IT teams across industries face numerous challenges in selecting the right application security features to match their development lifecycle and new release frequency. They need guidance to pick the right tools that enhance developer velocity. They also need to stay tuned about the latest App Security best practices and approaches in a world where new threats arrive faster than the next security update. 

To overcome unforeseen security hurdles, IT teams are rushing to integrate innovative security tools and automation strategies.

Overall, there are three key focus areas that need to be secured for delivering stable mobile and web applications:

• Secure the Infrastructure & Network
• Robust AppSec in App development lifecycle
• Practicing & Governing Security SDLC

However, the necessity of the hour is to not only identify vulnerabilities but also to know which AppSec tool is most responsive to the needs of app owners and product leaders. Due to these factors, the IT team must also evaluate the benefits of innovative app security tool features that they can combine and customize as per their needs.  

Discover nine ways in which innovative software application security tools enable secure app delivery:

1. Leverage interactive application security testing mechanisms

By identifying the right-fit interactive application security testing tool, you can analyze code for vulnerabilities while an automated test runs the app. By using interactive DevSecOps, app owners can create the necessary infrastructure required while it seamlessly gets embedded in the CI/CD pipeline. It is made possible by integrating SAST, SCA, IAST, and AppSec Awareness on a single platform. 

2. Automatically assign severity levels to app security vulnerabilities

A robust asset discovery solution can help perform continuous scanning to discover vulnerabilities based on IP addresses, SSL certificate information, etc. It can also highlight the potential damage caused by automatically assigning the severity level to vulnerabilities. It can empower app owners to effectively manage vulnerabilities with the help of third-party applications like Azure DevOps and vulnerability management systems like Metasploit.

3. Get a complete view of your organization’s web app security

An end-to-end web security scanner provides a complete view of the organization’s web security. By integrating security scanning with tracking systems like Jira, GitHub, etc., security scanners can help manage security, no matter the scope of your web presence. The use of macro recording technology helps scan multi-level forms and password-protected areas of the site or application to give a complete view of web security.

4. Perform both manual penetration testing and automated scans

Empowered by in-depth, intelligent crawling, IT teams can detect malware that mostly goes unnoticed. They can gain from unlimited scanning features to detect vulnerabilities validated by OWASP and WASC. It helps carry out a complete scan of the application to ferret out all sorts of vulnerabilities, malware, and critical CVEs while giving zero false positive assurance to make vulnerability fixing glitch-free.

5. Monitor risks across servers, cloud, websites, and endpoint devices

By enabling continuous vulnerability management across your entire IT estate, you can find vulnerabilities such as misconfigurations, missing patches, encryption weaknesses, and broken application code structures. These code structure anomalies can lead to vulnerabilities such as SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting, and faulty OWASP top 10 control implementation. It can essentially help avoid possible data breaches with timely threat detection.

6. Invest in DevSecOps for a clean CI/CD to boost security in applications 

To address security issues as early as possible, development teams must integrate security checks and assessments into the CI/CD Pipeline to make the code risk-free. While end-to-end, DevSecOps tools ensure robust security, a customized strategy must formulate based on every app’s data complexities and infrastructure architecture requirements. You also need a step-by-step guide that brings visibility on effort estimation, deliverables, and test approach.

7. Implement a Secure Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

Developers must be aware of potential security problems at every project’s life cycle phase. To help developers, IT teams must integrate the right-fit security solution into the SDLC. The perfect solution gives access to the source code while securing the application from real threats. However, having well-defined security policies for every stage of the SDLC is also critical.

8. Enhance security in static code analysis

Static code analysis can help establish them as secure before a working application and code execution happens. Static Application Security Testing tools like Veracode and sonar cube can help find vulnerabilities like SQL Injections, buffer flows, etc. Several tools like Burp Suit and Sonar can help you check vulnerabilities and penetrating testing, which helps you identify the vulnerabilities to reach your targets.

9. Have a robust Web Application Firewall (WAF)

WAF leverages your application security by detecting threats like SQL injections, XSS, and others, freeing your application from unauthorized access, vulnerabilities, and data breaches. This web application firewall works at the application layer examines HTTP and HTTPS web traffic and identifies malicious attacks.

Conclusion:

Unforeseen threats and vulnerabilities make application security a critical component for development teams. Using scriptless testing automation, developers can now protect the data and confidently build applications. In addition, it can help the IT team to reduce risks for development teams by automating security integration into the application development life cycle.

Outcomes you can achieve with the best-fit and most innovative application security tools: 

• Reduce operational costs by introducing on-demand environments
• Detect legacy defects faster with the use of an automation suite
• Catch bugs at the earlier stages in the SDLC
• Improve test coverage
• Reduce manual efforts in testing
• Free developers from time spent on data security

Factors that determine successful Application Security implementation:

• Ability to maintain security at every phase
• Detailed assessment before security
• Security-related changes right at the code level
• Automation of all possible processes
• Continuous monitoring through alerts and dashboards