Application security is an essential part of the software development lifecycle, and getting it right should be a top priority in today’s ever-evolving and expanding digital ecosystem. Application security is the practice of protecting your applications from malicious attacks by detecting and fixing security weaknesses in your applications’ code.

Software 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). Source: Forrester: The State of Application Security 2022

Most developers aren’t security experts. This isn’t because we don’t care about security, it’s just that there are only so many hours in the day and features come first. Fortunately, developers don’t need to be security experts to build secure apps — they just need the right tools.

As organizations are increasingly prioritizing application security continues to become a top priority for organizations, application security risk assessments is atop many bucket lists. Every application is unique and carries threats factors. It's critical to implement processes and tools to identify and remediate security issues before shipping.

The holiday season is the perfect time to rewatch some favorite festive movies! While some prefer their holiday movies to be as sappy as possible (Hallmark, we’re looking at you), others relish the annual opportunity to watch an 8-year-old boy exact his revenge on two bumbling bad guys in the 1990 classic Home Alone.

It stands to reason that if you’ve implemented a Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tool, you’ll want to reap the full value of the investment. But to accurately assess ROI, you need metrics that can evaluate factors such as overall results, KPI compliance, and timeframe. Only then can you estimate whether you’re making a real improvement to the security of your code base, and from that, assess the monetary value of these results.

Editor’s note: This is Part 3 of a five-part cloud security series that covers protecting an organization’s network perimeter, endpoints, application code, sensitive data, and service and user accounts from threats. In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we discussed the importance of protecting the boundaries of networks in cloud environments and best practices for applying efficient security controls to endpoints.

One of the most important steps of securing your code base, your software, and your applications, is to update the dependencies they rely on. In principle, maintaining software health with updates demands that you use recent versions of any software and dependencies. Recent updates are less likely to be exploited and attacked via publicly known vulnerabilities than older versions, because with the latter, malicious actors have had more time to hunt for weaknesses.

This is the final of a six-part blog series that highlights findings from a new Mend white paper, Five Principles of Modern Application Security Programs. When thinking of adjectives to describe cyberattackers, it’s doubtful that many people would choose to call them innovative – a term we’re more likely to ascribe to things we enjoy. But the reality is that adversaries are innovative, constantly finding new ways to launch attacks that result in greater rewards for less effort.