SERVICES

Software Engineering for Privacy and Security

AI-powered development accelerates delivery but introduces new attack vectors across the SDLC. We help teams secure AI-assisted workflows with architecture reviews, threat modeling, secure coding practices, SDLC security audits, and hands-on training.

Section 01 · Engineering services

Where privacy and security become engineering decisions

Privacy and security engineering converts risk decisions into architecture, code, defaults, tests, pipelines, and operational evidence. The deliverable is running software that behaves as the policy claims, which is a different artefact from a document describing how it should behave. Up Secure works on both sides of that line — building systems and independently reviewing them — with particular depth in Python and Django.

Verification depth follows published standards rather than a private checklist. OWASP ASVS 5.0 organises roughly 350 requirements across 17 chapters and sets how deeply a component is examined. OWASP SAMM 2.0 assesses the delivery process itself through 15 security practices grouped under five business functions. The NIST Secure Software Development Framework, SP 800-218, defines 19 practices that customers increasingly name directly in contracts.

The regulatory ground has shifted for anyone selling software in the EU. Under the Cyber Resilience Act, manufacturers of products with digital elements must report actively exploited vulnerabilities and severe incidents from 11 September 2026 — an early warning within 24 hours, a full notification within 72 hours. A software bill of materials, a coordinated disclosure policy, and free security updates become product obligations rather than engineering preferences.

The privacy half runs on the same code. Article 25 of the GDPR requires data protection to be implemented in the processing itself — defaults, minimisation, retention, and access as built. ISO 27001 controls A.8.25 through A.8.34 cover the same ground from the management-system side, which means one body of engineering evidence can serve a product audit, a certification audit, and a customer questionnaire.

11 Sep 2026
CRA vulnerability reporting begins
24 h
CRA early warning deadline
17
ASVS 5.0 verification chapters
19
NIST SSDF practices
A.8.25–A.8.34
ISO 27001 secure development controls
Standards that define engineering scope and depth

Engineering work is measured against published frameworks so that findings transfer between an audit, a customer questionnaire, and a regulator. Each cell represents one practice or control; point at a framework to see representative entries. Counts are the full published sets.

Annex A controls A.8.25 – A.8.34

10 of 52
  • A.8.25 Secure development life cycle
  • A.8.26 Application security requirements
  • A.8.27 Secure system architecture and engineering principles
  • A.8.28 Secure coding
  • A.8.29 Security testing in development and acceptance
  • A.8.30 Outsourced development
  • A.8.31 Separation of development, test and production environments
  • A.8.32 Change management
Section 02 · Engineering drivers

When engineering work has to happen rather than wait

The cost of a control rises sharply once the decision behind it has shipped. A trust boundary drawn wrongly at design time is a refactor after release; a data flow that should never have existed becomes a deletion exercise across backups. The usual triggers are concrete: a new integration or identity flow, a Cyber Resilience Act reporting obligation that starts on 11 September 2026, a customer contract naming SSDF or ASVS, or the same class of defect appearing in three consecutive releases.

  1. 01 Architecture or data-flow change New trust boundaries, integrations, and identity flows are cheap to correct at design time and expensive afterwards. 5
  2. 02 Cyber Resilience Act obligations Reporting starts 11 September 2026 and CE marking follows on 11 December 2027, both requiring evidence the team may not yet produce. 4
  3. 03 Contractual framework requirements Buyers increasingly name SSDF, ASVS, or SAMM directly, which turns an internal practice into a demonstrable one. 4
  4. 04 Recurring defect classes The same finding across releases indicates a missing feedback loop in requirements, review, or testing. 3
  5. 05 AI-assisted delivery Faster code production raises the value of review boundaries, dependency provenance, and clear human accountability. 2
Indicative strength on a 1–5 scale, based on Up Secure engagement patterns.
Manufacturers of products with digital elements

Anyone placing software on the EU market falls under the Cyber Resilience Act, which requires an SBOM, a disclosure policy, and free security updates for the support period.

Python and Django delivery teams

Framework-level decisions — ORM query construction, template autoescaping, session and CSRF configuration, settings separation — decide whole categories of defect before any test runs.

Teams answering SSDF or ASVS questionnaires

A contract naming a framework converts internal practice into evidence, and the gap usually sits in provenance, release archiving, and review records rather than in coding itself.

Section 03 · Lifecycle coverage

Where each service contributes

Design, implementation, and verification are connected: a finding at one stage usually explains a decision made at an earlier one. The matrix shows where each area attaches across the product lifecycle; the services that deliver them are listed further down.

Engineering service coverage across the product lifecycle
DiscoverDesignBuildVerifyImprove
Design & architecture
Threat and data-flow analysis
Security and privacy architecture review
Control and security requirements
Implementation
Secure and privacy-preserving development
Dependency and SBOM management
Pipeline and release controls
Verification
Secure source code review
Application penetration testing
Delivery system
Secure SDLC audit
Team enablement and secure coding practice
Section 04 · Service portfolio

Engineering, assurance, and enablement services

The catalogue below groups the available services by expertise, keeping delivery support, independent assessment, and advisory work as separate choices. The separation is deliberate: a team that builds a control should not be the only party that assesses it, and a contract that blurs the two produces evidence an auditor will discount.

Audits and Assessments

Systematic compliance audits, security assessments, and maturity evaluations across GDPR, ISO 27001, NIS 2, SOC 2, and AI Act frameworks for organizations in regulated industries.

Secure Source Code Review

SAST and manual code review for Python/Django apps. Findings mapped to OWASP Top 10 and CWE with fix guidance.

NIS 2 DirectiveISO 27001
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GDPR Compliance Audit

GDPR compliance audit covering Art.5–35 with gap matrix, RoPA assessment, DPA chain analysis, and remediation roadmap.

GDPR
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Web Application Penetration Testing

Web app penetration testing with OWASP methodology. Severity-scored findings and remediation guidance for Python/Django.

NIS 2 DirectiveISO 27001SOC 2
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Consultancy and Advisory

Strategic consultancy and implementation advisory across GDPR, AI Act, ISO 27001, NIS 2, and cybersecurity for organizations building compliance programs or making security architecture decisions.

Secure Source Code Review

SAST and manual code review for Python/Django apps. Findings mapped to OWASP Top 10 and CWE with fix guidance.

NIS 2 DirectiveISO 27001
Read more

Secure SDLC Consulting

Secure SDLC consulting — embedding security gates, threat modeling, and DevSecOps practices into your development pipeline.

NIS 2 DirectiveGDPRISO 27001
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Start the conversation

Scope engineering work before the design decision becomes a refactor.

The first conversation identifies the trust boundaries, data flows, and delivery controls in question, and what evidence has to exist for them. Where the Cyber Resilience Act applies, it also establishes what a software bill of materials, a disclosure policy, and a defined support period mean for your release process.

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Why Up Secure
Engineers who have shipped Reviews are done by people who have run production Python and Django systems, not only read about them.
Depth set by a standard ASVS 5.0 chapters make verification depth explicit up front instead of negotiated finding by finding.
Independence kept intact Where we build, we say so. A control assessed by the team that wrote it is not independent evidence, and an auditor will treat it accordingly.
Section 05 · Frequently asked

Questions asked before engineering work is scoped

Frequently asked questions

What does the Cyber Resilience Act require from a software team?
From 11 September 2026, manufacturers of products with digital elements must report actively exploited vulnerabilities and severe incidents: an early warning within 24 hours of becoming aware, a full notification within 72 hours, and a final report once a corrective measure exists. From 11 December 2027 the essential requirements apply in full, including conformity assessment and CE marking. In engineering terms that means a maintained software bill of materials, a coordinated vulnerability disclosure policy, a defined support period, and a way to ship free security updates.
Does source-code review replace penetration testing?
No. Code review examines the implementation and reaches systemic causes, including paths unreachable from outside the running system. Penetration testing validates exploitable behaviour in the deployed target, including configuration and environment issues that never appear in a repository. They answer adjacent questions, and the combination is what allows a finding to be traced from symptom to cause.
Which verification standard should scope be written against?
ASVS 5.0 is the practical choice for a component or application, because its 17 chapters let depth be set explicitly rather than negotiated per finding. SAMM 2.0 fits when the question is about the delivery process rather than one product. SSDF is the right reference when a customer contract names it. Writing scope against a published standard also means the next vendor can pick up where the last one stopped.
What does Article 25 of the GDPR require in engineering terms?
Data protection by design and by default has to be implemented in the processing itself, not documented alongside it. In practice that is a set of concrete decisions: which fields are collected at all, what the default visibility of a record is, how long data survives in primary storage and in backups, who can read it, and what the audit log captures. Each is a code and configuration decision that a reviewer can verify.
How does AI-assisted development change the scope?
It changes where the risk concentrates rather than the amount of it. Generated code raises questions about dependency provenance, licence exposure, and whether a reviewer understood what was merged. Tools with repository access raise questions about what leaves the environment. The controls are conventional — review boundaries, dependency pinning, secret handling, and named human accountability for merged code — but they have to be stated, because volume makes informal review unreliable.
Can support be embedded in an existing delivery team?
Yes, as a bounded review, implementation support, an embedded specialist role, or a recurring assurance cadence. The one condition worth setting in advance is independence: if the same engineers both build and formally assess a control, the assessment cannot be presented as an independent one. Keeping the roles distinct costs little at the start and preserves the value of the evidence.