Application security can be defined as package of measures undertaken to ensure the security of the application or the system. The flaw can be in the design, development, deployment, upgrade or maintenance of the application.
When an application is attacked by a hacker, have usually have access to the confidential data on the customers and company. For this reason testing an application to ensure security has become a major concern. It is necessary to maintain and upgrade the application security products in order to stay in pace with the changing threat-space.
Application security testing can be classified into two types:
Static Analysis can be performed using automated and manual testing tools. Some of the automated static analysis tools include Fortify Software and Ounce Labs. These tools have the advantage to run on large source code and analysis can be performed consistently on the source code. These are very efficient in finding flaws like SQL injection, cross-site scripting and buffer overflows.
Just like static analysis dynamic analysis can be automated or manual. Dynamic analysis tools include WatchFire and SPIDynamics. These automated tools are helpful in finding out vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting(XSS). Manual Testing of web applications can be performed using tools such as Paros and WebScarab.
The process involves sending requests to application and examining the responses to see if there was an indication that a security vulnerability was present. Since the result of testing is predicted depending on the response it is not considered a very reliable.
Ability to determine vulnerabilities on time and take appropriate measures will lead to higher results hence improving the confidence.
Determining the vulnerabilities can erase many hurdles in an organization and lead to improved efficiency. Developers can prioritize the vulnerabilities quickly and easily from a single pan and unified workflow.
Combining the Coverity Development Testing Platform with NTOSpider helps to achieve maximum application coverage in a singular interactive application security testing software.
Collaborating Security and Development teams can improve communication, prioritization and remediation efforts around security vulnerabilities.
This step involves identifying all the vulnerabilities in a system.
Threat modeling involves identify the vulnerabilities and objectives of the system and defining counter measures to overcome the vulnerabilities or mitigate the threats.
Code Analysis involves analysis the code to check for flaw.
This test will help to expose the efficiency of applications security controls by highlighting the risks that may be caused as a result of the vulnerabilities in the application.
Run-time analysis can be defined as the analysis of the code and an estimate of the time taken for the execution.
This procedure is similar to Web based application testing, Binary application testing is most beneficial for clients who have third-party binaries on their systems.
Authentication can be defined as a step to identify the digital identity of sender of a communication. Authenticating will help to avoid unauthorized access and hence prevent or reduce vulnerabilities.
Authorization can be defined as giving access to something. Allowing access to only authorized users may prevent vulnerabilities to a great extend.
Denial of service is nothing but making a particular service unavailable. Enabling Denial of Service, will allow access only to authorized users and hence help to avoid vulnerabilities.
While testing take into account the business restrictions that one will face.
Risk Functionality is not but analyzing the risk involved and coming up with mitigation measures for the same.
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