about CSSLP experience requirements and how to account for part-time work and internships at www.isc2.org/Certifications/CSSLP/CSSLP-Experience-Requirements.

Accreditation

CSSLP is in compliance with the stringent requirements of the ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB) ISO/IEC Standard 17024.

Job Task Analysis (JTA)

ISC2 has an obligation to its membership to maintain the relevancy of the CSSLP. Conducted at regular intervals, the Job Task Analysis (JTA) is a methodical and critical process of determining the tasks that are performed by CSSLP credential holders. The results of the JTA are used to update the examination. This process ensures that candidates are tested on the topic areas relevant to the roles and responsibilities of today’s practicing information security professionals.

CSSLP Examination Information

Length of exam	3 hours
Number of items	125
Item format	Multiple choice and advanced item types
Passing grade	700 out of 1000 points
Language availability	English
Testing center	Pearson VUE Testing Center

CSSLP Examination Weights

Domains	Average Weight
1. Secure Software Concepts	12%
2. Secure Software Lifecycle Management	11%
3. Secure Software Requirements	13%
4. Secure Software Architecture and Design	15%
5. Secure Software Implementation	14%
6. Secure Software Testing	14%
7. Secure Software Deployment, Operations, Maintenance	11%
8. Secure Software Supply Chain	10%
Total	100%

Loading component...

Domains

1.1 - Understand core concepts

Confidentiality (e.g., encryption)
Integrity (e.g., hashing, digital signatures, code signing, reliability, modifications, authenticity)
Availability (e.g., redundancy, replication, clustering, scalability, resiliency)
Authentication (e.g., multi-factor authentication (MFA), identity & access management (IAM), single sign-on (SSO), federated identity, biometrics)
Authorization (e.g., access controls, permissions, entitlements)
Accountability (e.g., auditing, logging)
Nonrepudiation (e.g., digital signatures, block chain)
Governance, risk and compliance (GRC) standards (e.g., regulatory authority, legal, industry)

1.2 - Understand security design principles

Least privilege (e.g., access control, need-to-know, run-time privileges, Zero Trust)
Segregation of Duties (SoD) (e.g., multi-party control, secret sharing, split knowledge)
Defense in depth (e.g., layered controls, geographical diversity, technical diversity, distributed systems)
Resiliency (e.g., fail safe, fail secure, no single point of failure, failover)
Economy of mechanism (e.g., single sign-on (SSO), password vaults, resource efficiency)
Complete mediation (e.g., cookie management, session management, caching of credentials)
Open design (e.g., Kerckhoffs’s principle, peer review, open source, crowd source)
Least common mechanism (e.g., compartmentalization/isolation, allow/accept list)
Psychological acceptability (e.g., password complexity, passwordless authentication, screen layouts, Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA))
Component reuse (e.g., common controls, libraries)

2.1 - Manage security within a software development methodology (e.g., Agile, waterfall)

2.2 - Identify and adopt security standards (e.g., implementing security frameworks, promoting security awareness)

2.3 - Outline strategy and roadmap

Security milestones and checkpoints (e.g., control gate, break/build criteria)

2.4 - Define and develop security documentation

2.5 - Define security metrics (e.g., criticality level, average remediation time, complexity, Key Performance Indicators (KPI), objectives and key results)

2.6 - Decommission applications

End of Life (EOL) policies (e.g., credential removal, configuration removal, license cancellation, archiving, service-level agreements (SLA))
Data disposition (e.g., retention, destruction, dependencies)

2.7 - Create security reporting mechanisms (e.g., reports, dashboards, feedback loops)

2.8 - Incorporate integrated risk management methods

Regulations, standards and guidelines (e.g., International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Payment Card Industry (PCI), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code (SAFECode), Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM), Building Security in Maturity Model (BSIMM))
Legal (e.g., intellectual property, breach notification)
Risk management (e.g., risk assessment, risk analysis)
Technical risk vs. business risk

2.9 - Implement secure operation practices

Change management process
Incident response plan
Verification and validation
Assessment and Authorization (A&A) process

3.1 - Define software security requirements

Functional (e.g., business requirements, use cases, stories)
Non-functional (e.g., security, operational, continuity, deployment)

3.2 - Identify compliance requirements

Regulatory authority
Legal
Industry-specific (e.g., defense, healthcare, commercial, financial, Payment Card Industry (PCI))
Company-wide (e.g., development tools, standards, frameworks, protocols)

3.3 - Identify data classification requirements

Data ownership (e.g., data dictionary, data owner, data custodian)
Data labeling (e.g., sensitivity, impact)
Data types (e.g., structured, unstructured)
Data lifecycle (e.g., generation, storage, retention, disposal)
Data handling (e.g., personally identifiable information (PII), publicly available information)

3.4 - Identify privacy requirements

Data collection scope
Data anonymization (e.g., pseudo-anonymous, fully anonymous)
User rights (legal) and preferences (e.g., data disposal, right to be forgotten, marketing preferences, sharing and using third parties, terms of service)
Data retention (e.g., how long, where, what)
Cross-border requirements (e.g., data residency, jurisdiction, multi-national data processing boundaries)

3.5 - Define data access provisioning

User provisioning
Service accounts
Reapproval process

3.6 - Develop misuse and abuse

Mitigating control identification

3.7 - Develop security requirement traceability matrix

3.8 - Define third-party vendor security requirements

4.1 - Define the security architecture

Secure architecture and design patterns (e.g., Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture (SABSA), security chain of responsibility, federated identity)
Security controls identification and prioritization
Distributed computing (e.g., client server, peer-to-peer (P2P), message queuing, N-tier)
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) (e.g., enterprise service bus, web services, microservices)
Rich internet applications (e.g., client-side exploits or threats, remote code execution, constant connectivity)
Pervasive/ubiquitous computing (e.g., Internet of Things (IoT), wireless, location-based, Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), Near Field Communication (NFC), sensor networks, mesh)
Embedded software (e.g., secure boot, secure memory, secure update)
Cloud architectures (e.g., Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS))
Mobile applications (e.g., implicit data collection privacy)
Hardware platform concerns (e.g., side-channel mitigation, speculative execution mitigation, secure element, firmware, drivers)
Cognitive computing (e.g., artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality, augmented reality)
Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) (e.g., facility-related, automotive, robotics, medical devices, software-defined production processes)

4.2 - Perform secure interface design

Security management interfaces, out-of-band management, log interfaces
Upstream/downstream dependencies (e.g., key and data sharing between apps)
Protocol design choices (e.g., application programming interfaces (API), weaknesses, state, models)

4.3 - Evaluate and select reusable technologies

Credential management (e.g., X.509, single sign-on (SSO))
Flow control (e.g., proxies, firewalls, protocols, queuing)
Data loss prevention (DLP)
Virtualization (e.g., Infrastructure as code (IaC), hypervisor, containers)
Trusted computing (e.g., Trusted Platform Module (TPM), Trusted Computing Base (TCB))
Database security (e.g., encryption, triggers, views, privilege management, secure connections)
Programming language environment (e.g., common language runtime, Java virtual machine (VM), Python, PowerShell)
Operating system (OS) controls and services
Secure backup and restoration planning
Secure data retention, retrieval, and destruction

4.4 - Perform threat modeling

Threat modeling methodologies (e.g., Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service, and Elevation of Privilege (STRIDE), Process for Attack Simulation and Threat Analysis (PASTA), Hybrid Threat Modeling Method, Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS))
Common threats (e.g., advanced persistent threat (APT), insider threat, common malware, third-party suppliers)
Attack surface evaluation
Threat analysis
Threat intelligence (e.g., identify credible relevant threats, predict)

4.5 - Perform architectural risk assessment and design reviews

4.6 - Model (non-functional) security properties and constraints

4.7 - Define secure operational architecture (e.g., deployment topology, operational interfaces, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD))

5.1 - Adhere to relevant secure coding practices (e.g., standards, guidelines, regulations)

Declarative versus imperative (programmatic) security
Concurrency (e.g., thread safety, database concurrency controls)
Input validation and sanitization
Error and exception handling
Output sanitization (e.g., encoding, obfuscation)
Secure logging & auditing (e.g., confidentiality, privacy)
Session management
Trusted/untrusted application programming interfaces (API), and libraries
Resource management (e.g., compute, storage, network, memory management)
Secure configuration management (e.g., baseline security configuration, credentials management)
Tokenization
Isolation (e.g., sandboxing, virtualization, containerization, Separation Kernel Protection Profiles)
Cryptography (e.g., payload, field level, transport, storage, agility, encryption, algorithm selection)
Access control (e.g., trust zones, function permissions, role-based access control (RBAC), discretionary access control (DAC), mandatory access control (MAC))
Processor microarchitecture security extensions

5.2 - Analyze code for security risks

Secure code reuse
Vulnerability databases/lists (e.g., Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10, Common Weakness Enumerations (CWE), SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Errors)
Static application security testing (SAST) (e.g., automated code coverage, linting)
Manual code review (e.g., peer review)
Inspect for malicious code (e.g., backdoors, logic bombs, high entropy)

5.3 - Implement security controls (e.g., watchdogs, file integrity monitoring, anti-malware)

5.4 - Address the identified security risks (e.g., risk strategy)

5.5 - Evaluate and integrate components

Systems-of-systems integration (e.g., trust contracts, security testing, analysis)
Reusing third-party code or open-source libraries in a secure manner (e.g., software composition analysis)

5.6 - Apply security during the build process

Anti-tampering techniques (e.g., code signing, obfuscation)
Compiler switches
Address compiler warnings

6.1 - Develop security testing strategy & plan

Standards (e.g., International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual, Software Engineering Institute)
Functional security testing (e.g., logic)
Nonfunctional security testing (e.g., reliability, performance, scalability)
Testing techniques (e.g., known environment testing, unknown environment testing, functional testing, acceptance testing)
Testing environment (e.g., interoperability, test harness)
Security researcher outreach (e.g., bug bounties)

6.2 - Develop security test cases

Attack surface validation
Automated vulnerability testing (e.g., dynamic application security testing (DAST), interactive application security testing (IAST))
Penetration tests (e.g., security controls, known vulnerabilities, known malware)
Fuzzing (e.g., generated, mutated)
Simulation (e.g., simulating production environment and production data, synthetic transactions)
Failure (e.g., fault injection, stress testing, break testing))
Cryptographic validation (e.g., pseudorandom number generators, entropy)
Unit testing and code coverage
Regression tests
Integration tests
Continuous testing
Misuse and abuse test cases

6.3 - Verify and validate documentation (e.g., installation and setup instructions, error messages, user guides, release notes)

6.4 - Identify undocumented functionality

6.5 - Analyze security implications of test results (e.g., impact on product management, prioritization, break/build criteria)

6.6 - Classify and track security errors

Bug tracking (e.g., defects, errors and vulnerabilities)
Risk scoring (e.g., Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS))

6.7 - Secure test data

Generate test data (e.g., referential integrity, statistical quality, production representative)
Reuse of production data (e.g., obfuscation, sanitization, anonymization, tokenization, data aggregation mitigation)

6.8 - Perform verification and validation testing (e.g., independent/internal verification and validation, acceptance test)

7.1 - Perform operational risk analysis

Deployment environment (e.g., staging, production, quality assurance (QA))
Personnel training (e.g., administrators vs. users)
Legal compliance (e.g., adherence to guidelines, regulations, privacy laws, copyright, etc.)
System integration

7.2 - Secure configuration and version control

Hardware
Baseline configuration
Version control/patching
Documentation practices

7.3 - Release software securely

Secure Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline (e.g., DevSecOps)
Application security toolchain
Build artifact verification (e.g., code signing, hashes)

7.4 - Store and manage security data

Credentials
Secrets
Keys/certificates
Configurations

7.5 - Ensure secure installation

Secure boot (e.g., key generation, access, management)
Least privilege
Environment hardening (e.g., configuration hardening, secure patch/updates, firewall)
Secure provisioning (e.g., credentials, configuration, licensing, Infrastructure as code (IaC))
Security policy implementation

7.6 - Obtain security approval to operate (e.g., risk acceptance, sign-off at appropriate level)

7.7 - Perform information security continuous monitoring

Observable data (e.g., logs, events, telemetry, trace data, metrics)
Threat intelligence
Intrusion detection/response
Regulation and privacy changes
Integration analysis (e.g., security information and event management (SIEM))

7.8 - Execute the incident response plan

Incident triage
Forensics
Remediation
Root cause analysis

7.9 - Perform patch management (e.g. secure release, testing)

7.10 - Perform vulnerability management (e.g., tracking, triaging, Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE))

7.11 - Incorporate runtime protection (e.g., Runtime Application Self Protection (RASP), web application firewall (WAF), Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), dynamic execution prevention)

7.12 - Support continuity of operations

Backup, archiving, retention
Disaster recovery plan (DRP)
Resiliency (e.g., operational redundancy, erasure code, survivability, denial-of-service (DoS))
Business continuity plan (BCP)

7.13 - Integrate service level objectives and service-level agreements (SLA) (e.g., maintenance, performance, availability, qualified personnel)

8.1 - Implement software supply chain risk management (e.g., International Organization for Standardization (ISO), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST))

Identification and selection of the components
Risk assessment of the components (e.g., mitigate, accept)
Maintaining third-party components list (e.g., software bill of materials)
Monitoring for changes and vulnerabilities

8.2 - Analyze security of third-party software

Certifications
Assessment reports (e.g., cloud controls matrix)
Origin and support

8.3 - Verify pedigree and provenance

Secure transfer (e.g., chain of custody, authenticity, integrity)
System sharing/interconnections
Code repository security
Build environment security
Cryptographically-hashed, digitally-signed components
Right to audit

8.4 - Ensure and verify supplier security requirements in the acquisition process

Audit of security policy compliance (e.g., secure software development practices)
Vulnerability/incident notification, response, coordination, and reporting
Maintenance and support structure (e.g., community versus commercial, licensing)
Security track record
Scope of testing (e.g., shared responsibility model)
Log integration into security information and event management (SIEM)

8.5 - Support contractual requirements (e.g., intellectual property ownership, code escrow, liability, warranty, End-User License Agreement (EULA), service-level agreements (SLA))

Loading component...

Additional Examination Information

Supplementary References

Candidates are encouraged to supplement their education and experience by reviewing relevant resources that pertain to the current CSSLP Exam Outline and identifying areas of study that may need additional attention.

View the full list of supplementary references at www.isc2.org/certifications/references.

Examination Policies and Procedures

ISC2 recommends that CSSLP candidates review exam policies and procedures prior to registering for the examination. Read the comprehensive breakdown of this important information at www.isc2.org/register-for-exam.