Secure-by-Design Software Procurement: Questions to Ask Before You Buy
Software procurement is one of the points where a business can influence security without building every control itself. A product that makes basic safeguards difficult or sells them only as unexpected add-ons can create ongoing risk and cost. CISA’s Secure by Design work emphasizes that technology manufacturers should take greater responsibility for customer security outcomes. Its guidance highlights features such as multifactor authentication, logging, and single sign-on as security capabilities that should be available without extra cost. Ask vendors precise questions and verify answers in a product demonstration and contract.
Describe the use case and data before reviewing vendors
Write down who will use the product, what business process it supports, what information enters it, and which systems it connects to. Include customer, employee, financial, operational, and source-code data where relevant. Identify users outside the company, such as suppliers or contractors, and whether a process depends on the product during a service outage. A clear use case prevents a vendor comparison from being driven solely by feature count and makes it easier to distinguish mandatory safeguards from nice-to-have functions.
Classify information according to the organization’s own rules and ask how it is stored, accessed, exported, deleted, and backed up. Confirm where data and support access may occur, what subprocessors are involved, how logs are handled, and what happens when the contract ends. Treat location and privacy answers as inputs to a legal and risk review, not as automatic evidence of UAE compliance. Sector, free-zone, and customer requirements may differ. Ask the vendor to identify which product tier and configuration the answer refers to.
Ask about security capabilities and default settings
Can administrators require MFA for every user and enforce stronger authentication for privileged accounts? Is SSO supported for the plan being quoted? Can access be limited by role, and can the company remove a user centrally? What audit events are available, how long are they retained, and can the customer export them to its own monitoring system? Ask the vendor to show the settings and available evidence rather than answering only “yes” to a feature question. A capability that is hidden, unavailable in your plan, or difficult to operate may not provide practical protection.
Ask how vulnerabilities and updates are handled: how the vendor communicates security issues, applies fixes, supports older versions, and informs customers about material changes. For a hosted service, clarify how customer data is logically separated, how support personnel access it, and whether administrative access is recorded. For installed products, ask about secure configuration baselines, signing, update channels, and end-of-support dates. A supplier may not share every internal detail, but a clear process and accountable response are more informative than broad claims about being “enterprise grade.”
Test integration, accessibility, and operational fit
Review the application’s connections to identity, finance, CRM, email, document storage, and reporting. Each integration can expand data exposure and permissions. Ask whether scopes can be limited, credentials rotated, and connections revoked. Confirm how the product behaves if an integration is disabled or a user’s role changes. During a demo, test ordinary user flows, administrator tasks, account recovery, export, and audit history. If an important control requires vendor support, document the response path and any service limitation.
Security should be considered alongside operational fit. Can staff access the product using supported devices and assistive technologies? Are sign-in and account-recovery steps understandable? Can the organization manage Arabic and English content if needed? What support hours cover UAE business operations and the locations where staff work? A secure product that employees cannot use may prompt risky workarounds. Arrange a limited pilot with representative users and include support effort, implementation, training, and migration in the cost comparison.
Build procurement evidence and contract clarity
Keep a concise decision record that identifies requirements, vendor answers, evidence reviewed, unresolved risks, compensating controls, and the approving owner. Attach relevant security documentation and note its date and scope. Ask for contract language covering data handling, incident communication, support access, service availability, data export, retention, and deletion. Verify that promises from a sales presentation appear in the product configuration or agreement where they matter. Avoid assuming a general certification covers your exact service, region, product tier, or usage pattern.
Consider exit before adoption becomes difficult to reverse. Confirm export formats, API limits, data deletion process, transition support, and whether critical workflows can continue during migration. The business may reasonably accept a vendor-specific dependency, but decision-makers should know its cost and recovery path. Revisit procurement risk when a new feature uses AI, a vendor changes ownership, or the organization expands to new data categories.
Software procurement checklist
- Document the use case, users, data categories, integrations, and criticality.
- Confirm MFA, SSO, role-based access, offboarding, and audit logging in the quoted tier.
- Ask about security updates, vulnerability reporting, support access, and incident communications.
- Review storage, processing, subprocessors, exports, retention, backups, and deletion.
- Test the product with representative users, workflows, and accessibility needs.
- Record vendor evidence, unresolved risks, owners, and compensating controls.
- Clarify security, availability, support, data, and exit commitments in contract terms.
- Reassess when usage, features, vendor terms, or data categories change.
A UAE SME example and practical conclusion
A Dubai consultancy is selecting a cloud document-approval platform for client proposals. It asks whether MFA, SSO, named-role permissions, and audit export are included in the quoted plan, then tests whether a departing contractor loses access promptly. The team verifies how comments and attachments are exported and what happens to records after termination. A vendor cannot meet one desired logging requirement, so the consultancy records the gap and considers whether its own monitoring and retention process can compensate. Procurement can now compare actual operating risk rather than brochure claims alone.
Security-aware procurement is an evidence exercise, not a checklist that automatically proves a product safe. CISA highlights important security features, but the availability and terms of a specific product still require verification. Ask concrete questions, observe the configuration, and preserve the decision record. Combine the review with legal, privacy, and sector assessment where appropriate, and avoid describing a purchase as a compliance guarantee.