What Is Application Security? Concepts, Tools & Best Practices

Introduction

In today’s digital age, where applications are an integral part of our daily lives and business operations, ensuring their security has never been more critical. Application security encompasses the measures and practices designed to protect applications from threats and vulnerabilities throughout their lifecycle. This blog delves into the core concepts of application security, explores essential tools, and highlights best practices to help organizations safeguard their applications effectively.

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What Is Application Security Testing?

Application security is the process of making applications more secure by finding, fixing, and enhancing their security features. This includes not only protecting applications from external threats but also addressing vulnerabilities that could be exploited from within. The primary goal is to prevent unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security threats that can compromise the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of an application.

Key Concepts in Application Security

• Threat Modeling: Identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities in an application to understand the risks and implement appropriate security measures.

• Secure Coding Practices: Write code that minimizes vulnerabilities and adheres to security guidelines and standards.

• Authentication and Authorization: Ensuring that users are who they claim to be (authentication) and have the appropriate permissions to access specific resources (authorization).

• Encryption: This process protects data in transit and at rest by converting it into a secure format that can only be read by authorized parties.

• Input Validation and Sanitization: Checking and cleaning input data to prevent injection attacks and other exploits that leverage malformed input.

• Security Testing: Conduct various tests, including static analysis, dynamic analysis, and penetration testing, to identify and address security flaws.

• Patch Management: Regularly updating and patching applications to fix known vulnerabilities and enhance security features.

Application Security Tools

Here are the most common application security categories:

• Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

SAST helps detect code flaws by analyzing the application source files for root causes. It enables comparing static analysis scan results with real-time solutions to quickly detect security problems, decrease the mean time to repair (MTTR), and troubleshoot collaboratively.

• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

DAST is a proactive testing approach that simulates security breaches on a running web application to identify exploitable flaws. These tools evaluate applications in production to help detect runtime or environment-related errors.

• Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST)

IAST utilizes SAST and DAST elements, performing analysis in real-time or at any SDLC phase from within the application. IAST tools get access to the application’s code and components, which means they achieve the in-depth access needed to produce accurate results.

• Runtime Application Security Protection (RASP)

RASP tools work within the application to provide continuous security checks and automatically respond to possible breaches. Common responses include alerting IT teams and terminating a suspicious session.

• Mobile Application Security Testing (MAST)

MAST tools test the security of mobile applications using various techniques, such as performing static and dynamic analysis and investigating forensic data gathered by mobile applications. MAST tools help identify mobile-specific issues and security vulnerabilities, such as malicious WiFi networks, jailbreaking, and data leakage from mobile devices.

• Web Application Firewall (WAF)

A WAF solution monitors and filters all HTTP traffic passing between the Internet and a web application. These solutions do not cover all threats. Rather, WAFs work as part of a security stack that provides a holistic defense against the relevant attack vectors.

WAF works as a protocol layer seven defense when applied as part of the open systems interconnection (OSI) model. It helps protect web applications against various attacks, including cross-site-scripting (XSS), SQL injection (SQLi), file inclusion, and cross-site forgery (CSRF).

• CNAPP

A Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) centralizes the control of all tools used to protect cloud-native applications. It unifies various technologies, such as cloud security posture management (CSPM) and cloud workload protection platform (CWPP), identity entitlement management, automation and orchestration security for container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes, and API discovery and protection.

Application Security Best Practices

The following best practices should help ensure application security.

1. Asset Tracking

An organization must have full visibility over its assets to protect them. The first step towards establishing a secure development environment is determining which servers host the application and which software components it contains.

For example, Equifax could have prevented the breach by patching an Apache Struts component in a customer web portal, but they were unaware they were using the vulnerable component.

2. Shifting Security Left

The modern, fast-paced software development industry requires frequent releases—sometimes several times a day. Security tests must be embedded in the development pipeline to ensure the Dev and security teams keep up with demand. Testing should start early in the SDLC to avoid hindering releases at the end of the pipeline.

Understanding the existing development process and relationships between developers and security testers is important to implement an effective shift-left strategy. It requires learning the teams’ responsibilities, tools, and processes, including how they build applications. The next step is integrating security processes into the existing development pipeline to ensure developers easily adopt the new approach.

The CI/CD pipeline should include automated security tests at various stages. Integrating security automation tools into the pipeline allows the team to test code internally without relying on other teams so that developers can fix issues quickly and easily.

3. Performing Threat Assessments

After listing the assets requiring protection, it is possible to start identifying specific threats and countermeasures. A threat assessment involves determining the paths attackers can exploit to breach the application.

With the potential attack vectors identified, the security team can evaluate its existing security controls for detecting and preventing attacks and identify new tools to improve the company’s security posture.

However, when evaluating existing security measures and planning a new security strategy, it’s important to have realistic expectations about the appropriate security levels. For instance, even the highest level of protection doesn’t completely block hackers.

4. Managing Privileges

Not every user in an organization requires the same access privileges. Restricting access to data and applications on a need-to-know basis is a key security best practice. There are two main reasons for limiting privileges:

• If hackers can access the system with stolen credentials (e.g., from an employee in the marketing department), there must be controls to prevent them from accessing other data. Least-privilege access controls help prevent lateral movement and minimize the blast radius of an attack.

• Insider threats are more dangerous when the network has open internal access. These threats may be malicious or unintentional, such as an employee misplacing a device or downloading malicious files.

• Privilege management should adhere to the principle of least privilege to prevent employees and external users from accessing data they don’t need, reducing overall exposure.

Application Security Risks

Web Application Security Risks: OWASP Top 10

Software applications are vulnerable to numerous threats. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)  identifies the most critical threats that commonly affect applications in production.

Broken Access Control

Broken access control allows attackers to gain unauthorized access and privileges. Common issues include:

• Attackers gain unauthorized access to user accounts and act as administrators or regular users.

• Users obtain unauthorized privileged functions.

To remediate this issue, implement strong access control mechanisms that clearly define and isolate each role’s privileges.

Cryptographic Failures

Cryptographic failures (previously referred to as “sensitive data exposure”) occur when data is not adequately protected in transit and at rest. This can expose passwords, health records, credit card numbers, and personal data.

Such failures can lead to non-compliance with data privacy regulations, such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and financial standards like PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

Injection (Including XSS, LFI, and SQL Injection)

Injection vulnerabilities enable attackers to send malicious data to a web application interpreter, causing it to be compiled and executed on the server. SQL injection is a common form of this vulnerability.

Application Security Trends in 2024

Conclusion

Application security is a multifaceted discipline that requires a proactive and comprehensive approach to protect applications from evolving threats. By understanding core concepts, leveraging essential tools, and adhering to best practices, organizations can significantly enhance the security posture of their applications. In an era where cyber threats are ever-present, investing in application security is not just a best practice—it’s a necessity.

FAQs

1. What is the difference between SAST, DAST, and IAST?

• SAST (Static Application Security Testing): Analyzes source code for vulnerabilities before the application is compiled.

• DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing): Tests running applications in real-time to identify vulnerabilities that may be exploitable.

• IAST (Interactive Application Security Testing): Combines aspects of SAST and DAST, providing real-time analysis within the application environment.

2. Why is shifting security important in application development?

Shifting security left means integrating security testing early in the SDLC, reducing vulnerabilities and costs associated with fixing issues later in the development process.

3. How can organizations effectively manage application security across different environments?

By implementing automated security testing tools, conducting regular threat assessments, and enforcing least-privilege access controls, organizations can maintain robust security across diverse application environments.