Forever 21, one of the world’s largest retail fashion stores, recently experienced security breach where hackers successfully obtained customers’ credit card information by injecting malware to their point of sales (POS) devices after some terminals had their encryption switched off. This incident reminds us that security is an important part of every business. Being secure does not end by creating password for your computer. It is a lot wider than that, including application security, data security, network security and endpoint security. We are going to discuss all these types this month, starting with application security.
Nowadays, businesses are using applications to make their operations easier and efficient, so it is not unexpected that according to a 2017 research by Inkwood Research, the global market for enterprise applications will experience a 10.66% compound annual growth rate until 2025. This signifies today’s competitive marketplace where businesses are under increasing pressure to get applications to the market as quickly as possible. By this metric, developers are measured by the speed of coding an application, which later puts security in low priority. Even when bugs or vulnerabilities are eventually found by testing at the end of the development process, organizations often choose to fix the bugs to improve user experience rather than the vulnerabilities that would make the application more secure.
Before learning more why security in applications is important, we should know the purpose of it. Application security is the use of software, hardware, and procedural methods to protect applications from external threats. It helps identify, fix and prevent security vulnerabilities in any kind of software application. By doing so, enterprises are capable to minimize the flaws of applications that can be exploited by cybercriminals to gain access to one’s system and steal confidential data.
The use of application security is no longer optional, but has become an absolute necessity due to the fact that attacks and threats are getting more sophisticated as each year passes. A 2017 research by Positive Technologies revealed that the most common attacks on web applications were SQL injections and OS Commanding (84%), which allow for a deeper level of compromise, and later followed by Path Traversal (74%) and Cross-Site Scripting (58%).
There is no denying that applications are important to increase our efficiency and productivity, but enterprises should remember that the security of it is just as important to minimize the possibility of attacks. CTI Group has dedicated themselves for more than a decade in assisting you to enhance security through a range of solutions, one of which is application security.
