What is Application Security?
Application Security (AppSec) is the process of improving the defense of your application software by protecting it from internal and external threats across the entire SDLC. AppSec involves fixing bugs, addressing vulnerabilities/CVEs, prioritizing risks, and preventing misuse–all of which is an integral aspect of software engineering.
Not to be confused with a singular tool or technology, AppSec includes a variety of security measures, best practices, and tools to prevent unauthorized access, modification, or misuse. As applications have become more complex and businesses more dependent on technology, ensuring a healthy security posture has become key to customer trust.
Why is Application Security Important?
Application security is becoming increasingly important because of the risks associated with using open source software and its implication in today’s growing threat landscape. But more importantly, AppSec is a way to measure the effectiveness of securing application software in this unsafe digital world. These four compelling arguments underscore the need for security measures to safeguard your application:
Safeguards Sensitive Data by ensuring applications handle information effectively, reducing the risk of compromise in the event of a data breach.
Ensures Compliance with standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS to help organizations avoid legal challenges and hefty fines.
Maintains Customer Trust and Brand Reputation of big businesses and large enterprises in an era when attacks have become common occurrences.
Supports Business Continuity because security incidents can lead to operational disruptions, downtime, and financial losses hindering growth.
Common Application Security Threats
A lack of any AppSec control mentioned in the previous section can allow attackers to exploit applications for code vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and gaps in infrastructure security. Understanding the nature of these threats and their potential impact is fundamental to maintaining a robust AppSec posture. Now let’s look at the common application security threats (as also outlined in the OWASP Top 10 list):
Injection Attacks
Injection-based attacks are those where threat actors insert malicious code into a command or query (or any unverified input) along with the input data to a web application interpreter. The attack commences when the web server compiles or executes this command. Ex: SQL injection/XSS, etc.
Broken Access Controls
If an attacker can bypass login and get unauthorized access to an application resource, then it’s a broken access control attack. This is usually a result of weak authentication methods or exposure of user credentials giving a threat actor unintended access.
Cryptographic Failures
Cryptographic failure occurs when data is not properly encrypted during transmission, exposing sensitive data. Such attacks could expose credit card details, personally identifiable information, health records, passwords, etc.
Security Misconfigurations
Security misconfigurations refer to a lack of a strong security posture of the application stack, including vulnerable firewalls and API gateways. Such attacks can lead to unauthorized access, exposure of sensitive information, or exploitability of other vulnerabilities.
Insecure Design
A variety of weaknesses, such as architectural flaws, insecure design patterns, and missing or ineffective security controls, lead to insecure design attacks. These attacks have become more frequent and increasingly exploitable, calling for greater reliance on threat modeling.
Vulnerable and Outdated Components
These are attacks arising due to the use of vulnerable 3rd party libraries, open source components, or insecure code in the application stack. Such attacks occur when unverified or unvetted components make your application stack in the absence of Software Bill of Materials (SBOM).
Identification and Authentication Failures
Previously a part of ‘Broken Access Controls’, such attacks are less frequent these days but still serious enough to be a part of the OWASP Top 10 list. Identification and authentication failures arise due to ineffective user authentication and identification measures in place.
Software and Data Integrity Failures
Software and data integrity failures occur due to assumptions related to the integrity of software updates, modification of sensitive data, and changes to the CI/CD pipeline not being validated. Exploiting these security gaps can lead to unauthorized access and software supply chain attacks.
Security Logging and Monitoring Failures
If an application weakness gets exploited as a result of its inability to detect and respond to security risks in real-time, it’s considered a security logging and monitoring failure. Failure of logging and monitoring components to detect abnormal behavior is a serious security risk.
Server-Side Request Forgery
Server-side request forgery (SSRF) allows an attacker to manipulate the server into making requests to internal or external resources via unvalidated URLs in the input. Attackers can use SSRF to gain access to sensitive information and compromise an organization’s internal network.
A consequence of any of the above-listed attacks are financial losses, legal penalties, and damage to brand reputation. So it’s essential for security teams to equip themselves with the right “Shift-Left” strategies and associated “AppSec” tests to prevent and mitigate application threats.
Shift-Left Application Security
‘Shift-Left Security’ places emphasis on developers incorporating security measures from the early stages of development. This includes integrating automated security checks into CI/CD pipelines and automating security guardrails to enforce policy compliance.
These measures can prevent code vulnerabilities and design flaws from moving further downstream—ensuring secure software delivery. Moreover, these measures help AppSec teams reduce the substantial costs linked to remediating vulnerabilities and delaying releases.
SAST and SCA tools like SonarQube, Checkmarx, and OWASP Dependency-Check play a crucial role in finding vulnerabilities in codebase before getting deployed to production. But the most important consideration for organizations is promoting team harmony and fostering a collaborative culture between the security and DevOps teams as part of the shift left.
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Leveraging Application Security Testing (AST)
Security teams can leverage different tools to perform various types of automated application security tests. The tools fall broadly under one of the following categories of AppSec testing, and they help address vulnerabilities and security gaps at different stages of the SDLC.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
SAST analyzes source code (including bytecode and binaries) for security flaws and vulnerabilities. This is a white-box testing technique that detects flaws without actually executing the program.
SAST tools systematically analyze the code’s structure and logic for errors to detect buffer overflows, SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting (XSS), and hard-coded credentials, among others. This approach reduces the likelihood of introducing security vulnerabilities into production in the first place.
Open Source SAST tools: SonarQube, Bandit, Brakeman, ESLint.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
DAST analyzes a live or running application by simulating attacks and monitoring responses to identify security vulnerabilities. This is a form of black-box testing that simulates external attacks in real time.
DAST tools find architectural weaknesses and security vulnerabilities outside of an application to determine if it’s vulnerable to attacks such as SQL injections and cross-site scripting. This approach detects vulnerabilities often missed in static testing, making it essential for thorough security coverage.
Open Source DAST tools: OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy), Nikto, SQLMap, Arachni.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
SCA identifies vulnerabilities in 3rd party and open source components used in application code. Unlike SAST and DAST, SCA only analyzes 3rd party and open source components–libraries, packages, etc.
SCA tools provide insights on the usage and license risks associated with third-party components and identify code vulnerabilities already reported on sites like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and KEV Catalog (Known Exploited Vulnerabilities).
Open Source SCA tools: OWASP Dependency-Check, OWASP Dependency-Track, Snyk, Trivy.
Mobile Application Security Testing (MAST)
MAST combines the best of SAST, DAST, and digital forensic investigations of mobile apps. By simulating attacks on mobile devices in real-time, this technique detects vulnerabilities and security flaws.
MAST tools cover mobile-specific risks like jailbreaking, insecure data storage, data leakage prevention, permission misuse, device rooting, spoofed Wi-Fi connections, certificate validation, etc. MAST safeguards mobile users from AppSec threats.
Open Source MAST tools: MobSF (Mobile Security Framework), Android Debug Bridge (ADB), Frida.
The Role of Vulnerability Management in Application Security
Targeting to resolve all vulnerabilities in the codebase is a herculean task. As some experts say, ‘zero vulnerabilities is a myth’. Rather, a more practical approach is to focus on prioritizing vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk to your applications.
With the right tool and techniques for vulnerability management, you can assess the criticality, severity, exploitability, and business impact associated with vulnerabilities in your codebase. This will provide the groundwork for adopting a Risk-Based Prioritization approach to vulnerability management.
Open-source tools like OpenVAS and Clair can automate vulnerability detection and schedule scans. This helps AppSec teams gain real-time visibility into security gaps and prioritize high-risk vulnerabilities for immediate remediation—maximizing the ROI on security measures.
Best Practices for Application Security
Shift Left Security
Integrating security measures early on in the development cycle helps detect threats, mitigate security risks, and design flaws when the issue is still easily addressable.
Risk-Based Prioritization (RBP)
Since vulnerabilities are inevitable, prioritizing them based on severity, criticality, and business impact can help you focus your resources on the most important threats that need addressing.
Continuous Threat Monitoring
Combining automated threat monitoring with RBP can help you address threats the moment they are detected—minimizing damage and increasing ROI on security with minimal intervention.
Secure Logging
Security teams can gain insights into specific issues, such as suspicious activity, by analyzing system logs, which can help them respond quickly to potential breaches.
Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)
The Software Bill of Materials helps maintain an inventory of open source components and third-party packages, making it easy to track vulnerabilities and prepare for audits.
Compliance Automation & Policy Enforcement
Automating compliance checks and enforcing regulatory policies ensures adherence with standards and reduces burden on SecOps—all while securing software release and delivery.
Benefits of Application Security
Enhanced Data Protection
Protects sensitive proprietary data from unauthorized access and security breaches.
Regulatory Compliance
Compliance with industry standards such as GDPR, NIST, etc. mitigates legal risks.
Reduced Remediation Costs
Early triage and vulnerability remediation lower the cost of security fixes.
Improved Customer Trust
Robust AppSec posture enhances customer trust and brand reputation.
Operational Continuity
Smooth and continued business operations thanks to minimal disruptions from incidents.
Increased cost savings
Effective security measures prevent breaches, lower security costs, and optimize resources.
Cloud Application Security vs. Web Application Security vs. Mobile Application Security
Within Application Security, there are a few focus areas that are slowly gaining traction given the constantly evolving threat landscape. We purposefully left them unaddressed earlier in this resource, so let’s quickly review them now.
Cloud Application Security
As a result of rapid digitization, organizations started embracing the power of cloud computing and swiftly moved their software workloads to the cloud. However, the lack of consideration for security left room for attackers to exploit security gaps in cloud apps. But with cloud-native applications becoming mainstream, security controls for the cloud-native apps are now non-negotiable.
Techniques such as Secrets Scanning, Secrets Management, Identity and Access Management (IAM), Continuous Compliance Monitoring, etc., can prevent unauthorized access or sophisticated attacks targeting cloud misconfigurations. Implementing such measures is standard practice to help organizations manage compliance posture and ensure business continuity in a cloud-dependent landscape.
Web Application Security
Thanks to the overwhelming adoption of web apps and SaaS today, attackers have started to follow suit, targeting web applications and SaaS products in innovative ways—via SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and DDoS attacks that exploit user access points. The need for web application security has never been more prominent.
Secure coding standards, implementing Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), and performing regular vulnerability assessments are among the common Web AppSec practices that improve security posture and protect sensitive data, helping businesses operate in today’s highly volatile environment.
Mobile Application Security
As covered earlier in this article, the growing adoption of mobile applications for day-to-day business operations has motivated attackers to start targeting mobile devices. Data leakage, malware, and insecure storage are common attack surfaces to target mobile applications.
By focusing on both user data and application functionality, techniques like data encryption, secure permissions, and code obfuscation can improve Mobile AppSec. Even though attack vectors seldom target mobile apps, the industry as a whole is taking the right strides towards securing mobile experiences and protecting data theft against users on personal devices.
How OpsMx Can Help You Achieve Application Security
OpsMx offers a robust Application Security Posture Management solution to help organizations secure their software delivery pipelines. OpsMx leverages the capabilities of your existing open source DevOps and Security tools and combines them with native vulnerability monitoring and policy enforcement features to help dev teams Shift left, automate compliances, and give comprehensive visibility into AppSec posture.
OpsMx Delivery Shield
For teams with an existing DevOps toolchain and looking specifically for security add-ons to improve their application security, OpsMx Delivery Shield adds Application Security Posture Management (ASPM), Unified Visibility, Compliance Automation, and Security Policy Enforcement to your existing application lifecycle. By leveraging your existing open source tools and processes, OpsMx provides a practical solution to accelerate and fortify software delivery.
SECURITY ADD-ONS
- Application Lifecycle Visibility
- Security Posture Evaluation
- Compliance Monitoring
- Policy Enforcement
- Open Source Risk Assessment
- Software Delivery Bill of Materials
- Vulnerability Management
OpsMx Secure Open Continuous Delivery
For teams just getting started in their DevOps journey and looking to integrate Security from the outset, OpsMx Secure Open CD is the industry’s first software delivery and deployment solution specifically designed for Software Supply Chain Security. It combines GitOps multi-cloud deployment platform with DevSecOps capabilities to automatically Enforce Policies and Audit Security Compliance at the time of deployment.
DEVOPS + SECURITY
- Central DevSecOps Dashboard
- Multicloud and K8s deployments
- Automate Approvals
- Scalable Enterprise GitOps
- Governance and Audit Reports
- Delivery Intelligence
- Automated Verification & Rollback
- Application Lifecycle Visibility
- Security Posture Evaluation
- Compliance Monitoring
- Policy Enforcement
- Open Source Risk Assessment
- Software Delivery Bill of Materials
- Vulnerability Management
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