Application Security has become one of the fastest-growing, increasingly challenging security sectors within modern business. What was once almost an afterthought, a simple task of securing the software development process with some manual testing and patching, has evolved into a critical component of security postures in every type of organization and industry.
As veteran security leader and CISO at Inspectiv, Ray Espinoza, notes in his SC Magazine piece: The 20-year application security blindspot: Can ADR finally fix it? “The explosion of microservices and distributed development in the modern software landscape has fundamentally reshaped the way these services communicate and how they affect the application environment.”
This evolution has resulted in the rise of Application Detection and Response, a proactive approach to Application Security that takes the challenges of the modern application development process and addresses them from the core, going beyond surface-level security to address potential threats within the application itself. For any security practitioner interested in implementing this cutting-edge security approach, here are 3 things to know before taking the first step toward proactive application security leveraging Application Detection and Response (ADR).
Going beyond the firewall
The firewall and code-hardening-based, multi-layered approach to application security has worked wonders, helping security professionals prevent and address attacks at the application level. But, as Ray notes, “Web-application firewalls mainly focus on traffic coming into the application through the web interface, without insights into the internal communication between various microservices in a distributed application.” At the scale and complexity of application development today, with the rise of considerably more sophisticated attacker abilities and numerous chains of trust exploited without detection, legacy AppSec tools are no longer enough. Miggo’s ADR platform was designed with in-application context and controls to anticipate and see what these sophisticated attackers target and its ability to dive deep into the application’s core helps it stop threats that may otherwise slip through the firewall cracks.
A live-action vulnerability chase
The distributed nature of application development makes visibility an even more important - and frustrating - challenge for security teams. Traditional security solutions lack application-layer visibility, preventing them from detecting vulnerabilities at the most crucial stage of application development - run-time. Miggo’s application detection and response (ADR) platform gives security teams deep, live visibility into application interactions. It can detect and pounce on vulnerabilities in real time, using an agentless security scan that integrates seamlessly into existing environments, ensuring minimal disruption and quick value delivery. This deep visibility allows Miggo to detect and respond to threats with high precision when it counts.
Rules are meant to be broken
Newsflash - attackers are one step ahead of you, at all times. Most security teams cover what they think are all of the bases by setting statistical baselines for vulnerabilities and attacks, derived from historical data and statistical analysis. Rule-based baselines use specific criteria for this task, specifying which applications should not access specific resources.
These are great starting points - but they are unscalable, static and will never catch up to attackers. These old-school strategies are made irrelevant by ADR. As Ray notes, “ADR tools can map the application flow – a day-one win for security and engineering teams.
” Mapping the live flow of data gives Miggo’s platform the ability to undertake deep behavioral baselining, rooted in the seamless integration of various application environment data points and tools, and the ability to correlate them with the latest threat intelligence. This unparalleled ability ensures that ADR can detect anomalies in dataflows, reduce false positives and provide security teams with continuous, constantly updated guardrails to fit their needs and environments.
Costs, resources and developer frustrations - saved.
There are numerous benefits to shifting your AppSec strategy to a real-time, proactive ADR approach, but these three elements are game-changers for organizations of all sizes and industries.
By understanding the key components of ADR, including its real-time capabilities, the importance of baselines, and its role in enhancing your overall security posture, you can make informed decisions about implementing an effective ADR solution. Learn more here.
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