Everything You Need to Know About Application Security Best Practices

Applications are the weakest link when it comes to the security of the enterprise stack. In The State of Application Security, 2022, Forrester reports that the majority of external attacks occur either by exploiting a software vulnerability (35 percent) or through a web application (32 percent).

As applications become more complex and software development timelines shrink, developers are under pressure to release new features as quickly as possible. As a result, developers rely more heavily on third-party libraries, particularly open source components, to achieve differentiated and compelling application functionality. This increase in open source components forces organizations to adjust their security practices. In addition, new frameworks like containers and APIs add to the complexity of application security.

With developers under pressure to continually release new features, organizations face the very real risk that security won’t keep up. One of the ways they can secure their software is by adopting application security best practices and integrating them into their software development life cycle.

To this end, here are the top ten application security best practices you should implement in your organization.

1. Track your assets 

You can’t protect what you don’t know you have.

Do you know which servers you use for specific functions or apps? Do you know which open source components are in your various web apps? Do you know what dependencies these components have?

Don’t think tracking your assets is that important? Just ask Equifax, how important it is to remember which software is running in which application. In one of the most high-profile cases of its kind, the credit rating agency was hit with a $700 million fine for its failure to protect the data of over 145 million customers. Equifax suffered the security breach because it failed to patch the vulnerable Apache Struts open source component in one of its customer web portals. The company claimed it wasn’t aware that the vulnerable open source component was being used in the customer portal.

So, keeping track of your assets can prevent serious issues. The process should be automated as much as possible since it can feel like a Sisyphean task as organizations continue to scale their development.

In addition to tracking your assets, take the time to classify them, noting which ones are critical to your business functions and which are of lower importance. This comes in handy later for your threat assessment and remediation strategy.

2. Perform a threat assessment

Once you have a list of what needs protecting, you can begin to figure out what your threats are and how to mitigate them.

What are the paths that hackers could use to breach your application? Do you have existing security measures in place to detect or prevent an attack? Are more or different tools needed to protect yourself?

These are key questions you need to answer as part of your threat assessment. However, you also need to be realistic about expectations for how secure you can be. Be aware that even if you take the maximum level of protection available, nothing is ever unhackable. You also need to be honest about what kind of measures you think your team can maintain. Pushing for too much can lead to your security standards and practices being ignored. Remember that security is a marathon, not a sprint.

When judging your risk, use the basic formula: Risk = Probability of Attack x Impact of Attack.

3. Stay on top of your patching 

Are you patching your operating systems with the latest versions? What about third-party software? If you’re lagging behind, then you’re exposed to risk.

Patching your software with updates either from commercial vendors or the open source community is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure the security of your software. When a vulnerability is responsibly discovered and reported to the owners of the product or project, it is then published on security advisories and databases, like Mend Vulnerability Database, for public consumption. Ideally, a fix is created and pushed out before publication, giving users the chance to secure their software.

If you don’t patch when one becomes available, you are not taking this important step toward better security. 

Developers may be hesitant to upgrade to the latest version of the software if it could break your product, but automated tools can help tremendously here. Updating and patching should be at the top of your application security best practices list.

Find the other seven best practices here ➡️ go.mend.io/3WCs3q2