Threat actors continuously adapt to organisations’ evolving security strategies. Sandeep Johri, CEO at Checkmarx, emphasises the critical need to enhance application security to minimise security gaps while integrating AppSec into every aspect of the development process.
Software applications are the foundation of the digital enterprise yet keeping them secure remains a significant challenge. The breach of a single application can expose the personal and financial information of millions of people to criminal exploitation. This reality underscores the significance of Application Security (AppSec) as a vital business imperative.
Moreover, as organisations adopt DevOps to deal with rapid technological advancements, embedding AppSec throughout every phase of development is essential. Ensuring applications are secure from inception to deployment and on through continuous upgrades is not just a technical necessity but a strategic priority to safeguard against the ever-present threat of data breaches.
The dangers of overlooking Application Security
Application Security (AppSec), despite its crucial role in safeguarding business operations, remains immature. Our research found that 89% of organisations have suffered breaches in the last year due to vulnerabilities in their own software and that 60% of these vulnerabilities emerge during the coding, building, or testing stages.
It is worrying that the dangers of unsecure applications are often overlooked, especially given that breaches happen so often. The consequences, both in terms of reputation and financial impact, are severe. The global average cost of a data breach, as reported by IBM, is approximately US$4.35 million – a figure that soars to US$9.44 million in the US for some breaches.
This highlights the need to elevate AppSec as a leading issue on boardroom agendas, ensuring it garners the strategic attention it critically requires.
Elevating AppSec to the board level
Without prioritising AppSec, businesses today face significant risks in launching digital products and services, potentially stifling their growth. It demands a significant proportion of security budgets to be allocated to equipping security teams with the necessary resources, training and funding. This enables the integration of security practices throughout the DevOps process, ensuring that secure coding becomes a foundational element of software development.
AppSec is more than just complying with standards; it is a crucial business goal that enhances business outcomes by stopping vulnerabilities before they create issues. While this strategic emphasis starts with CISOs, it also needs board backing to promote a security management approach that goes from the top down.
Starting with strategic planning and architectural decisions ensures that security measures are not merely applied in isolation but are part of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.
Helping the board to understand its value to the business is vital. To effectively communicate the importance of AppSec, CISOs should regularly present key metrics to the board, such as the Security Risk scoring of each application, and the number of critical vulnerabilities in production, which reflect the effectiveness of current testing and remediation efforts.
Establishing a dashboard for the board to monitor these metrics can significantly improve understanding and decision-making regarding the organisation’s security posture. This approach not only prioritises security within strategic business planning but also aligns AppSec initiatives with overall business objectives, ensuring a robust defence against the evolving threat landscape.
The need for a new AppSec paradigm
Its strategic importance has become ever more important as enterprises are under increasing pressure to accelerate their Digital Transformation initiatives. With 67% of applications now hosted in the cloud, managing cloud-related risks has emerged as a paramount concern for CISOs. This digital shift, alongside the advent of cloud-native development, has significantly broadened the attack landscape for businesses, prompting a re-evaluation of security measures across the entire development operations (DevOps) process, from inception through to cloud deployment and operation.
Organisations report a variety of vulnerabilities leading to security incidents, including cloud misconfigurations, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) weaknesses and container security issues. Compromised credentials and inadequate authentication practices are also major factors, along with vulnerabilities within software supply chains, such as flawed APIs and open-source components.
This complex development environment, characterised by a mix of custom and open-source code, requires a comprehensive ‘code to cloud’ security approach. This shift aims not just to mitigate, but to significantly lower business risk through a more integrated and holistic AppSec strategy, ensuring robust protection throughout all DevOps activity. This method represents a shift from piecemeal security measures to a more comprehensive protection of organisational resources.
Incorporating AppSec throughout the DevOps process
Traditionally, AppSec practices have been applied towards the final stages of the production cycle, often overlooking vulnerabilities that emerge early on. This recognition has led to the ‘shift left’ approach, which integrates security measures from the outset of the DevOps process. Despite this, evidence suggests developers predominantly concentrate on identifying vulnerabilities during the coding and design phases.
Yet, while developers focus on early stages, AppSec managers and CISOs are adopting a more comprehensive view with continuous risk assessment throughout the DevOps lifecycle. This idea has evolved into the concept of ‘shift everywhere’, which encourages the integration of security measures not only at the beginning of development but also constantly during all stages, including after deployment.
By leveraging tools that provide runtime insights, both AppSec and development teams can identify and rectify vulnerabilities in real-time, ensuring comprehensive protection from the coding phase to cloud deployment. This enhances security and brings AppSec and development efforts together for a common goal of protecting the software lifecycle from start to finish.
Proactive measures against evolving threats
In today’s dynamic software development environment, integrating advanced security features such as static analysis, software composition analysis and API security checks is essential. It is also important to have like IaC examinations and intelligence on open-source supply chain threats. These tools should be seamlessly incorporated into software configuration management systems (SCMs), integrated development environments (IDEs) and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. Automation is essential for this strategy, as it allows for thorough vulnerability scanning across the whole codebase – both in development and after deployment – ensuring strong protection from new threats.
Embracing a ‘shift everywhere’ philosophy means extending protective measures across the entire spectrum of AppSec efforts, ensuring a collective responsibility towards security that involves management, developers and AppSec professionals alike. This comprehensive approach is important for protecting against constantly evolving cybersecurity risks, making security a coordinated effort throughout the organisation.
By weaving AppSec seamlessly through every phase of the DevOps operation and embracing a ‘shift everywhere’ approach, organisations strengthen their defences against a fast-evolving cybersecurity landscape. Getting support from the board will ensure that security leaders have the resources and tools they need to safeguard sensitive data and preserve their organisation’s integrity in our increasingly digital world.
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