The Five Key Principles of Modern Application Security

The last few years have been filled with anxiety and the realisation that most websites and apps of many organisations are vulnerable to basic attacks. We now live in a world where daily reports of massive data loss, denial of service, and even complete ruin of companies are upon us.

It’s never a clear decision to invest time and resources in security, especially since traditional management teams have laid out rationalities such as “we haven’t been hacked yet, why would we invest time and money into securing a non-issue”. Fortunately, this type of thinking is rapidly disappearing from the corporate landscape, as high-profile attacks have demonstrated the power of a few skilled individuals against even the largest companies in the digital area.

With that in mind, let’s go through the five key principles of modern application security to ensure your organisation is safe from an impending application security meltdown.

Preparing and Planning: The Recipe for Maximum Visibility

In today's fast-paced digital world, cybersecurity has become an essential aspect of every organisation's operations. The increasing number of cyberattacks and data breaches have made it clear that no company is entirely safe from the dangers of the internet. Hence, it is essential to prepare and plan ahead to ensure maximum visibility of potential threats and vulnerabilities, as well as raising cybersecurity awareness.

One critical step in securing your organisation is to know precisely what you're dealing with. You can't protect or fix what you don't know you have, and this is where preparation and planning come in. It is vital to have a comprehensive understanding of the contents of your open-source code and how it is stored and used. Continuously reviewing and updating your process is also necessary to stay ahead of new vulnerabilities and attacks.

Knowing who has access to your code, software, and data is another essential factor in keeping your organisation secure. Regularly updating components and dependencies can help ensure that your systems remain secure, not to mention conducting pen testing to ensure no vulnerabilities are laying dormant. Moving to the Cloud can also be advantageous as cloud service providers offer many great tools to help you secure your organisation. All of these processes will ensure you have a comprehensive cybersecurity management plan in place.

Shift Left and Shift Smart: The Way Forward

One of the most effective ways to improve your organisation's security is to shift left. This means performing security scans early in the development process to identify and address potential vulnerabilities before they become a problem. However, it is crucial not to stop there and execute shift smart as well.

Integrating vulnerability prioritisation and remediation tools into your team's development environments can help address potential risks as soon as they arise. This includes integrating security tools into your code repositories, build servers, and bug-tracking tools. By doing this, you put security in the hands of developers during development, making it easy and quick for them to fix their code.

Automation: The Answer to Speed and Detection

Automation has become an essential aspect of cybersecurity, addressing the need for speed and detection while easing the stress caused by the ongoing shortage of cybersecurity management and professionals. Automating processes saves time and reduces risk by ensuring that all current versions are in use and deploying solutions that automatically detect and remediate vulnerabilities.

Tools such as Mend make it easier to integrate application security into the software development lifecycle, especially if you're using GitHub or other repositories. Pull requests will automatically bring you a less vulnerable version or take you to the latest version, ensuring that your systems remain secure.

Good Governance: The Foundation of a Secure Organisation

Having a robust process, good cybersecurity incident response plan, and collaboration with cybersecurity companies are vital to maintaining a secure organisation. However, many organisations do not have these in place or apply them consistently. Regularly reviewing and testing your processes is crucial to improving visibility and applications, assessing data, and rapidly updating vulnerabilities and patches.

Creating playbooks and running drills can also help ensure that you can address the newest vulnerabilities and threats. This helps to create a culture of preparedness, where everyone knows what to do in the event of a cyberattack.

Culture Change: Making Security a Priority

Inculcating a security mentality throughout your teams, your secure SDLC, and your organisation is essential to achieving a secure organisation. Security is a collective effort, and goals must be aligned between security and DevOps teams. Best practices must be applied by all, but they should not become so onerous that they are ignored or avoided altogether.

Listening to your teams' needs and concerns can help find ways to integrate and automate the process so that they readily adopt security best practices. Appointing cybersecurity specialists champions on each team can also help spearhead best practices at every point in the SDLC, build trust in the process, and improve the often-fraught relationship between security and development teams.

In Conclusion

The importance of application security in the software development lifecycle cannot be overstated. Ensuring that your open source components are secure, scanning for vulnerabilities early, integrating automated tools to speed up the detection, triage, and remediation of vulnerabilities, having a good cybersecurity incident response plan, and fostering a culture of security throughout your organisation are all crucial steps in creating a secure and safe environment for your application.

In today's rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape, it's more important than ever to stay ahead of the curve and ensure that your application is as secure as possible. By following the steps outlined in this article and utilising the many tools available, organisations can significantly reduce their cyber risk and ensure maximum protection for their application.

As a leading provider of cybersecurity solutions, Xcidic recognises the critical importance of safeguarding businesses and individuals from cyber threats in today's digital age. With a mission to stay at the forefront of cutting-edge cybersecurity technology, we have established strategic partnerships with top industry players such as Mend and Protos Labs to provide comprehensive protection and ensure the highest level of security for our clients. 

To learn more about our unparalleled cybersecurity prowess and how we can help safeguard your organisation's digital assets, please visit our website.