The Holy Grail of cybersecurity is the ability to see, understand, and respond to business-impacting attack surface issues in real time and with laser precision. This quest has resulted in the development and deployment of thousands of commercially available tools and millions — if not billions — of data points produced by these products every year. While the intent of this innovation is to provide cybersecurity professionals with the ability to perform their jobs better, faster, and more accurately, the real outcome is rampant tools sprawl and more alerts to triage than is humanly possible.
Now, if you’re reading this and thinking, “Well, thank goodness for machine learning and automation,” you likely do not deal with these tools every day. Practitioners have come to learn that “more” is not “better.” In fact, some of the biggest problems in application security (AppSec) (and cybersecurity in general) are noise and inefficiency. Though it might be impressive and helpful to show business leaders the sheer number of issues handled by security teams, when it comes to actually protecting the business from cyber threats, what teams need is tools that help them home in on the issues and vulnerabilities most likely to cause the greatest damage to the organization if exploited — a reliable and actionable prioritization list based on their unique business and digital landscapes.
The Problem with AppSec Alerts
Excessive Alerts
The crux of the problem with cybersecurity tools sprawl is, frankly, excessive alerts. Cybersecurity teams simply can’t manage the overabundance of alerts produced by the plethora of tools deployed in their digital ecosystem.
It’s bad enough for security teams to have to wrangle their own tooling. But when it comes to AppSec tech, developers are being asked to work with security tools that aren’t built for developer workflows. These tools generally generate large volumes of findings (including false positives and low-risk vulnerabilities), which leaves developers unable to focus on the most critical issues and slows down release cycles.
Lack of Context
In addition to the “too many to handle” problem mentioned above, many AppSec tools fail to provide the context necessary for either AppSec or DevOps teams to understand why the highlighted issue is a problem and must be prioritized. Without proper context — such as whether a vulnerability is exploitable, affects sensitive data, or will have an impact on the specified business — teams struggle to prioritize remediation effectively.
Developer Frustration
The above two issues, combined, are well known to result in friction between AppSec and DevOps teams. Developers are consistently overwhelmed by security tools that disrupt workflows, introduce inefficiencies, and fail to provide actionable insights in a developer-friendly format. A common consequence: Developers mistrust tools and find ways to work around them, leaving gaps that threaten to increase risk.
Fragmented Tools and Data
AppSec suffers the same fate as network security, cloud security, data security, and all other areas of cyber: Organizations rely on multiple, siloed tools for monitoring, measuring, and managing the digital ecosystem. Rather than allowing security teams to get a better handle on risk and vulnerability management, a siloed approach thwarts efforts to gain a complete and comprehensive understanding of the attack surface.
In the case of AppSec tools, disparate vulnerability assessment products such as static analysis (SAST), dynamic analysis (DAST), software composition analysis (SCA), artifact integrity, secret scanning, and software bill of materials (SBOM) point products are stitched together, leading to fragmented data and duplicated efforts.
Complex Software Supply Chains
Modern software relies heavily on third-party components, open-source libraries, and CI/CD pipelines. In fact, it has been estimated that up to 90% of codebases are made up of open-source and third-party components. Due to the interdependencies of inherited code, and thus, code flaws, traditional AppASec tools and approaches struggle under the complexity. Rather than reducing the attack surface, these issues make security trickier to manage comprehensively.
Reactive vs. Proactive AppSec Programs
Because cybersecurity is hard, and because software development moves so quickly, many AppSec teams are forced into a reactive approach to fixing vulnerabilities along the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Not for lack of trying, yet, outdated AppSec methods have placed security practitioners on developers’ persona non grata lists.
However, when vulnerabilities are fixed late in the development cycle or after deployment, the outcomes equal higher costs and more complexity. For optimal efficacy, security must be integrated early in the SDLC (a.k.a., “shift left”), but accomplishing this with old-school tools and methods is nearly impossible.
A new approach is necessary.
Steps to Address AppSec Inefficiencies
Consolidate Tools
While fragmented and siloed tools are more the norm than the best practice nowadays, organizations can adopt Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) platforms that provide holistic visibility and contextual enrichment to the data gathered from organizations’ IT and security tooling. ASPM aggregates, normalizes, and correlates AppSec data into one management plane. This allows AppSec and development teams to work from a single source to manage issues and vulnerabilities across the software development lifecycle.
Organizations can adopt ASPM platforms that unify SAST, DAST, SCA, and runtime monitoring to eliminate fragmentation and streamline workflows.
Focus on Vulnerability Prioritization
Aggregation and correlation aren’t enough. Without deep and enriched contextual insights into weaknesses and vulnerabilities, AppSec and DevOps teams are still stuck trying to figure out what to focus on and how to accurately estimate the repercussions of an ignored alert or vulnerability.
Find AppSec platforms that can calculate risk based on exploitability, reachability, and business impact — your business impact, not your colleague’s business’s impact. Furthermore, if your provider’s reachability analysis depends entirely on generic sources like the CVE data or CISA KEV, consider those tools only nominally useful for risk-based prioritization; they don’t take into account the controls or entities in your environment that either allow or prevent an exploit from happening. They only speak to a generic digital software development lifecycle, not your organization’s specific cyber risk. ASPM solutions that can shed light on the vulnerabilities that matter most are the most effective.
Practice Shift-Left Security
“Shift left” might be somewhat of a buzzword among security practitioners. Or maybe a pipedream. But modern ASPM platforms allow cybersecurity teams to embed security earlier in the development cycle without the frustration and friction of older AppSec products. Shift-left in software security terms means that these tools fit seamlessly into development workflows, are developer-friendly with reports and dashboards tailored to developers’ needs, and incorporate automated testing in CI/CD pipelines.
Modern ASPM platforms reduce friction and allow developers to work on the issues that actually matter — the vulnerabilities and flaws that would result in the greatest damage if exploited. Importantly, these tools highlight critical findings early in the software development process when the issues are easier to remediate
Empower Developers to Build Secure Software
As mentioned above, truly effective ASPM platforms are developer-friendly, providing actionable insights, guardrails, and context to help developers code securely. Unlike the AppSec or siloed tools of the past that include every finding, newer ASPM platforms distill developer data into what they need to know to fix a problem. What’s more, a modern ASPM illustrates why the issue demands attention, giving developers the reason(s) for turning their attention toward certain security problems instead of fixing flaws that might or might not impact the organization’s security posture. Helping developers find and focus on important issues speeds up deployment times while empowering them to build better software.
Automate and Simplify Low-Level Security Tasks
Needless to say, AppSec tools (or any other effective cybersecurity tool) today must include automation. While AppSec teams may not yet be ready for full SDLC security automation, team members’ time can be much better spent when repetitive tasks like vulnerability scanning, triage, and remediation workflows can be automated. Doing so will optimize team resources and eliminate error-prone rote tasks that can easily become tedious when handled by humans.
Automation is a force multiplier for software development security, allowing developers to deploy secure software at scale. In addition to reducing human error and freeing up team resources, the benefits of automation include faster vulnerability detection and remediation, improved identification of critical issues like dependencies and misconfigurations, and increased developer productivity (which is always a win, especially when it comes to our next point…).
Invest in Collaboration
To ensure developers buy into software security, AppSec teams must actively work to find the right tools and improve communication with developers. Even though security practitioners operate under the premise that “security is everybody’s job,” most other departments don’t feel that way. While many software developers are indeed security conscious, they are also keenly aware that quickly deploying software is their main job, as communicated by management.
Security professionals must foster closer alignment between AppSec, DevOps, and cloud security teams to create a shared understanding of risks and priorities. ASPM can be that bridge since it blends into developer workflows and emphasizes a focus on the most critical issues in the software supply chain.
Conclusion
Taking these steps to address inefficiencies in AppSec enables organizations to reduce application risk more effectively, maintain developer velocity, and build resilient applications in a scalable way. Incorporating an ASPM platform into the SLDC is the best way to ensure that developers and security teams alike are not overwhelmed or distracted by issues of lesser importance. Organizations can streamline security across the SDLC using an ASPM-integrated approach, embedding automated checks into the CI/CD pipeline, and providing contextual and reachability analysis. This ensures that developers feel empowered — not burdened — by security efforts, and helps AppSec teams minimize the risk of compromise.
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