What is Application Security? All You Need To Know Guide

Uncertain about how to secure your application or which steps to take? You’re not alone – every aspiring digital product creator has faced this challenge. As app development experts with over a decade of experience, we understand how confusing it can be at the start. That’s why we’ve crafted this guide to help you master the essentials of application security, ensuring you feel confident when discussing your needs with your future or current app development team.

What is application security?

Also known as AppSec, application security refers to the steps taken to both protect applications and the data and code within an application from being stolen or misused. This includes precautions during the development and design phases, as well as measures to protect the application after it’s launched.

These steps can use hardware, software, and procedures to find and fix security problems. For example, a router that hides a computer’s IP address from the Internet is a type of hardware security. Software security might include firewalls that control what actions are allowed within the application. Another example is encryption software that protects data by turning it into code. Procedures might include regularly testing the application for vulnerabilities to make sure it remains secure.

Read also: What Is a Mobile App – All You Should Know as a Future Product Owner

Why is application security important?

When building apps, it’s important to make security a priority. Your apps will likely be accessible over multiple networks and connected to the cloud, making them a target for hackers. Securing your app is just as important as securing your network.

Hackers often target apps, looking for vulnerabilities to exploit. If your app isn’t secure, it could be vulnerable to unauthorized access and data breaches. By focusing on application security, you can find and fix vulnerabilities before they become a problem.

Think of it this way: would you build a house without locks on the doors? The same idea applies to your applications. Ensuring strong application security tools even from the start protects your users and your reputation. Investing in application security testing helps you identify and address potential threats, keeping your app safe and successful.

What types of applications do you need to secure in a modern enterprise?

Cloud-based applications

Cloud application security involves protecting applications and data in cloud environments through policies, processes, and controls. This includes managing access, securing data, protecting infrastructure, monitoring activities, responding to incidents, and mitigating vulnerabilities. Effective cloud security ensures that shared resources are used safely and that sensitive data is protected as it travels over the Internet.

• Challenges: In cloud environments, shared resources require strict access controls to ensure that users only see authorized data. Sensitive data is vulnerable as it travels over the Internet between the user and the application.
• Security measures: Implement strong authentication, encryption, and access controls to protect data both in transit and at rest.

Mobile applications

Securing applications on platforms such as Android, iOS, and Windows Phone utilizes a specific range of processes known collectively as mobile application security. This involves evaluating the application for security issues based on the platform, development framework, and user base. Security testing includes static and dynamic analysis, as well as penetration testing to find vulnerabilities that a malicious user could exploit. Ensuring secure coding practices and compliance with security policies is critical to protecting mobile applications.

• Challenges: Mobile apps frequently interact with other apps and services, increasing the risk of data leakage or malicious activity. Also, mobile operating systems and apps are regularly updated, which can introduce new vulnerabilities or compatibility issues.
• Security measures: Ensure mobile applications have secure coding practices, use encryption for data storage, implement secure communication protocols, and perform regular security testing to detect vulnerabilities.

Web applications

Web application security aims to protect web applications from attacks while ensuring that they function as expected. This involves integrating security controls throughout the development process to address both design and implementation flaws. Security testing methodologies such as DAST, SAST, penetration testing, and RASP help identify and mitigate vulnerabilities. Because Web applications often contain sensitive data and are accessible over the Internet, robust security measures are essential.

• Challenges: Web applications are accessed through browsers and live on remote servers, requiring the secure transmission of data between the user and the server.
• Security measures: Deploy web application firewalls to inspect and block malicious data packets and ensure robust security protocols for data transmission.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

API security is critical due to the growing importance of APIs in modern microservices architectures and the API economy. These interfaces enable data sharing and access to software functionality, making them potential targets for attackers. Common API vulnerabilities include weak authentication, data exposure, and a lack of rate limiting. Specialized tools help secure APIs by identifying and remediating vulnerabilities to ensure they are protected from unauthorized access and misuse.

• Challenges: APIs are critical to modern microservices and the API economy, but they can expose sensitive data and disrupt operations if not secured.
• Security measures: Protect APIs with strong authentication, data exposure controls, and rate limiting to prevent misuse. Use specialized tools to identify and mitigate API vulnerabilities.

Read also:

• Fintech Cybersecurity: Challenges, Best Practices, and Future Trends
• 8 Key IoT Security Challenges and Proven Solutions from the Field

Types of application security

When building an app, it’s also important to understand the different types of application security to keep your app and your users safe. Here are some key features:

Authentication

• Ensures that only authorized users can access the application.
• Common methods include requiring a username and password.
• Multi-factor authentication adds additional layers, such as a mobile device or fingerprint, to verify a user’s identity.

Authorization

• Determines what an authenticated user can do in the application.
• Verifies that the user has permission to access specific features or data.
• Occurs after authentication to ensure that users can only access what they are authorized to access.

Encryption

• Protects sensitive data from unauthorized access or use.
• Encrypts data as it travels between the user and the application, especially in cloud-based applications, to keep it secure.

Logging

• Keeps track of who accessed the application and what they did.
• Provides a record that can help determine how a security breach occurred and who was responsible.

Application security testing

• Regularly tests all security measures to ensure they are working properly.
• Helps find and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.

By incorporating these security features, you can help protect your application and its users from potential threats.

Types of security testing explained

Security testing types refer to different methods used to evaluate the security of an application or system. These types help identify vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and potential threats from various perspectives to ensure that the application is robust and secure. Here are the most common types.

Penetration testing (Ethical Hacking)

The simulation of real-world cyber-attacks on your application, software, system, or network is known as penetration testing, and it can demonstrate how well your existing security measures hold up. It’s like a drill to find unknown vulnerabilities, including serious threats and logical flaws. Traditionally, this is done manually by an ethical hacker: a professional who tries to safely penetrate your system. Today, automated tools can also perform these tests, making them more affordable and frequent.

Application security testing (AST)

AST is the process of testing software applications for security issues throughout their development. The goal is to find and fix vulnerabilities before the application is released, ensuring stronger and more secure code. This ongoing testing helps protect against threats and keeps your application safe from internal and external attacks.

Web application security testing

If you want to verify that your web application is not vulnerable to attack, then you need web application security testing. This includes both automated and manual techniques to gather information, find vulnerabilities, and see how they could be exploited. The goal is to identify and remediate risks. The OWASP community is focused on finding and reporting these vulnerabilities.

API security testing

API security testing identifies vulnerabilities in your APIs and web services to protect against unauthorized access and misuse. APIs are entry points to sensitive data and can be targets for attacks such as eavesdropping, code injection, and denial of service. Regular and thorough testing ensures that APIs have strong security measures such as authentication, encryption, and input sanitization.

Vulnerability management

The ongoing process to find, assess, report, and remediate security vulnerabilities in your systems is known as vulnerability management. Using scanning tools, this process helps you prioritize and remediate the most critical vulnerabilities quickly, reducing the overall risk to your organization.

Configuration scanning

Configuration scanning identifies incorrect settings in your software, networks, and systems. Automated tools check your systems against best practices and provide reports with details and remediation suggestions.

Security audits

You can use security audits to assess your applications and systems against specific security standards. They examine code, architecture, and practices to identify security vulnerabilities and ensure compliance.

Risk assessment

Risk assessments identify and prioritize security risks to your critical assets. This helps you understand key threats, plan remediation efforts, and budget for long-term security investments.

Security posture assessment

A security posture assessment combines scanning, ethical hacking, and risk assessments to evaluate your current security controls. It identifies gaps and recommends improvements to strengthen your overall security posture.

Security testing approaches

We can also divide security testing into methods used to evaluate the security of a system or application by examining it from different perspectives and access levels. Here are 3 main approaches.

Black box security testing

In black box testing, the tester has no access to the inner workings of the system. They test the application from an outsider’s perspective, like a hacker, to find vulnerabilities. This method helps identify external threats, but can’t reveal deeper security issues inside the application.

White box security testing

Unlike black box testing, white box testing gives the tester full access to the inner workings of the application, including the source code. This allows for in-depth analysis to find issues with code quality, business logic, and security configurations. Dynamic testing techniques such as fuzzing can also be used to find hidden vulnerabilities. However, not all identified issues may be exploitable in real-world scenarios.

Gray box security testing

Gray box testing provides the tester with limited knowledge of the application’s internals, such as user credentials. This method helps evaluate what an insider or someone with partial access could do to exploit the system. It combines the perspectives of both black box and white box testing, making it an efficient and balanced approach to security testing.

Application security testing tools and solutions

Testing tools and solutions are essential components in ensuring the security and integrity of applications. Here are some key types and examples:

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

A security tool that monitors and filters traffic between a web application and the Internet, a Web Application Firewall doesn’t stop all threats, but works in conjunction with other existing security measures and tools to provide strong overall protection.

Think of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, a framework for understanding how different network protocols interact. In this model, a WAF works at layer seven, which deals with web applications. It helps protect against attacks such as cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery, SQL injection, and malicious file inclusion.

Unlike a proxy server, which hides the identity of client machines, a WAF acts as a reverse proxy to protect the web server. It acts as a shield in front of the web application, filtering all incoming traffic from the Internet before it reaches the server. In this way, the WAF helps to protect the web application from various online threats.

Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP)

RASP technology monitors how users interact with an application and how data moves within it while it’s running. It helps detect and stop cyber threats by looking at the application’s source code and identifying vulnerabilities. RASP tools can find and stop active attacks and send alerts for better protection.

Vulnerability management

Vulnerability management is the process of finding, prioritizing, and fixing security problems in software. Tools scan your application for known issues, rank them by severity, and help you fix the most critical ones first. This ensures that your application remains secure by addressing vulnerabilities on a regular basis.

Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)

An SBOM lists all the components in your software, both open source and proprietary. It helps you track and manage vulnerabilities by showing you what’s in your application. If a vulnerability is found, an SBOM helps you quickly identify and remediate the affected components.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

SCA tools generate a list of third-party components in your software. They scan these components for security issues, helping you manage and remediate vulnerabilities in the external libraries and modules your application uses.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

SAST tools analyze your application’s source code to find security vulnerabilities before the software is executed. They can identify issues such as coding errors and insecure practices, helping you fix problems early in the development process.

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

DAST tools test your application while it’s running, simulating attacks to find security problems. They check how the application responds to various inputs and look for vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and scripting issues.

Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST)

IAST combines SAST and DAST techniques, testing the application while it is running and examining the source code. This method provides detailed information about security issues, helping you understand and effectively remediate vulnerabilities.

Mobile Application Security Testing (MAST)

MAST tools test the security of mobile applications using a variety of techniques, including static and dynamic analysis. They check for issues such as data leakage, weak encryption, and vulnerabilities unique to mobile environments.

Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)

A CNAPP provides a centralized dashboard for securing cloud-based applications. It combines multiple security tools and capabilities, such as identity management and API protection, to secure applications running in the cloud.

Application security best practices

Application security best practices are critical to protecting your software from cyber threats. Following these guidelines will help keep your application safe and secure for users.

• Conduct a threat assessment: Identify critical assets and potential threats. Understand what methods hackers might use and ensure you have the right security measures in place.
• Shift security to the left: Integrate security testing into the development cycle from the start, making it part of the routine rather than an afterthought. Automate security testing in your CI/CD pipelines to catch problems early.
• Prioritize remediation: Focus on fixing the most critical vulnerabilities first, based on their severity and the importance of the affected application.
• Measure security results: Track and report on the effectiveness of your security efforts. Use simple, actionable metrics to demonstrate the impact of your security program.
• Manage privileges: Limit access to sensitive systems and data to only those who need it. This reduces the risk of both external attacks and insider threats.

Application security risks

Many application security vulnerabilities are well known and tracked by organizations over time. The Open Web Application Security Project OWASP Top Ten list focuses on web application vulnerabilities, while the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) covers issues that can occur in any software context. Both lists are intended to provide developers with practical advice on how to secure their code and protect their applications.

Web Application Security Risks: OWASP Top 10

Broken Access Control

Broken access control occurs when unauthorized users gain access and privileges they shouldn’t have. This can allow attackers to log into user accounts and act as administrators or regular users. It can also give users access to functions they shouldn’t have. To fix this, use strong access controls that clearly define and separate user roles.

Cryptographic failures

Also known as “sensitive data exposure,” cryptographic failures occur when data isn’t properly protected during transmission or storage. This can expose passwords, health records, credit card numbers, and personally identifiable information, resulting in non-compliance with regulations such as GDPR and PCI DSS.

Injection (including XSS, LFI, and SQL injection)

Injection flaws allow attackers to send malicious data to your web application, which can then be executed by the server. A common example is SQL injection. These vulnerabilities must be addressed by ensuring proper input validation and secure coding practices. 

Unlike SQL injection, whose main target is the server part, an XSS attack targets a client using a vulnerable web application. Such an attack involves injecting a piece of javascript or other scripting language (such as VBScript) that can be run in the victim’s browser.

Insecure design

Vulnerabilities due to missing or ineffective security controls are symptoms of insecure design. Applications that lack basic security measures can’t defend against critical threats. Unlike implementation flaws, insecure design can’t be fixed with simple configuration changes and requires secure design from the start.

Security Misconfiguration (Including XXE)

Security misconfigurations occur when the application’s security settings are not set up properly. This can include improperly configured cloud permissions, enabling unnecessary features, and using default passwords. XXE vulnerabilities also fall into this category. Proper application security program configuration and hardening are essential to prevent these issues.

Vulnerable and outdated components

Using outdated or unsupported software components can lead to vulnerabilities. This happens when an application is built with components without knowing their inner workings and versions. Keeping software up to date is critical to security.

Identification and authentication errors

Formerly known as “broken authentication,” these failures involve problems with user identities. Protecting against them requires secure session management and authentication practices to ensure that only authorized users can gain access to the application.

Software and data integrity failures

These occur when infrastructure and code are open to integrity violations. This can happen during software updates, data changes, or unverified changes in the CI/CD pipeline, leading to unauthorized access and supply chain attacks. Secure validation processes are required to prevent these failures.

Security logging and monitoring failures

When logging and monitoring mechanisms fail, it becomes difficult to detect and respond to security risks. These tools are critical for identifying breaches, and without them, the application’s visibility and ability to respond to threats is compromised.

Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)

SSRF vulnerabilities occur when a web application fails to validate a user-typed URL before accessing data from a remote source. This can affect servers behind firewalls and networks without proper URL validation controls. Implementing proper URL validation can prevent SSRF attacks.

API Security Risks: OWASP Top 10

APIs allow different software programs to communicate with each other and enable external clients to request services. However, APIs can be susceptible to many threats and vulnerabilities. OWASP has also compiled a list of the top 10 security risks in this area.

Broken object-level authorization

APIs often have endpoints that manage object IDs, making them more vulnerable. To prevent unauthorized access, always check object-level authorization for any function that accesses data through user input.

Broken user authentication

If authentication is not set up correctly, unauthorized users can gain access. This can happen if there are errors in the implementation of authentication or if authentication tokens are compromised. Attackers can then impersonate legitimate users, posing a serious security threat.

Excessive data exposure

Sometimes APIs expose too much information because developers rely on the client to filter data before displaying it. This can lead to the unintentional exposure of sensitive data.

Lack of resources & limitations

Without limits on the number or size of requests, an API server can become overloaded, potentially causing a denial of service (DoS). This lack of control can also lead to authentication problems and brute force attacks.

Broken function level authorization

Complicated access control policies can result in unauthorized users gaining access to resources or administrative privileges. Ensure a clear separation between regular and administrative functions, and simplify access control policies.

Mass mapping

Mass mapping occurs when client data (such as JSON) is improperly mapped to data models without filtering. Attackers can then guess object properties or explore other API endpoints to manipulate data.

Security misconfiguration

Security misconfigurations can occur due to:

• Insecure default settings
• Open cloud storage
• Incomplete configurations
• Misconfigured HTTP headers
• Permissive cross-origin resource sharing (CORS)
• Unnecessary HTTP methods
• Error messages that reveal sensitive information

Injection

Injection flaws occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter via a command or query, resulting in unauthorized access or unintended commands. Examples include SQL and NoSQL injections.

Inadequate asset management

APIs often expose more endpoints than web applications, making accurate and up-to-date documentation essential. Keeping track of hosts and API versions helps avoid issues with debugging endpoints and outdated APIs.

Inadequate logging and monitoring

Without proper logging and monitoring, attackers can escalate their actions undetected. This allows them to remain in the system and potentially extract, destroy, or manipulate sensitive customer data further. Effective integration with incident response is critical.

Application security testing in Droids On Roids

We take app security seriously because we know how much your product means to you. We understand that you’ve put time, effort, and passion into developing your app, and you want it to be secure. We treat your app as if it were our own, recognizing that its security is as important to us as it is to you.

Our contracts include a Secure Development Lifecycle that integrates security into every phase of development. We adhere to the OWASP Mobile Application Security Testing Guide, the OWASP Mobile Application Security Verification Standard, and the OWASP Mobile Application Security Checklist. 

These rigorous standards of security considerations and practices enable us to provide the highest level of security, so you can be confident that your product is protected from potential threats.

Want to talk about your application security? Let’s talk!

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