(PentaByte is a software product development company located in Austin, Texas. The organization would like to secure communication methods to…

The "secure by communication" principle focuses on ensuring that all data exchange between components, services, or systems is protected. The foundation of this principle is establishing and maintaining secure trust relationships. This involves using strong, mutual authentication to verify identities, enforcing authorization to control access, and encrypting all data in transit using protocols like TLS to ensure confidentiality and integrity. By managing trust, the system can prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, eavesdropping, and unauthorized data manipulation during communication, which is the core intent of this principle.

A. Preventing a cybersecurity breach is the ultimate goal of all security principles combined, not the specific mechanism of "secure by communication."

B. Defense in depth and reducing attack surface are broad architectural security strategies, not specific to the secure communication principle itself.

C. Balancing default configuration settings relates to the "secure by default" principle, which ensures a system is secure out-of-the-box.

1. OWASP, "Secure Coding Practices-Quick Reference Guide," v2-2.0, section "C7: Protect Data Everywhere." The guide emphasizes encrypting data in transit and states, "All communication should be over a secure channel (e.g. TLS)." This directly supports the concept of secure trust relationships. (Source: owasp.org/www-project-secure-coding-practices-quick-reference-guide/)

2. Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute, "Secure Coding," CERT C Coding Standard, "Rule 02. Communication (COM)." This standard details rules for secure interprocess communication, which inherently relies on establishing trust between the communicating processes. (Source: wiki.sei.cmu.edu/confluence/display/c/SEI+CERT+C+Coding+Standard)