ThreatX - Blog

We live in a world where new application security vulnerabilities are discovered daily. Additionally, the advent of botnets and crypto currency mining has increased the attractiveness of targets. There are two major techniques utilized by attackers to find vulnerable applications en masse:

1. Run scanners against large portions of the Internet to look for common exploits, such as SQL injection, Remote Command Execution, etc. Virtually any poorly coded web application can be vulnerable to these attacks.
   
   
2. Follow the security feeds for newly discovered vulnerabilities, create exploits and launch them against every public instance of the application. Well known platforms like Wordpress and Drupal are especially susceptible to such an attack.

There is little debate that the best place to fix security issues is within the application code itself. However, that is not always feasible given the time that is required.

Application security never fails to keep us on our toes. Between the continuous evolution of application frameworks and integrations, and the advancement of human and automated attackers, security teams must always be braced for change and new challenges. On a similar vein, if the trends from 2018 continue, web application attacks will remain the most successful hacked area of the enterprise. In fact, over 60% of actual breaches occurred through web applications.^*

Data, data everywhere and yet there’s very little insight to inform the business on the true nature and severity of cyber threats. That’s the story at most organizations where traditional Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) fail to bring into focus the visibility into the mounting expanse of security data.

APIs are at the heart of modern applications and have quickly become a favorite target of attackers. And for good reason - they expose a wealth of functionality and attack surface that is often poorly defended. In our previous article we introduced the key building blocks of API security that can help ensure your APIs get the same level of protection as the web front-end of your application.

For many enterprises today, Web and cloud applications are critical components of the business. And for the ever-increasing number of companies conducting business online, they are the business. 

APIs have altered the attack surface of modern applications and exposed new gaps in security in the process. In the old days, virtually all application traffic passed through the web front-end of an application, and unsurprisingly that is where security efforts were focused. APIs have quickly and thoroughly eroded this basic assumption.

Web security is not a new concept. From the dawn of the Internet, cyber criminals have been experimenting with and mastering ways to exploit the data housed within online properties. And as businesses increasingly transition online, the volume of attacks has skyrocketed. According to a recent study,* the number of new vulnerabilities per month exceeded 17,000 in 2018. That’s nearly a 23% increase from 2017. From 10-person startups to thousand-person enterprises, cyber threats are an equally legitimate concern (or at least they should be). Arm yourself with the tools you need to protect your business from malicious attacks (automated or not). The first step is familiarizing yourself with the keywords/terms used most frequently in the application security space.

The following post details, alphabetical order, the first 10 keywords:

In a world where speed and agility is expected by consumers and required for business operations, automation has become key component of successful enterprise operations, from identity and access management to patching. But it goes beyond that. Automation has enabled many security teams to transfer maintenance burdens and manual tasks from security teams to applications, which in turn, frees skilled human workers to focus their energy on strategic initiatives. Unfortunately, that's not the end of the story. Without proper parameters, automation can actually introduce critical security vulnerabilities and serve more as an adversary than an ally.