CIOs and CISOs - Trends and Challenges Shaping Application Security

Applications are the core of any business. As applications become more complex, maintaining the stack becomes more difficult. Most of the companies also bear a huge stack of legacy apps which are not modernize and are prone to security breaches. Visibility into the overall security posture of applications have not only just become difficult but cumbersome. This complicates efforts to assess, measure, prioritize and respond to application risks. Average applications breaches can cost $12 Million plus damages to reputation/brand.?

Most of the executives are looking for -?

• Where is my business risk? Which apps are most critical to me and my business?
• How do I set internal policy requirements for application security?
• How do we test apps for security in rapid DevOps environment?
• How do we reduce costs and catch security problems earlier in the lifecycle?
• How do we prioritize the work for the resources I have?

?Gen AI is transforming Applications in a significant way. Developers are using Gen AI to write codes. AI powered tools like GitHub Copilot assist developers by generating code snippets, detect bugs early and accelerate software development process. Applications in Finance, Healthcare, Logistics etc. use AI to predict trends, consumer behaviors and most importantly innovation.

?As applications continue to be entry points for data breaches, securing them becomes critical component of information security programs.? Application and API deployments continue to increase the attack surface of organizations. ?

Development,?platform engineering, cloud operations, security teams and others frequently struggle to prioritize specific security issues that should be addressed more holistically to provide optimal reduction in risk.

The pace of, and approaches to, application development strain traditional application security efforts, creating confusion and frustration for all stakeholders and yielding unsatisfactory results that fail to effectively manage risk.?

With Gen AI, there are few trends which are shaping up in this area and becoming huge –?

1. Speed of development and DevSecOps
2. Cybersecurity platform consolidation
3. Evolution of developer and security roles
4. Cloud native applications and APIs
5. Regulations

Now with AI in the hands of cybercriminals – they are using tactics like Deepfakes and Phishing and AI -Augmented Malware. With Gen AI models using large data sets, this raises concerns about the confidentiality, integrity and privacy of the data. There is an increase in the attack surfaces such as APIs, Data, App layers, Infra layers etc.

Application Security/AppSec is the process of finding, fixing, and preventing security vulnerabilities at the application level in hardware, software, and development processes. Application security posture management (ASPM) has evolved and promises to address these challenges.?

1. Assess generative AI and how it can enable developers for code security, but also assess threats to your applications with a focus on access control risks and misconfigurations.
2. Focus on posture management and runtime protection
3. Shift left approach – embeds security from the early stages of App Development
4. Automated Security Policies – Patch vulnerabilities and remediation process
5. Engage with platform engineering teams to obtain support and enforcement of your DevSecOps principles.

?Identify –?

1. Architectural Standards
2. Security Requirements – Threat-intel mindset

?Secure –?

1. Code Reviews
2. Application Testing – Static (SAST), Dynamic (DAST), Interactive
3. SCA - Software Composition Analysis
4. Pen testing as a service
5. Perform Threat Modeling
6. Software supply chain and runtime environment
7. Integrate with CI/CD pipelines

CNAPPs - Cloud-native application protection (CNAPP) is in the Future of Workload and Application Security Consolidation. It brings together multiple security functions into a unified platform.? Areas such as CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management), CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platform), CIEM (Cloud infrastructure Entitlement Management), KSPM (Kubernetes Security Posture Management).

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