Whilst a growing number of businesses are mindful of the need for program security, few are handling the issue in an effective manner. In a survey of over 640 IT professionals, seven crucial issues were repeatedly identified as recurrent barriers to successful application security. Resolving these issues will help your organization improve developer security understanding, and reduce the costs of software vulnerabilities – assisting you to improve the maturity of your program security processes, and discuss the competencies of high-performing software businesses.
1) NO DEFINED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Secure application development begins with a defined software development process; using appropriate processes in place to address applications requirements, design, testing, and implementation. Many organizations approach these issues in an ad-hoc way, without any emphasis on subsequent procedural guidelines. Without the capacity to develop software in a repeatable, measured and uniform way, it’s almost impossible to incorporate security into the development procedure. Just 43% of surveyed organizations had a defined software development process. Of that 43 percent, just 69% are stuck in the process – resulting in only 30% of all organizations working to a defined development process.
2) NOT TESTING FOR APPLICATION SECURITY
Despite the common sense nature of this issue, simple inaction is one of the biggest security threats faced by organizations. Only 43% of surveyed organizations have a defined procedure in place to mitigate the danger of bugs and defects in the developed software. Even after that, most organizations are at the panic scramble phase of program security maturity – acting in a purely reactive method to safety threats.
3) SECURITY POLICIES ARE NOT INCORPORATED INTO THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE.
To be able to improve the effectiveness of secure application development processes, it’s essential to incorporate security policies right into the software development lifecycle (SDLC). The costs of remediating bugs and vulnerabilities grow tremendously as an application progresses through the SDLC. When problems are identified during creation and post-release, fixing a vulnerability may cost thirty times longer to resolve than a problem detected through the requirement and structure phase.
4) NO FORMAL APPLICATION SECURITY TRAINING PROGRAM
Defined safety policies and requirements are a significant part of securing the development procedure. However, without programmer training to assist the dev staff know and implement the following best practices, security policies will have a slight impact on vulnerabilities and remediation expenses. Over half of the businesses (51 percent) have no application security training regime in place. Even fewer businesses are rolling out the security training plan in an effective manner – blending criteria, education, and evaluation to help developers in adhering to security policy.
5) TRAINING EVALUATION
Using a training program set up, it is vital for the organization to track adherence to safety policies – both in terms of enhancing the efficacy of training programs, and measuring their return on investment. There are three principal areas development teams will need to be assessed throughout: compliance with regulatory requirements, compliance with protected architecture criteria, and compliance with secure coding standards.
6) MOST ORGANISATIONS DON’T UNDERSTAND APPLICATION SECURITY RISKS
Application growth poses an ever-changing threat, together with the safety risks faced by your organization changing in an extremely fluid and lively manner. In order to create and maintain effective safety standards, your organization needs to conduct regular audits to evaluate potential dangers. Most mature organizations use a threat modeling procedure to attain this; identifying new dangers, and prioritizing the need for action.
7) EXECUTIVES AND PRACTITIONERS Have Various UNDERSTANDINGS OF APPLICATION SECURITY MATURITY
In most organizations, there’s a severe disconnect between high-level executives and safety practitioners, together with the C-suite often holding an unrealistic (and unduly optimistic) view of application security in the organization. This misalignment of priorities is a driving force behind several of the largest issues faced by organizations – including expensive shelfware, ineffective security instruction, and the poor standing of security. To remedy this issue, it’s important to prioritize safety from the top down and allow for effective communication between all areas of the business – from dev teams to security, to the C-suite.
Conclusion
Application Security is a major concern in the technology industry nowadays. Application security solutions and strategies initiate a reliable proposal to minimize the risk of security breaches and gaps.