Software security: Why is it important in any software development process
Introduction
Since March 2020, IT professionals have been working from home instead of going to their offices to manage a large workforce, thus more people are using the cloud (due to the impact of the pandemic). But, this initial delay was required in order to enable a focused shift towards improving the cloud landscape and building organizational workflows which fits the new normal.
Software…
Tucker - Trip, he’s asked Malcolm to call him - looks vaguely ill when he corners Malcolm in the corridor outside the armory, glancing around like he’s worried someone might overhear them. Malcolm lets him crowd them both against the wall, tilting his chin up to stare at the other man.
“I need a favour.”
He raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"
They both know what it's about, but Malcolm is bored and there's a slight level of amusement to be found in forcing his commanding officer to admit that he's pregnant.
“This wouldn’t happen to be about your… condition, would it?”
Trip scowls. “It ain’t a condition, it’s a damn mistake, and I’d appreciate it if the whole ship didn’t find out about it before I’ve even had time to process it myself.”
“You’re worried about the rumour mill.”
“Yeah." Trip rubs the back of his neck. "You know how people talk. One person overhears somethin’ in sickbay, tells a friend, and next thing you know, the chef’s askin’ if I want pickles with my ice cream.”
“I see your concern.” He magnanimously does not point out that several members of the security team have stopped in the doorway to the armoury, peering around at the two of them, both as if they want to know what is happening, and as if they are fully prepared to step in if either of them happen to get violent. With no context, Trip having him backed into the wall probably doesn't look good.
“Do you?” Trip looks exasperated. “Look, I just don’t wanna deal with it right now. Can you… I don’t know, keep a lid on it? You’re good at that kind of thing, right?”
Reed straightens, nodding briskly. “Consider it handled.”
The people in the doorway - Hunter, Nguyen and Castillo, he's fairly certain - duck back in as Trip turns, pressed against the wall just enough that the distracted chief engineer doesn't see them as he walks away.
They stick their heads back out again as soon as he's gone, all watching Reed with a concerning level of glee; they might not know what's going on, but they sure know that it's something.
"You have drills to do." He informs them dryly, watching as they all vanish again before he sighs.
There's no way he can just keep it quiet now, not now they know something has happened, and there's no point in telling them to keep it to themselves, because if there’s one thing he knows about security teams—all security teams—it’s that they thrive on gossip. It’s part of what keeps them going during long shifts. More than that, it’s something they’re trained to keep an eye on.
It's not that gossip is a part of their job, as such, but it does come under their umbrella, protecting the crew from themselves as well as from external threats - after all, it's only a matter of time before some of the bored scientists decide to implement a prank war, and it'll be his job to keep that from getting out of hand.
And now, against his better judgment, it’s his job to keep the ship from learning that their chief engineer is, somehow, pregnant.
He follows the three of them into the armoury, already resigned to whatever nonsense he’s about to walk into. As usual, his instincts are correct: the team are not doing their drills – they aren’t even pretending to do their drills, just holding the equipment loosely – instead, they are gathered in a misshapen knot in the centre of the room, speaking over each other in hushed, but gleefully enthusiastic tones.
“Could be some kinda alien virus,” Foster is saying. “Maybe he got stuck in a transporter malfunction.”
Rogers notices him as he walks in and makes an aborted gesture, as if she’s about to try and start up the drills again.
“Or maybe it’s genetic,” Mack counters. “Something dormant in his DNA until the right conditions—”
“Or,” Di Dio interrupts, grinning, “he got cursed.”
There are general objections to that, mainly along the lines of ‘magic isn’t real,’ and Reed sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose and clears his throat, loudly and pointedly. They fall silent, spreading out again to face him with expectant faces.
“Ensign Rogers,” he says instead of giving in to them, “I need to speak to you in my office.”
She follows him obediently across the room and into what is nominally his office. It’s a small room off the armoury with a desk, a chair, a com, and a computer. It’s also not much bigger than a broom closet, but it’s what he has to work with.
Malcolm can feel the eyes of the rest of the team on them as he closes the door. He might not yet have a lie to give them, but if he doesn’t get ahead of it before they leave for lunch, the entire thing is going to spiral out of control.
“Ensign.”
There’s no second chair in the office, so she perches on the edge of his desk. “Sir?”
He sighs, again. “We will be following the xyrillian ship, attempting to regain contact with them.”
Her eyes and smile are brighter than they have any right to be. “Why?”
“I need you to inform the team that it is because Commander Tucker has accidentally married one of the xyrillian crew, and Starfleet want the marriage annulled before it can cause any problems.”
Rogers nods, reasonably, and for a stupid moment he lets himself hope that she’ll let the rest of it go.
“What’s the real reason, sir?”
It was a stupid hope. He sighs. Braces his elbows on his knees and looks up at her. “You cannot tell the rest of the team this.”
She still looks way too thrilled at the entire situation when she agrees.
"He's pregnant."
Rogers falls silent for a moment and he watches as she tries to twist the situation to fit her worldview. "Like... with a baby?"
"An alien baby, yes."
"I thought he had..." she breaks off and makes a slightly crude gesture in the direction of her crotch instead of finishing the sentence. Malcolm bites down on the inside of his lip to keep himself from laughing.
"He does."
"Right."
And then, because he's already too deep in this, "He's growing nipples and everything."
"Nip- he already has...!" She cuts herself off with an expression that suggests she doesn't actually want to think about that. Malcolm can sympathise.
"I know." He replies, mildly.
There’s a pause. She glances between him and the door.
“Go.”
“Yessir.” She hops up and almost bounces out the room. And she leaves the door open, so Malcolm had an audible front-row seat to the chaos that he’s started to unfold.
The team pounces almost immediately. “Well? What did he say?!”
He hears her take a deep breath, and while he can't actually see any of them, he imagines her mouth twitching with barely concealed humour. Imagines that the slight shake to her voice when she speaks is laughter she’s trying not to let out.
“Commander Tucker accidentally married one of the Xyrillians,” she announces. “Starfleet wants the marriage annulled before it causes a diplomatic incident.”
There is, for a moment, blessed silence in the armoury. Despite himself, Malcolm smiles.
Then—
“He what?” Foster demands, voice trailing off in a slight shriek.
“Oh, this is beautiful,”
“We have got to get him a wedding gift,”
“I’m pretty sure that makes him an ambassador’s husband,” Castillo jumps in, loud enough that Malcolm's pretty sure he's supposed to hear it. “Maybe he’ll get diplomatic immunity.”
"It's not an ambassador." Rogers objects. "Just a crew member."
"OK, but... a wedding gift, right?"
Reed, still in his office, buries his face in his hands as the chaos continues to erupt outside. He takes a slow breath, willing himself to remain calm. There is no undoing this now.
And, in a moment of deep and bitter regret, he wonders why he didn’t just tell Trip to spread his own damn rumor and keep himself out of it entirely.
*
Trip finds him in the corridor outside the armory again, and this time, he doesn’t look vaguely ill, he looks furious.
Before Malcolm can react, Trip has him backed into the wall again, one hand braced beside his head, the other jabbing a finger into his chest. It’s an oddly intimate position, and Malcolm were a stupider man (or maybe a braver one) he would point this out, but he’s not, so he doesn’t.
“What the hell, Malcolm?”
He sighs, slowly, tilts his head against the wall and remembers that he chose to be there, he had chosen to join this crew, through good and through bad, through truth and through… spreading rumours, apparently.
“Good morning, Commander.”
Trip does not look appeased by his greeting.
Over his shoulder, Malcolm can see that the door to the armoury is open, again - do they ever close it? - and this time, there’s only one person peering out. Rogers. Watching the whole thing unfold, both with that same amused glee, and with a readiness that suggests she’s prepared to put the Commander on his back, should it be necessary.
Trip’s voice drops into a hiss. “How, how, is this fixin’ the situation?!”
Malcolm lifts an eyebrow. “Has anyone mentioned your… condition?”
They’re still looking for the Xyrillians’ ship, by now the entire crew is aware of that, and Malcolm’s pre-prepared excuse has actually been useful. Not that Trip seems to appreciate that.
Trip falters. His mouth opens, then closes again.
Behind him Rogers has a hand over her mouth, stifling a smile. She knows the truth, and Malcolm’s pretty certain Hoshi and Travis know the truth as well, either through being told or working it out, based on the way he saw them crowded into a small triangle in the mess hall the day before, pointedly not looking in Trip’s direction.
Malcolm allows himself a small, satisfied smile. “Exactly.”
The other man throws his hands up and storms off without another word; he scowls at Rogers as he walks past her. “What are you starin’ at?”
She doesn’t respond, just watches him walk down the corridor, but when Malcolm approaches her, she turns her head towards him with a faint smirk.
“Those hormones are really getting to him, huh?”
Trip lets out a strangled shriek and Malcolm shoves the two of them into the armoury, shutting the door behind him as he bites down on his laughter.
“Stop bullying the chief engineer, you’re going to wake up to a shower that doesn’t work.”
“He doesn’t know which shower is mine.” She replies with far too much confidence. “And even if he did, I could just use someone else’s.”
*
As far as Malcolm is concerned, the situation is resolved a few days later; the Xyrillian crew has been contacted, the baby removed, and everything is back to normal, with the addition of a few snickering crew members expressing their sympathy to Trip at his ‘divorce’ as they walk to the mess hall together.
He watches Trip wave off the latest one with good humour.
“Guess T’Pol was right, I should watch where I stick my fingers.”
“Or at least ask what it is before you stick your fingers in.”
Trip rolls his eyes, but it’s amused. “Yeah, yeah, let’s just move on and pretend this never happened.”
“Sir?” It’s Foster sticking his head around the office door, rather than Rogers and that sets off alarm bells in Malcolm’s mind almost immediately. “Uh, it’s Commander Tucker.”
He follows Foster back out into the main armoury, and is greeted with the sight of a rather furious Trip pointing an accusing finger at Rogers. Di Dio is stood almost in between them, clearly prepared for Trip to lunge at her, although Malcolm likes to think that he wouldn’t do that.
It’s clear, immediately, that someone has dropped the ball on keeping the Commander’s secret, not least because he promptly yells an accusation at Rogers that she told everyone he was pregnant.
"Pregnant?" At least three people repeat, the word echoing around the room.
Trip pauses, glances around at their faces, and apparently realizes that he's made a mistake.
"I didn't tell anyone." Rogers insists, and she looks so utterly confused that Malcolm believes her. She might have been thrilled at the possibility of gossip, but he doesn't think she would actually break someone's privacy like that.
Despite his realisation, Trip stands his ground. “Then who did?”
She stammers, “Uh, Sato and Mayweather knew as well."
He drops his hands and then brings them back up to press into the corners of his eyes, something like clarity dawning across his face. "Fuckin' Travis," he mutters and walks out again, leaving a room full of gaping security officers in his wake.
There’s a beat of silence.
"Was... was he actually..."
Malcolm sighs, the cat is out of the bag at this point, and confirms it.
There's another pause, and then, because apparently not poking the bear is not a skill that Starfleet has ingrained in their security personnel, "Is that why he's been so moody?"
