Code vulnerabilities can result in serious data breaches, compromised systems, and regulatory violations. Because of these risks, modern applications are a prime target for cyberattacks. To combat these risks, Application Security Testing (AST) can play a vital role.
In today’s fast-paced DevOps environments, integrating security into the development process is key to maintaining secure, resilient applications without slowing down innovation. As organizations increasingly rely on web and cloud-based software, the attack surface steadily grows. This makes early and continuous security testing more essential to address these issues.
AST helps organizations to identify and remediate security flaws throughout the development lifecycle, reducing risk, avoiding costly rework, and ensuring compliance with industry standards. Read on to learn more about application security testing, how it operates and how it could be used to support your organizations security efforts.
What Is Application Security Testing (AST)?
Application Security Testing refers to the process of checking applications for security vulnerabilities prior to production. This ensures that any security flaws and vulnerabilities are identified and addressed whilst they are in development. While this may slow the development process down slightly, it means that security is baked into the foundations of the software, rather than being tacked on.
AST involves testing, analysis, and comprehensive reporting on the applications security level, resulting in your organization being more resistant to cyber threats.
There are several types of Application Security Testing, including:
- Static Application Security Testing (SAST) – This involves testing for vulnerabilities within the application’s source code itself; also known as a “white box” approach. It does this security testing without executing the program. By scanning code as rest, SAST allows developers to detect and resolve security issues before the software’s deployment, lowering risk and remediation costs.
- Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) – This involves testing for vulnerabilities in an application’s behavior, without seeing the source code; also known as a “black box” approach. With this method, running applications are analyzed to identify vulnerabilities from the outside, thereby simulating real-world attacks. DASTis generally used in staging of production environments to highlight security gaps that arise during application execution.
- Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST) – This is a testing method that can utilize both static and dynamic approaches, letting developers check for vulnerabilities while application is running. The IAST testing approach analyses applications from within while they run, combining elements of both SAST and DAST, which allows IAST to detect vulnerabilities with high accuracy and provide detailed context.
- Software Composition Analysis (SCA) – This method identifies and manages open-source components within an application. It scans codebases to detect known vulnerabilities (i.e. security weaknesses, licensing problems, or outdated versions). SCA helps organizations reduce risk by providing visibility into the open-source software they use and facilitating proactive remediation of potential threats.
What Elements Of AST Still Need To Be Completed Manually?
Application Security Testing solutions cannot do everything automatically, but they can reduce the DevOps teams’ burden, saving them significant time on routine tasks.
Troubleshooting more complex issues, for example, will still need to be done manually by a developer. Code reviews, PenTesting, and thorough analysis of automated tool findings would also benefit from human input.
While automated scans are helpful, they can’t detect every single type of attack that exists, and there is no guarantee that they will be 100% accurate. For example, automated tools are unlikely to detect previously unknown zero-day issues. The odds of running into a false positive or missing a vulnerability can be lowered, but they will never be zero.
While AST automation significantly boosts coverage and efficiency, manual testing remains an essential part of the testing process. A hybrid approach allows you to detect nuanced threats, validate results, and tailor remediation efforts to specific business contexts.
Ways That Automation Capabilities In AST Solutions Can Help Development Teams
For more information from Expert Insights on Application Security Testing (AST) check out the following articles:
- The Top Application Security Testing Solutions
- Application Security Testing Statistics
- The Top Mobile Application Security Testing (MAST) Tools
