Software developers should be held personally accountable for the security of the code they write, Howard Schmidt, former White House cybersecurity advisor, said.

Speaking Tuesday at the SecureLondon 2005 conference, Schmidt, who is now the CEO of R&H Security Consulting, also called for better training for software developers. He said he believes many developers don't have the skills needed to write secure code.

"In software development, we need to have personal quality assurances from developers that the code they write is secure," said Schmidt, who cited the example of some developers he recently met who had created a Web application to talk to a back-end database using SSL.

"They had strong authentication, strong passwords, an encrypted tunnel. The stored data was encrypted. But when that data was sent to the purchasing office, it was sent as a plain text file. This was not an end-to-end solution. We need individual accountability from developers for end-to-end solutions, so we can go to them and say: 'Is this completely secure?'" Schmidt said.

Schmidt also referred to a recent survey from Microsoft that found that 64 percent of software developers were not confident they could write secure applications. For him, better training is the way forward.

"Most university courses traditionally focused on usability, scalability and manageability--not security. Now a lot of universities are focusing on information assurance and security, but traditionally Web application development has been measured in mouse clicks--how to make users click through," Schmidt said.

Companies that develop software also have a role to play, said Schmidt, by checking that prospective employees have relevant security qualifications before hiring them.

The British Computer Society agreed that there should be accountability in software development, but argued that companies should be held responsible for the security of the code written by their employees, rather than the employees themselves.

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