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Security Checklist

Updated on July 1, 2021

The Security Checklist provides Pega's leading practices for securely deploying applications. To assist you in tracking the completion of the tasks in the Security Checklist, Pega Platform shows the overall completion on the Dev Studio Home page, and built-in ways to track the status of each task.

Pega takes application and system security extremely seriously. Security is a shared responsibility between Pega and our clients.

Each successive release of Pega Platform™ augments the security features and capabilities available to harden applications and systems against improper access and to protect the data that those applications manage.

The Security Checklist is the key feature of Pega Platform that assists clients in hardening their applications and systems. The Security Checklist does the following:

  • Provides Pega's leading practices for securely deploying applications.
  • Helps protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your application in production.
  • Identifies when each task should be performed: at or near the beginning of development, on an ongoing basis, or just before deployment.
  • Helps avoid expensive rework late in your development process.

To assist you in tracking the completion of the tasks in the checklist, Pega Platform automatically installs an application guideline rule instance that includes the tasks in the security checklist for each version of your application.

For more information, see Preparing your application for secure deployment.

Note: If you are using Deployment Manager, starting in Pega Platform 8.5, completing the Security Checklist is required to move an application into production.

Security is critical

Inadequate security can prevent your application from being deployed in two ways:

  • Most clients need approval from the IT security group who review the application’s security before the project team can put the application into production.
  • If a client is building their application with Deployment Manager, the application will be blocked if the Security Checklist has not been completed.

Your responsibility as an administrator, senior system architect, or lead system architect is to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your application. Unauthorized individuals should not be able to access or modify the application or the data it creates and stores. Further, users should only have access to those application functions and data that are necessary to perform their jobs.

Assign responsibility for administering security

At the beginning of application development, determine who is responsible for verifying the completion of the tasks in this checklist, and assign clear responsibility for each task to the Security Administrator.

  • Create a Security Administrator work queue.
  • Add operators to this work queue who are responsible for verifying the completion of checklist tasks.
  • Click the option on each task to create a corresponding user story, give it a high priority, and assign to this work queue.

    For more information, see Notifying operators of work queue activity.

Independent security assessment

An independent assessment of your application’s security, and sign-off of that assessment, is always recommended and is required by most organizations’ IT Security groups.

Guardrail compliance: the basis of a secure application

The most important security requirement for all Pega Platform applications is to maintain guardrail compliance. Pega Platform security features cannot always be successfully enforced in custom code.

Use the built-in security configuration features in Pega Platform to protect your application, and do not rely on custom code built by developers who are not security experts.

Review the Application Guardrails landing page weekly and make changes to keep your application rules in compliance.

Do not wait until deploying your application to eliminate non-compliant rules, because applying changes is costlier after deployment.

For more information, see Improving your compliance score.

If your application includes custom Java or custom HTML written by your project team, there are special tasks you must perform to secure that code.

For more information, see:

Not all security tasks are required for all applications or releases

It’s important to understand the nature of the application and how it will be deployed when reviewing the Security Checklist tasks – these tasks are not required for all applications:

  • Security Checklist core tasks

    The Security Checklist provides Pega's leading practices for securely deploying applications. To assist you in tracking the completion of the tasks in the Security Checklist, Pega Platform shows the overall completion on the Dev Studio Home page, and built-in ways to track the status of each task.

  • Security Checklist additional tasks

    These tasks are not part of the core Security Checklist because they do not apply to all applications. You should review these additional tasks and determine if they apply to your application.

  • Security Checklist when deploying on Pega Cloud

    For applications deployed on Pega Cloud Services, there are additional considerations you should address when completing the Security Checklist.

  • Security Checklist when deploying in on-premises environments

    When you are deploying on-premises, there are additional considerations you should address when completing the Security Checklist.

  • Security Checklist for custom code

    These tasks are not part of the core Security Checklist because they do not apply to all applications. You should review these tasks whenever you use custom code in your application to mitigate risks.

  • Preparing your application for secure deployment

    Use the Application Security Checklist to prepare your application for deployment. By completing the tasks on this checklist, you can safeguard sensitive data and improve the security of your application.

  • Security guidelines for test environments

    As a best practice, configure the application server in your test environment to mirror a production environment configuration.

  • Adding the Security Checklist to an application created before 7.3.1

    The security checklist is automatically added to applications starting in Pega Platform 7.3.1. You can manually add the security checklist to applications that were created in earlier versions. By completing the tasks on the checklist, you can improve the security of your application.

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