Trends in Application Security

Cyber attacks on both individuals and big business continue to break new ground every year, and with new hacking techniques and tools being leveraged by cybercriminals and an ever-growing increase in threat vectors, it is all the more important to make sure that IT departments are up to the challenge of fighting back. Cybersecurity as an industry is helping IT departments to cope with that challenge with a number of new trends and methods that companies can make use of in order to stay safe. Many organizations face having to join a partner or outsource their security or try to handle the situation on their own, but either way application security requires special expertise in order to implement successfully and stay ahead of the trends.

7 Trends in Application Security

Machine learning and artificial intelligence

While machine learning and artificial intelligence are helping to make the lives of cybersecurity professionals easier as they try to scale their efforts in regards to data protection, the impact of the technologies on application security is perhaps somewhat overestimated by many. In many ways, ML and AI simply remain popular buzzwords as the reality is that human-based intervention and the need to work on particular accurate policies are likely to stay a differentiator at least for the next two to three years. The primary current use for machine learning and artificial intelligence will continue to be for backend efficiencies.

Integration

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a software intermediary of which the purpose is to enable applications to communicate with each other. It offers protocols, routines, and tools that can be used by developers who are responsible for the building of software applications, while also enabling the accessible extraction and sharing of information. Using API to integrate application security systems is set to become a crucial requirement to ensure that organizations can be provided with workflow and process management flexibility.

Moving to the cloud

More and more organizations are continuing the trend of shifting their workloads to the cloud as their physical systems reach the end of their natural life cycle and they attempt to leverage the latest available tools and technology. Having systems secured within the cloud is not dissimilar to doing so within the more traditional enterprise environment but there are a number of different nuances that often depend on the particular services that are being made use of as well as the specific cloud provider.

Using data throughout enterprises

Data that is shared throughout the entirety of an organization needs to be as secure as possible. One method to gain a better understanding of security and data utilization is to apply data science and analytics in addition to some machine learning models. With new data science graduates moving into security positions every year, they will increase the industry’s recognition of the ability of data models application to create more effective forms of security.

Built-in security

While not a completely new trend, the move to have security built into the lifecycle of software from the very beginning is continuing to grow in 2019. Security needs to be taken into account from the initiation of a new software product through to deployment and afterward, including maintenance. Many organizations have started to integrate such security processes as design review, security unit testing, and threat modeling into the development process, allowing them to see value at a much earlier point and can avoid the problem of having to resolve security issues at a much more advanced stage of development. Likewise, those behind the development of tech such as application vulnerability scanners are now focusing considerable effort on enabling organizations to have their tools integrated into their automated pipelines for build and development, as was the case with the Burp Suite Enterprise 2.0 released earlier in the year.

Thinking like hackers

Understanding how the ploys of cybercriminals and hackers work inside and out is the only way to truly beat them at their own game, which is why Certified Ethical Hackers are becoming truly invaluable resources in the fight against cybercrime. CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certification and other similar certifications offer crucial skill sets which IT departments serious about protecting their network and data should be able to provide.

Privacy and increased enforcement

Data breaches are becoming more and more commonplace, as is the trend for increased accountability as a consequence. Accountability means that those people who lose PII are held responsible for the consequences of their security-related decisions.

Those who benefit the most from the ever-increasing focus on application security to counter modern technological threats will be those offering the support or service component who are able to offer managed security services to organizations, rather than those who simply sell security products that can just be used straight out of the box.

Indusface is a leader in the application security industry and has won a number of awards for its unique application security monitoring platform. Contact Indusface today for the best in application security.

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