Guarantee Application Security: Integrate Security Measures throughout the Development Life Cycle.
In today's increasingly hostile digital landscape, the security of applications, especially those exposed, has become an absolute priority for companies.
Too often, security is seen as a late addition to the development process, exposing applications to potential vulnerabilities and much higher switching costs. Indeed, the widely observed tendency is to act once the problem has occurred, not before the security breach.
This week's article is part of an ongoing series on our blog, https://www.bradleyrollins.com/fr/blog, since January on the 20 critical SANS security controls, highlighting the importance of integrating security measures early in the application development lifecycle.
I. Risk Analysis from the Start
The first step to ensuring application security is conducting a thorough risk analysis early in development. This step allows potential vulnerabilities to design appropriate countermeasures.
Identification of Assets and Threats
Identify critical application assets, such as sensitive data and essential functionality.
List potential threats such as SQL injection attacks, denial of service attacks, etc.
Vulnerability Assessment
Review application code and architecture to detect vulnerabilities much more effectively.
We use automated tools such as vulnerability scanners and static code analyses to optimize detection efforts.
Impact Assessment
Assess the potential impact of vulnerabilities on the application and business.
Prioritize risks based on their criticality to define priorities.
Development of Countermeasures
Develop appropriate countermeasures to mitigate identified risks.
Implement secure coding practices, robust access controls, etc.
Integration into the Development Process
Integrate risk analysis throughout the development lifecycle.
Regularly reassess risks to adjust countermeasures based on changes.
II. Developer Training and Awareness
Developers play a crucial role in application security. Adequate Training on security best practices and awareness of the latest threats and vulnerabilities are essential.
Recommendations from our application security experts at Bradley & Rollins:
Adopt good practices
· It is important to organize sessions on secure coding practices, raise teams' awareness of the importance of good security practices in this context, and provide Training on secure development best practices.
· Training is critical! It is essential to train the security team, particularly developers, to proactively integrate threat modeling into their development process to identify potential security threats and vulnerabilities.
III. Use of Automated Security Tools
Integrating automated security tools into the development process can help detect and remediate vulnerabilities as soon as they appear. Tools like static code analyzers and automated penetration testing can help strengthen application security.
Static Code Analyzers
These tools scan application source code for vulnerabilities, such as security flaws, configuration errors, and risky coding practices. They provide detailed reports on identified issues, allowing developers to fix them quickly before deployment. However, good support in implementing these tools is essential.
Automated Penetration Testing
Automated penetration testing simulates actual attacks against the application to identify security weaknesses. It explores vulnerabilities such as SQL injections, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) security flaws, and session management weaknesses. The obtained results help developers strengthen application security by fixing detected vulnerabilities.
IV. Rigorous Security Testing
Regular security testing is essential to identifying application security vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Penetration testing and security audits should be carried out at every stage of development and after the application's deployment.
Recommendations from our application security experts at Bradley & Rollins:
Incorporating the proper security tests
Strengthen the CI/CD pipeline with security controls. It is important to incorporate security testing tools (e.g., SAST, DAST) into the CI/CD pipeline and provide developers with actionable feedback based on the analysis results. The pipeline should not continue until major vulnerabilities are found.
V. Continuous Updates and Maintenance
Application security is not limited to initial development. It is crucial to keep applications up to date by regularly applying security patches and monitoring for new threats. Cybercriminals are creative and responsive. Remember that a vulnerability found will probably have already been exploited for several days before its publication.
Bradley & Rollins has experts specializing in application security. Do you have a question about one of the points covered in this article? Do not hesitate to ask via our contact form; an expert will contact you!