There are many software security solutions available today designed to provide insight into important security issues found during software development. As organizations begin moving forward with DevOps initiatives, are their current Application Security Testing (AST) solutions doing the work they need them to accomplish? If you haven’t integrated AST automatically into your vulnerability detection, triage, and remediation processes across all stages of DevOps, your organization is suffering from what we at Checkmarx call, adoption exposure. AST solutions manage and measure your overall Software Exposure, which helps you accurately understand and significantly reduce your organization’s business risk. Software exposure results from mistakes made in the design, coding, testing, and maintenance of software. Exploiting these vulnerabilities can make the software unavailable or unreliable to users, or allow attackers to execute unauthorized code, read or modify data, change a user’s privileges, hide activities, or bypass security controls. One component of software exposure includes the concept of adoption exposure as shown in the graphic below. This concept raises the question of, “Does our application scanning cover all stages of DevOps and has it been automated?”
Organizations today generate vast amounts of software. Without proper integration and automation of AST solutions directly into the stages of DevOps, you simply won’t be able to scale or systematically cover all of the code you produce and deliver. Although it’s critical to integrate AST solutions automatically into DevOps, you also need to incorporate them into your Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) through plugins and APIs. Every organization has unique needs, which is why it’s essential to automate the process of finding security issues, and also automate the remediation processes that follow those discoveries. With the right policies in place, you can ensure that you have the ability to mark a build as unstable if necessary, based on a critical policy violation. The ability to block completion of a build is essential if you want to treat security issues seriously. Adoption exposure occurs when AST solutions are treated as standalone solutions that are only operated by security teams. Without integrating and automating AST into your overall DevOps environments, your organization will experience unintended consequences—including delayed results, poor feedback loops, incomplete testing, wasted testing, and partial or limited results.
Blog
Adoption Exposure: Your Software Security Needs Integration and Automation
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By Stephen Gates
- July 30, 2019
About the Author
Stephen Gates
Stephen Gates is an experienced writer, blogger, and published author who brings 15+ years of hands-on knowledge in information security to the Checkmarx team. Stephen is dedicated to conveying facts, figures, and information that brings awareness to the cybersecurity issues all organizations and consumers face. Aligning with Checkmarx mission of improving software security for all organizations, he is an advocate and promoter of their solutions worldwide.
See All Blogs > Stephen Gates
Stephen Gates is an experienced writer, blogger, and published author who brings 15+ years of hands-on knowledge in information security to the Checkmarx team. Stephen is dedicated to conveying facts, figures, and information that brings awareness to the cybersecurity issues all organizations and consumers face. Aligning with Checkmarx mission of improving software security for all organizations, he is an advocate and promoter of their solutions worldwide.
See All Blogs > About the Author
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