Select Page

What is Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)?

ASPM is the phenomenon transforming DevSecOps workflows and helping enterprises make secure software delivery a reality. In today’s advanced threat landscape, it’s hard to maintain a healthy application security posture without a robust ASPM program.

In short, ASPM is an integrated and comprehensive approach to application security. But this is an oversimplified statement. Therefore, we have compiled this article to dispel the myths surrounding ASPM and demonstrate how organizations can utilize it to enhance their security posture.

ASMP Second Fold
ASPM Second Fold

Introduction to Application Security Posture Management

Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) is a modern approach to improving an organization’s security posture by providing a holistic view from across the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC). While the concept of ‘Application Security’ has been around for a while, ASPM has been gaining traction because it brings Continuous Posture Management to application security.

ASPM consolidates various application security test results, policy checks, and a threat remediation program to provide a single source of truth for identifying, correlating, and prioritizing security risks. Ultimately, with an ASPM program, organizations can get visibility into their security posture across every stage of SDLC, improve developer productivity, and stay compliant with industry regulations.

How is Application Security Posture Management Different From Traditional Approaches?

While earlier approaches like Application Security Orchestration and Correlation (ASOC) focused on addressing security risks in pre-production code with the use of AppSec testing techniques (like SAST and SCA), ASPM encompasses a wider spectrum of activities, including incident management, continuous security monitoring, compliance, and policy enforcement.

Gartner defined ASPM as “a solution that analyzes security signals across software development, deployment, and operation to improve visibility, better manage vulnerabilities, and enforce controls.”

Gartner also predicted in a recent report that by 2026, over 40% of organizations developing their own applications will adopt ASPM to swiftly detect and remediate security issues, a significant rise from just 5% in 2023.

Application Security Posture Management
(ASPM) Platform Diagram

Why is Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) important?

ASPM brings orderliness to existing DevSecOps workflows thanks to its comprehensive approach to application security. Without it, DevSecOps teams are prone to facing clutter and chaos pertaining to their security posture. Here are a few reasons why ASPM is important for enterprises:

image
Increasing Cybersecurity Threat Landscape

New vulnerabilities are reported almost daily, expanding the cybersecurity threat landscape. Enterprises must ensure these threats or CVEs do not infiltrate their codebase or impact the software supply chain. ASPM provides proactive visibility and defense, helping organizations stay ahead of emerging threats and continuously secure their applications.

image
Emerging Regulatory Demands

Regulatory requirements, such as GDPR, HIPAA, etc., are placing increasing demands on organizations to maintain robust security postures. Non-compliance can result in severe penalties and reputational damage. ASPM helps organizations enforce security standards, providing a clear audit trail for compliance and ensuring integrity with each software release.

Ready to Strengthen Your Application Security Posture?

OpsMx Delivery Shield integrates seamlessly into your software delivery pipeline and automates vulnerability scans, threat detection, compliance checks, and policy enforcement to give you comprehensive visibility into security posture and keep your application resilient.

Illustration

Key Components of an ASPM Program

An effective ASPM program is built on several foundational components. These components ensure that security is not an afterthought, but rather a key focus area for teams throughout the SDLC. These also establish the structure necessary for managing risks and ensuring compliance.

image
Robust AST Framework

A robust Application Security Testing (AST) framework is the starting point for effective ASPM. AST refers to test types such as SAST, DAST, SCA, IaC & Environment Security, Container & Build Security, etc., which identify vulnerabilities in different stages of SDLC. This ensures proactive testing and reduced production vulnerabilities.

image
Incident Response Plan

A comprehensive Incident Response Plan (IRP) helps address security breaches, vulnerabilities, or any other system downtime. With this, ASPM ensures there are processes in place to investigate, remediate, and learn from security incidents. This will help teams minimize damage and recover more quickly.

image
Team Collaboration

Breaking down silos between DevOps and Security teams improves collaboration and ensures that security is prioritized from the very beginning of SDLC. This fosters better communication, improves response times, and promotes joint ownership for maintaining a healthy security posture for applications.

What are the critical capabilities of an Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) solution?

When evaluating an ASPM tool for your organization, you must ensure that the components discussed in the previous section translate into product capabilities. These capabilities will help you automate security workflows, stay compliant with policies, and manage the AppSec posture holistically, from vulnerability detection to remediation. You should be aware of the following capabilities:

image
Centralized DevSecOps Dashboard

The solution must comprise a centralized DevSecOps dashboard, unifying all security-related data from across the organization. This should provide real-time visibility of security activities, allowing security teams to monitor vulnerabilities, threats, exceptions, and compliance statuses at a glance.

image
Integration with CI/CD Pipeline

Integrating with other DevOps and security tools in the CI/CD pipeline can help aggregate data as well as automate security checks without slowing release velocity. This also helps with continuous monitoring and enforcement of security policies as and when the code is checked-in, thus improving release velocity.

image
Real Time Threat Detection

Real-time threat detection helps respond to security threats and zero-day exploits as and when reported. Immediate detection of vulnerabilities and breaches reduces the exposure window and minimizes damage. This highlights why analyzing security signals is a key component of ASPM.

image
Automated Policy Enforcement

Automated policy enforcement ensures that security standards and policies are consistently applied throughout the SDLC. This includes checking code for compliance and automatically blocking non-compliant deployments. Thus, establishing governance reduces manual intervention, playing a key role in ASPM.

image
Support for Regulatory Compliances

With growing regulatory demands on enterprises, ASPM solutions are expected to provide built-in support for industry-specific compliance requirements (NIST, FedRAMP, OWASP, etc.). Generating compliance reports to prove audit trails further helps organizations display adherence to industry regulations.

Core Business Benefits of ASPM

Business benefits of ASPM connect security improvements to tangible business outcomes, making it appealing to both business and technical audiences.

image
Proactive Risk Mitigation

ASPM recommends continuous application monitoring, urging teams to proactively identify and resolve vulnerabilities before they become critical. This minimizes security gaps and prevents incidents.

image
Enhanced Developer Productivity

By enforcing guardrails and automating security workflows, ASPM reduces the burden on developers. Its recommendation to prioritize Shift Left allows developers to focus on innovation rather than security.

image
Faster Time-to-Market

Automated security workflows along with proactive vulnerability detection and remediation reduces delays arising due to security risks. This helps organizations be agile in a competitive and fast-moving market.

Top 5 Use Cases of Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)

ASPM offers tangible benefits for organizations looking to reduce the attack surface, decrease MTTR, and enhance their AppSec posture. Here are five real-world scenarios that demonstrate ASPM’s value proposition.

Continuous Compliance Monitoring

Problem Statement:

Organizations operating in industries like healthcare, finance, and e-commerce must strictly adhere to regulatory requirements. As regulations evolve and grow, ensuring compliance becomes an ongoing challenge. Besides, manual checks are time-consuming and error-prone.

ASPM Role:

  • ASPM solutions automatically enforce security policies to comply with regulatory requirements.
  • Continuous security monitoring ensures compliance in real time with detailed audit reports.
  • Audit trails also track all security actions and help demonstrate compliance during audits.
Benefits
  • Automated compliance monitoring reduces the manual overhead needed to display adherence to policy regulations.
  • Compliance monitoring also reduces the risk of costly fines, penalties, and reputational damage from non-compliance, providing peace of mind during regulatory audits.
DevSecOps Integration for Secure CI/CD Pipelines

Problem Statement:

In modern software development, agility is critical. However, rapid software delivery using CI/CD pipelines increases the risk of vulnerabilities in the absence of security checks. DevOps teams need to release code quickly without sacrificing security.

ASPM Role:

  • ASPM solutions integrate directly into CI/CD pipelines and perform security checks at every stage of SDLC.
  • ASPM ensures the deployment of only secure code to production by automating vulnerability scans, policy enforcement, and remediation suggestions.
  • By shifting security to the left, ASPM addresses security issues without slowing down releases.
Benefits
  • This integration accelerates software releases while maintaining a high level of security.
  • DevSecOps teams can work more efficiently, knowing that security vulnerabilities will be caught early in the development process.
Real-Time Threat Detection and Response

Problem Statement:

Cyberthreats can appear at any time and target production or other environments. Organizations may not discover vulnerabilities until it is too late without real-time visibility into security threats, which could result in expensive breaches, data loss, or operational disruption.

ASPM Role:

  • ASPM solutions continuously monitor applications in real time for vulnerabilities, unusual activity, and potential threats. When a threat is identified, notifications are triggered.
  • With ASPM, one can observe applications in staging, production, and development environments.
  • A few ASPM solutions reduce the requirement for manual intervention by helping with automatic remediation activities.
Benefits
  • Real-time threat detection shortens the attack window and improves the organization's capacity to react quickly to security lapses.
  • This minimizes the impact caused by security breaches.
Cross-Functional Collaboration Between Security and DevOps Teams

Problem Statement:

In many organizations, security teams and DevOps teams operate in silos, leading to miscommunication, delayed responses, a lack of ownership, and inconsistent enforcement of security policies. This disconnect leads to inefficiencies and increases the risk of overlooking vulnerabilities.

ASPM Role:

  • ASPM solutions provide a centralized platform with unified security data, which both teams can access in real time.
  • ASPM fosters clear communication and a unified process for managing threats and gaining AppSec visibility.
  • Security teams can define and enforce policies, while DevOps teams can receive alerts and remediation guidance within their workflows.
Benefits
  • Bridging the gap between security and DevOps teams improves efficiency in addressing vulnerabilities, leading to faster and more effective responses.
  • Streamlined communication fosters collaboration, reduces friction, and ensures consistent application of policies across the SDLC, thereby reducing the risk of unaddressed vulnerabilities.
Risk Prioritization and Vulnerability Management

Problem Statement:

Modern applications often contain thousands of vulnerabilities, but not all of them pose an immediate threat. Security teams must rank vulnerabilities according to their level of risk to the business, prioritizing the most critical issues for immediate resolution.

ASPM Role:

  • ASPM solutions provide automated risk assessment to prioritize vulnerabilities based on severity, exploitability, and potential business impact.
  • ASPM solutions correlate vulnerability data from different testing tools and environments, allowing teams to focus on the vulnerabilities that matter most.
  • Mature solutions provide actionable insights for remediating and prioritizing vulnerabilities.
Benefits
  • Organizations can allocate resources more effectively to first address the high-risk vulnerabilities.
  • Businesses can save valuable time and resources by focusing on critical issues instead of low-impact or low-priority vulnerabilities.

ASPM Best Practices

As cited earlier in this article, ASPM is becoming increasingly important for enterprises, especially the large ones. Gartner predicts that by 2026, over 40% of organizations will adopt ASPM, compared to just 5% in 2023. ASPM is proving to be the foundational security model for software companies. You must ensure the correct implementation of these ASPM best practices.

image
Shift-Left Security in SDLC

Early integration of security workflows to detect and fix vulnerabilities before they reach production.

image
Policy Enforcement & Compliance Monitoring

Automate policy enforcement and compliance monitoring in order to adhere to industry regulations.

image
Team Collaboration

Improve harmony by fostering collaboration and eliminating silos between DevOps and Security teams.

Risk Prioritization and Risk Management in ASPM Platform

Risk prioritization and risk management are among the most indispensable features of any Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) solution. Why? Not every vulnerability carries the same level of risk. With new vulnerabilities being reported every day, security teams must approach vulnerability management strategically, allocating resources to address risks that pose the greatest threat to the business first.

Why Risk Prioritization Matters

If security teams lack tools to highlight issues that require immediate attention, the sheer volume of vulnerabilities (like zero-day exploits) can overwhelm them. Risk prioritization helps teams prioritize vulnerabilities by assigning a risk score based on factors such as severity, exploitability, potential impact, and business criticality. This can help them prioritize high-risk vulnerabilities over low-risk ones, optimizing for both time and resources.

Note: OpsMx Delivery Shield leverages NVD (National Vulnerability Database), KEV Catalog (Known Exploited Vulnerabilities) and CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) to assign a risk-score to vulnerabilities.
Group 317
Why Risk Management Matters

Risk management is more than just identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities; it’s about developing a comprehensive approach to efficiently mitigate security risks. Risk management includes:

  • Automated Remediation Assistance: ASPM platforms offer actionable insights and recommendations to quickly address risks.
  • Continuous Risk Assessment: ASPM platforms perform real-time monitoring and reassessment of risks because threats are constantly evolving.

Optimized resource allocation, faster remediation, and reduced business disruption are among the obvious benefits of risk management.

Common Gaps in ASPM Tools

While most ASPM solutions on the market today are mature in terms of functionality, they may still contain gaps that prevent them from being a comprehensive ASPM solution. We observe that various solutions lack the following key features. While evaluating various tools, make sure these functionalities are present, as they could be crucial in achieving a comprehensive security posture for the application.

01

Some ASPM solutions might require you to replace your existing tools with their own tool set. This is a major red flag. A suitable ASPM solution must give you the flexibility to use any open-source tool or ingest data from your existing ones.

03

Many tools do not store a system for records of security actions taken. This is a crucial feature in today’s highly regulated industries, where adherence to compliance is mandatory. Having such a system of record also helps during audits to demonstrate compliance.

05

Lack of posture visibility while in different stages of the SDLC (like testing, staging, QA, etc.) is dangerous to application security. Offering visibility exclusively in the production environment means your team will only ever know of security issues after it’s already live and active

Checklist: How to Evaluate an ASPM Platform?

The following factors can be used to evaluate an ASPM platform:

image

Centralized DevSecOps Dashboard- Does it  have a centralized dashboard providing comprehensive insights on security posture, compliance statuses, alongside basic reporting capabilities?

image

Aggregate AST Findings- Can the platform integrate with other AppSec tools and ingest data from them? For ex: SAST, DAST, SCA, Secrets, Container security tools, etc.

image

Software-BOM / Delivery-BOM- Does it support you in the creation of a Software or Delivery Bill of Materials? This serves as an inventory of all the components utilized in your software application.

image

Integration with CI/CD Pipeline- Does it have the ability to integrate with other DevOps or CI/CD pipeline tools and ingest data from them? This must be non-negotiable.

image

Real Time Threat Detection- Does it natively provide capabilities or at least integrate with threat intelligence tools to detect risks in a timely manner?

image

Risk Assessment & Vulnerability Management- Can it assess the risk posture/ status of a vulnerability and assign each vulnerability a rating? This is crucial for developer productivity.

image

Remediation and Automation- Does the tool have the ability to assist your security team and developers with remediation assistance and/or suggestions? This is a bonus feature.

image

Automated Policy Enforcement-Can the tool help you enforce industry regulations or custom organization-specific policies?

image

Support for Regulatory Compliances- Does it natively support compliance frameworks such as NIST 800-53, FedRAMP, OpenSSF ScoreCard, or OWASP Top 10?

image

Scalability & Flexibility- Can the tool accommodate a growing number of users over the years and be flexible enough to meet your specific business needs?

Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) with OpsMx Delivery Shield

In today’s complex and ever-evolving threat landscape, having a solution that can manage your end-to-end security posture is not just optional, but essential. OpsMx offers a comprehensive suite of solutions designed to help enterprises manage their application security posture. 

OpsMx Delivery Shield stands out as a powerful Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) platform, designed to deliver comprehensive security, proactive risk mitigation, continuous compliance, and full visibility into your risk posture – all while seamlessly integrating into your existing tech stack.

ASPM-Banner

How OpsMx Delivery Shield is Unique

Risk Prioritization and Vulnerability Management

OpsMx Delivery Shield makes sure security teams focus on the most serious threats first by continuously assessing vulnerabilities based on severity, exploitability, and business impact. We calculate risk scores by combining data from various sources such as the NVD and KEV Catalog, SAST, DAST, and IAST tools.

Shift Left Application Security Testing

OpsMx Delivery Shield supports automated Application Security Testing by integrating with other DevOps and Security tools. Instead of waiting till the end of the software development lifecycle, developers can detect and fix flaws as they write code, reducing the complexity of costly fixes and saving time.

Operational Visibility with DevSecOps Control Plane

OpsMx Delivery Shield offers unparalleled operational visibility through its centralized DevSecOps dashboard, providing a holistic view of security posture across the application lifecycle. This helps manage risks, investigate policy violations, monitor compliance statuses, and track all open vulnerabilities and exceptions.

Compliance Automation and Policy Enforcement

OpsMx Delivery Shield automatically checks for compliance and enforces policies. It supports regulatory frameworks like NIST 800-53, MITRE ATT&CK, FedRAMP, OpenSSF ScoreCard, OWASP Top 10 Vulnerabilities, CIS Benchmark for Kubernetes, and NSA CISA Top 10, as well as support for custom policies.

Group 319

Get started with

OpsMx Delivery Shield

Fortune 500 companies trust OpsMx for their DevSecOps and ASPM needs!

Ready for a Live Demo?

Witness OpsMx Delivery Shield in action!

Talk to one of our AppSec experts and get insights on:

Optimize cost efficiencies by consolidating your security toolset for ASPM

Gain unparalleled visibility into your AppSec posture 

Ease developer burden with DevSecOps Shift-Left

Effectively manage open-source risks in production

Manage vulnerabilities and proactively mitigate risks

Automate Policy Compliance and scale it enterprise-wide