Application Security is defined by developing, adding, and testing security features in an application or website. Taking these measures can prevent hostile attacks from malicious users and stop sensitive data or systems from being exposed.
Software encompasses a wide variety of different results. It could be an application on your computer or phone, the communication services that let your debit card take money from your bank, or even the website you’re reading this article on.
We’ll be focusing mainly on web-focused technologies, but the practices we’ll go over can be applied to any type of software.
Web development security encompasses most of what your typical user on the internet sees every day, including websites, web services and web apps. Most of these web apps will have user information or business-critical information, which means attackers see them as a high-value target.
While the internet has evolved to become more secure with the introduction of HTTPS (which creates a secure connection between you and a website), there are still many vulnerabilities. Security professionals are constantly working to protect websites from these malicious attacks and develop new ways to prevent potential issues in the future.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is how different services or applications communicate to one another. Picture it like this: imagine a waiter (the API) taking your order (the information in a login form or sending a picture on Twitter) and delivering it to the kitchen to be made (the system or service). This example is a simplified version of an API.
However, because these APIs connect services and transfer data, hackers can easily exploit them. Like web applications, hackers target these to gain access to sensitive information.
When it comes to cloud-native applications, this refers to any technologies that work or support anything done in the cloud. Because this field is so new, many of the old tools for security aren’t always possible within this new infrastructure. While these types of applications are usually broken down into smaller bits of code called microservices, they can quickly add up to a complex web of services.
Unlike other types of applications on our list, container applications are units of software that are shipped with everything you’d need to run them, including other applications. When securing these containers, developers need to cover everything within it. This includes running applications and the infrastructure of the container itself.
There are thousands of potential threats and vulnerabilities that have been documented or attempted. These are the most common ways to bring awareness to these vulnerabilities and create stepping stones to a more secure application.
The non-profit organisation Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) releases a standard awareness document roughly every three years, known as the OWASP Top Ten. This document highlights the ten most critical security risks for web applications.
The most recent list for 2021 included the following issues:
Similar to the traditional Top 10, OWASP also has a list for API’s top ten risks for APIs, which are:
OWASP also provides a basic standard for developers to build secure applications and thorough testing, known as the Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS). This was created to provide a basis of security verification across any sort of application, whether it’s used as a guiding hand or a firm standard to be applied to.
To make sure applications are resistant to security threats, developers use testing methods to check for any potential vulnerabilities thoroughly. These tests are automated and are run at every point of the software development lifecycle, from start to finish.
When it comes to improving web application security, there are plenty of tools and solutions to choose from, such as:
Static/Dynamic Application Security Testing (S/DAST) tests a codebase inside and out. Static Application Security Testing (SAST) goes over codebase that isn’t running, while Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) acts as if it’s an attacker from an external source.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) are tools that organisations can use to check for all of the third-party software components in their application. Most open-source (software made publicly for others to use) software comes with a specific licence that dictates how organisations can use them and whether or not the authors need to be attributed. They also search for known vulnerabilities and check for the versions of the components used.
Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) is an evolution of SAST/DAST that analyses traffic and users while an application is running. These integrate with the running application to detect and prevent malicious attacks and scan a codebase for potential issues.
When looking to enforce better security on an application or service, developers have a wide selection of methods and tools. Organisations should also know how to identify common attacks and how to handle them in case of a breach.
This is typically defined as an ongoing process to identify, evaluate, treat, and report vulnerabilities across systems and APIs. Developers should follow this process at all points of the software development lifecycle for organisations to be aware of their potential vulnerabilities.
It’s equally important for organisations to know how attackers could exploit their systems. Whether through OWASP’s awareness reports or other methods, developers should know what common attacks are. Knowing the potential attack vectors and common problems can lead to a more secure final product, with a lower risk of being exploited.
One of the best ways to keep security at the forefront of development is through Shift Left Security. Imagine a straight line, where the leftmost point was the start of development and the rightmost is a completed product. It used to be common to leave any security practices and checks near the end of the development cycle, closer to the right. By prioritising it earlier, you shift those security measures to the left of the line, making sure your product focuses on security well before a final release.
No software is completely secure. There is always a chance of a potential attack, and errors will occur, whether big or small. An organisation that knows what its possible vulnerabilities are should be able to prioritise the most important fixes. Comparatively, teams can roll minor issues into smaller updates, or more time can be spent on fixing more complex issues.
An essential aspect of improving security is through measurements. Organisations that take the time to measure their security practices will succeed in preventing potential exploits or data loss. This pairs well with Vulnerability Management, where teams should be categorising vulnerabilities and calculating how impactful they can be and how to budget on resolving them.
With web application threats and attacks becoming more common every year, it’s imperative to get to grips with application security and the type of applications that need protecting in your organisation. In this beginners guide you’ve discovered what application security is and the different application types. Finally, you’ve learned about security risks, application security testing and best practices.
Uleska’s Chief Security Officer, Gary Robinson, has worked in software and application security for 20+ years, as a developer, security architect, penetration tester, and even served on the Board of OWASP. Gary has been working to improve the automation around security tools for years.
“Application Security works alongside the software development process but hasn’t tended to keep up with the automation and toolchains development teams use and expect these days. I remember working in a company with lots of DevOps automation in the development teams on one side of me, and a bunch of security tools on the other side, but there was no automation or integration between the two. The security team became the bottleneck which wasn’t fair.” Gary says.
“Choosing and running a security tool is fun the first few times you do it, but when your job becomes a mindless wheel of running security tools over and over again, it doesn’t work for you, the dev teams, or anyone else. Nearly every security tool has APIs or command line interfaces that can be hooked into existing toolchains, but since there’s zero standardization of how to run, or get results from, these tools, the integration becomes a nightmare and we see many companies struggle.”
“That’s why we built the Uleska Platform, to productize that integration layer between development processes (CI/CD, Git platforms, artifacts, etc) and security tools (commercial, open-source or custom developed) and make them easily work together. That way security teams can add intelligence and value beyond the joining of the dots, and more effectively reduce the issues and risk across their teams. It also saves them lots of time on the boring repetitive tasks.”
Uleska helps security and development teams manage application security at scale by automating and orchestrating their preferred security tools within CI/CD.
With Uleska, teams can confidently start an AppSec program using open-source, commercial, and custom tools and then quickly change, add or scale tools as the technology and business needs evolve. Uleska also brings speed and scale when integrating into development tools, and reporting of metrics and risk.
By bringing security, DevOps and development teams together, we help reduce manual tasks so application security takes less time, cost and can scale, allowing teams to focus resources on the issues and metrics that matter.
You may unsubscribe at any time using the unsubscribe link in the newsletter.
Security tools are an essential part of software development today, especially with the ever-increasing number of attacks we see every year....
Security teams frequently struggle with the volume of alerts and issues they are tasked with daily. On average, most enterprises receive between...
Software development has evolved into an incredibly complex machine, with several moving parts to keep track of. Teams get more extensive, and...
Application Security is a constantly evolving industry, with new threats and methods to combat them appearing regularly. One of the more recent...
The application security (AppSec) industry moves fast. Development, security and operations (DevSecOps) practitioners are having to find creative...
We know starting your application security (AppSec) journey can be a little overwhelming. After all, choosing your tools from scratch and setting...
Did you know that over 79% of developers surveyed in 2020 stated their applications had 20 or more vulnerabilities on average? As the digital world...
No system is perfectly secure, as proven by software analysis firm CAST, which reviewed 278 million lines of code and discovered more than 1.3...
There are thousands of amazing AppSec tools out there, but this can be both a blessing and a curse. While the headway and innovation we are seeing...
Building robust application security is a lot like building a house—you want it done thoroughly, without any missing parts. However, there is a...
Cybersecurity has been a rising concern in the last decade. In 2021, researchers have seen 50% more attacks per week on corporate networks compared...
With today’s fast development speeds, it’s hard to keep up with security practices for some organisations. This is especially true in the last few...
Open-source software has become a vital part of development in the last decade. However, utilising these components often comes with several caveats,...
The saying goes: “Many hands make light work.” Nowhere is this more apparent than in DevSecOps where developers and releases outnumber security...
Software development cycles have changed immensely in the last ten years. New practices and design philosophies are being tried every day. One of...