C and C++ are Memory Unsafe
Software development is a core capability of nearly all large organizations, affecting how or whether they reach their goals. Over the past 12 months, there’s been a growing call for transitioning away from memory unsafe programming languages. Several leading organizations have publicly recommended this shift in development practices to help mitigate the risk of expensive and dangerous security events due to vulnerabilities in memory unsafe programming languages.
Programming languages such as C and C++ have been used for decades and are still common in large organizations. However, they are notorious for their security vulnerabilities as they leave room for memory leaks, buffer overflows, and vulnerabilities that can lead to cyberattacks. Additionally, these languages require manual memory management, making it difficult for developers to identify and fix vulnerabilities. This makes it easier for attackers to find and exploit security holes in software applications, which could lead to data breaches, financial loss, and potential human harm.
On the other hand, memory safe programming languages such as Rust, Swift, and Go were built to minimize some of these security vulnerabilities. Unlike memory unsafe languages, they enable automated memory management, drastically reducing the chances of errors occurring that malicious actors could misuse and abuse. With automated memory management, developers can confidently write code that is less prone to buffer overflow and memory leaks, leading to fewer security risks and improved application stability.
Beyond improved security and application stability, memory safe languages provide other benefits. They offer a more productive environment for developers where they can write code faster without worrying about the system or environment. Cultivating this environment can help reduce the time required for software development and testing, making products accessible to end-users in a shorter period and increasing time to value. Memory safe languages also perform better than memory unsafe languages, and their scalable features allow businesses to handle more significant workloads as they grow.
Furthermore, migrating to memory safe languages can reduce the costs associated with cybersecurity as businesses will spend less time and money resolving security breaches. With the increase in frequency and impact of cyberattacks, it has become crucial for businesses to invest in appropriate security measures. Adopting memory safe languages can be a step in that direction, reducing the need for additional resources and saving organizations potentially millions of dollars in incident response and remediation.
The arguments above are not new and are shared in case a recap is helpful. Despite these ideas being available for some time, few large organizations have begun an intentional transition. Moving away from memory unsafe languages should be prioritized as another IT transformation that IT and security leaders collaborate on. These leaders should commit to a multi-year plan with milestones that reduces the percentage of the portfolio to the minimum use of C and C++ that’s acceptable over time. While eliminating memory unsafe languages may be impossible, a more appropriate ratio of unsafe to safe is realistic and the correct business decision. Memory safe languages offer better security, productivity, performance, scalability, and cost and resource savings. With these benefits, any organization can improve its IT portfolio, increase data security, and stay ahead of the competition.