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Applications, especially those that are cloud native, are a gateway to servers and networks and present an ideal attack vector for malicious actors. Since malicious actors continue to refine their methods to penetrate software, it&apros;s crucial that security is an ongoing activity that&apros;s deeply embedded in the development process. Application security best practices help uncover vulnerabilities before attackers can use them to breach networks and data. It&apros;s also important to consider application data security to ensure that sensitive data such as customer information is secure. Vulnerabilities can originate from something as simple as a configuration error or using a software component that contains a known vulnerability.
What are the challenges of modern application security?
Modern application security is a wide and complex topic. We’ve boiled it down to five main challenges organizations commonly encounter:
- Inherited vulnerabilities
- Third-party and open source vulnerabilities
- Adopting a DevSecOps approach
- Finding qualified experts
- Lack of a centralized management tool
Inherited vulnerabilities
Developers need to be aware of vulnerabilities they may introduce during the coding process, but some vulnerabilities are inherent in modern applications. These inherited vulnerabilities exist for a few reasons:
- Software systems experience entropy — they are constantly changing, increasing in complexity, and in need of updating and improvement.
- Prioritizing which fixes, updates, and maintenance activities are most important is a vital and ongoing effort.
- Legacy code continues to play an important role in many organizations’ environments, and security teams need to scan this code and prioritize the most important fixes. Older code is less exciting than shiny new application code, so fewer people are interested in working with it, but it still requires careful consideration pertaining to security.
- The newest security tools are often not licensed to deal with legacy code. Problems build up over time if the code isn’t maintained and secured.
How do you secure an application?
Application security starts from the earliest stages of planning, where threat modeling and secure-by-design principles can ensure security is built into the application. It continues to the development and testing stages, where scanning tools can integrate into developer workflows to automate security testing. Since developers are increasingly responsible for the containers and infrastructure used to run the application, that environment also needs to be secured.