Best Application Security Solutions

All applications have security flaws. No app is perfect. The faster and sooner in the development process you can find and fix these flaws, the better off your enterprise will be.

With today’s continuous deployment and integration of applications, apps are being updated and refined constantly. This means that security tools need to keep the pace, finding issues with code much faster than they did in the past.

Interestingly enough, as new applications continue to come out, new vulnerabilities are constantly introduced. We are actually creating many of the tools that cybercriminals use against us and building them right into our applications.

Your organization needs an application security program in order to ensure that as your apps are developed and managed, they are secure and are not opening your company up to attack.

There are four main reasons why application security is important:

1. Securing sensitive information - This is a major concern for most people, which is why it should be important to your organization.
2. Preventing potential attacks - Find the vulnerabilities before the hackers do.
3. Improving your reputation - Businesses that excel at application security have reported increased sales, higher consumer loyalty, and better reputations.
4. Efficiency - Integrating application security tools into your development settings can ultimately simplify your workflow.

One of the reasons apps are such a popular target is because organizations are not careful enough about securing them. In fact, 79% of developers have an ineffective application security process or none at all. While businesses spend billions securing their hardware, network, and perimeter, they are not investing sufficiently in the security of their applications.

You need to secure your apps because:

1. Your applications are inextricably tied to the success of your business. Insecure applications equal an insecure business.

2. Most, if not all, apps are vulnerable. According to a report by Veracode, 70% of all applications they looked at had at least one of the top 10 web vulnerabilities.

3. Apps are the number one attack target and attacks against them are growing by more than 25% per year.

4. You can’t afford not to. Data breaches cost businesses around the world hundreds of millions of dollars. If you experience a data breach, you will have to deal with:

• Lost revenue due to stolen data, lower sales, or falling stock prices.
• The price of investigation and cleanup
• The cost of downtime. Every hour of downtime can cost you $100,000.
• Long-term damage to your brand reputation

RASP is a technology that is designed to detect attacks on an application in real time. When an application begins to run, RASP kicks in and analyzes the app’s behavior as well as the context of that behavior in order to identify threats that might have been overlooked by other security solutions..

RASP operates on the server the app is running on, and can protect both web and non-web apps. It makes sure that all calls from the application to the system are secure and directly validates data requests inside the app.

When a security event occurs, RASP takes control of the app. It can be set to diagnostic mode, in which case an alarm will alert the IT department that there is a problem. Or it can be set to protection mode, in which case it will try to stop the event by preventing the execution of an app or terminating the user’s session.

The application layer is the number one attack surface for hackers - 84% of cyber attacks occur on the application layer. You should be building security into the software development life cycle (SDLC). Below are four best practices for secure application development:

1. Use software composition analysis (SCA) to find open source components during the development stages of an app. This way you know exactly what’s in your code.
2. Know how your applications will be deployed and incorporate that information into your threat models. Your strategies will vary depending on how the app is going to be used.
3. There are all kinds of tools for software security testing, including RASP (runtime application security testing), DAST (dynamic application security testing), SAST (static application security testing), IAST (interactive application security testing), and penetration testing. Know your tools and use them appropriately.
4. Security shouldn’t be an afterthought. Create security requirements. Build security into the development process.

Application Security Tools integrate seamlessly into your DevOps pipeline, allowing you to identify potential vulnerabilities at every stage of development. They automate security checks, reducing the manual workload on your team. By catching issues early, you avoid costly fixes later and ensure enhanced security measures are naturally embedded into your CI/CD processes.

Using SAST, you can detect vulnerabilities during the early stages of development by analyzing source code before the application runs. It provides quick feedback and helps developers address security issues immediately, thereby reducing the risk of vulnerabilities reaching production. SAST enhances code quality and reduces remediation costs significantly.

RASP actively monitors and protects applications during runtime, offering real-time threat detection and prevention. It’s essential for modern applications as it mitigates vulnerabilities that might be exploited in production. RASP provides contextual awareness, analyzing application behavior to prevent attacks, and adapts to potential threats dynamically, thus offering robust protection.

When choosing a WAF, prioritize features like comprehensive logging and analytic capabilities, real-time threat monitoring, and automated security updates. Look for easy integration with existing systems, support for multiple protocols, and an advanced filtering mechanism to block malicious traffic. A good WAF should also offer strong DDoS protection and user-friendly management interfaces.

DAST provides an outside-in view, simulating external attacks on running applications to identify vulnerabilities that might not be visible through code analysis. It complements SAST and RASP by catching runtime issues and validating the effectiveness of security controls. DAST is essential for threat modeling, providing actionable insights that improve overall application security posture.