Understanding the Role of Application Security Services in Risk Management

In an era where enterprises rely on applications to drive daily operations, each app presents both an opportunity and a potential risk. According to a recent Salesforce survey, the average organization uses 1,061 apps, creating a vast and often under-managed attack surface for cyber threats.

While the lion’s share of this software is generally licensed through third-party vendors, larger organizations often develop their own apps and microservices for internal use – or to offer as a product to the open market.

As attackers increasingly exploit vulnerabilities in these applications, robust application security services are indispensable to effective risk management. Technical defenses do need to be augmented by a culture of effective cybersecurity, as application security management plays a critical role in identifying, mitigating, and preventing threats.

Threat Detection and Identification

In order to manage threats, they must first be detected and identified. The various approaches include security scanning, vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, and threat intelligence integration.

Threat scanning is usually an automated process managed by application security services. Ideally, these scans include the use of Static Application Security Testing (SAST), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), or Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST). SAST is designed to inspect security issues by inspecting the static source code. DAST checks for problems while an app is running, exposing security problems that may not be detected in static testing.

Meanwhile, IAST combines the SAST and DAST approaches to expand testing parameters and reveal issues that may have been overlooked in the other two testing methods.

Additionally, application security can include penetration testing or the use of ethical hacking to simulate cyber attacks and identify security weaknesses. Penetration testing helps reveal logical flaws and gaps in the security tools, protocols, and processes implemented in an organization. These flaws may not be detected by automated scanning systems.

Response and Prevention

Application security services enable organizations to promptly respond to threats through automated threat prioritization, reducing notification fatigue and addressing critical alerts efficiently. This is crucial in massive networks that deal with large volumes of security notifications and other information.

Every day, organizations deal with thousands of security alerts, making it necessary to identify which of these flags represent false positives, so they can prioritize the most crucial issues to address them promptly.

Application security also supports the crafting of effective incident response plans. The information gathered during risk and threat identification helps in establishing normal network patterns and distinguishing anomalous or potentially dangerous behaviors. For instance, Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) can automatically block SQL injection attempts or XSS attacks in real-time.

In terms of prevention, threat intelligence integration makes it easy to match incidents with threat signatures and block threats based on their similarity with other threats as established by post-incident forensics and security data analysis.

Attack Surface Minimization

Aside from threat mitigation and prevention, it is also important for enterprises to reduce available attack surfaces. Results from vulnerability scanning and penetration testing help identify IT assets that are unnecessarily exposing an organization to risks and attacks.

For example, apps may be granted permissions or port access that are not essential to their operation. Here it’s best to adopt the principle of least privilege, limiting permissions to only those deemed necessary for the execution of specific tasks.

Shadow services or resources, such as undocumented APIs or forgotten cloud instances, often exist outside the visibility of security teams. These unaccounted-for resources tend to have vulnerabilities or are not covered by existing security mechanisms, making them easy to exploit.

Finding and eliminating these in apps can be an extremely difficult task when done manually or without the aid of a reliable security solution. Tools like AWS Config or network vulnerability scanners can identify shadow services and ensure they are either secured or decommissioned.

Cost Reduction

The preventive and mitigative benefits of application security operations allow enterprises to avoid costly disruptions and damage to their IT infrastructure. Attacks are often undertaken by exploiting vulnerabilities in enterprise applications, including the mobile apps used by employees on their devices that connect to the enterprise network. App attacks not only lead to financial losses but also erode customer trust, undermining brand loyalty and causing long-term business harm.

For instance, application-layer Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks can cripple operations and also result in hefty recovery costs, which can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars for mid-sized enterprises. Moreover, the costs associated with data breaches extend beyond immediate financial losses, encompassing expenses related to incident response, forensic investigations, legal penalties, and reputational damage.

Security is even more of an issue given the rise of homegrown low-code and no-code applications. Organizations that build their own apps need to efficiently deal with security issues and prevent their apps from creating convenient entry points for threat actors. For example, hardcoded credentials in low-code apps can be exploited by attackers to gain unauthorized access.

By deploying tools like static code analyzers or runtime security agents, enterprises can detect and mitigate these risks before they lead to exploitation.

Compliance

Lastly, the cyber risks affecting enterprises are not limited to the financial and operational aspects. Regulations evolve in response to technological and market changes. The penalties for violating these regulations can include substantial fines, civil penalties, and even loss of business licensing.

Noncompliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), for example, can mean fines of up to four percent of an organization’s annual revenue. In the case of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), the failure to comply can mean fines of up to millions of dollars every month.

Application security services help enterprises comply with various regulations mainly through the identification and mitigation of vulnerabilities, the implementation of required security mechanisms, and the promotion of secure coding practices.

They also promote the enforcement of coding best practices, including input and output validation, to align with standards and regulatory requirements.