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A Study on the Engineering of Security Features

Software security is a concern that needs to be considered by everyone involved in software development. The goal of this study is to investigate how security is implemented in practice. This study extends our recent publication at the top-tier International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2025, preprint publicly available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.11546). We are a team of researchers from Ruhr University Bochum (Chair of Software Engineering and the cluster of excellence CASA), which, together with the Max Planck Institute in Bochum, is Europe’s largest security research center, and Chalmers|University of Gothenburg. In this survey, we will ask about general characteristics of your software engineering process and then dive into practices for developing security ‘features,’ which are functionalities of software systems that aim to protect assets, or mitigate attacks.

This survey will only take 15 minutes. Thank you for participating in our survey.

If you have any questions, please contact us:

Kevin Hermann (kevin.hermann@rub.de),
Sven Peldszus,
Jan-Philipp Steghöfer,
Thorsten Berger

In case of any concerns, please contact:

Ruhr University Bochum
Universitätsstraße 150
44801 Bochum

We collect responses to survey questions, which include professional experiences, opinions, and demographic information. No personally identifiable information (PII) is required unless voluntarily provided. The data collected will be used solely for research purposes to analyze how industrial professionals engineer security features in software systems. All collected data will be stored securely and accessible only to authorized researchers. We employ appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your data from unauthorized access, disclosure, or loss. Your responses will be analyzed in an aggregated and anonymized manner. No individual responses will be shared or published in a way that could identify participants. Participation in this survey is voluntary. You may choose not to answer any question or withdraw at any time without any consequences. If you wish to withdraw your personal data after submission, please contact us at kevin.hermann@rub.de or sven.peldszus@rub.de. If you have any questions about this privacy policy or how your data is handled, please contact us.