Building secure applications has to start with the IT department. We have fought the battle for far to long in trying to have a different group responsible for securing our applications. Whether you call it application security, product security, devsecops, or something else. It just doesn't work. These different groups can help in identifying and implementing some processes, but secure code starts with the development team. If we really want to start building more secure applications we have … [Read more...] about Application Security Starts With IT
secure development
Security.txt for Vulnerability Disclosure
Have you heard of RFC 9116? If not, I understand. I don't really know anything by RFC numbering and that is ok. RFC 9116 is a document put out by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) related to vulnerability disclosure. It is important to note that this is not a standard, but for informational purposes only. So what does it do? The focus of this document is on the security.txt file and the format of it. Security.txt is a simple text file that helps an organization describe their … [Read more...] about Security.txt for Vulnerability Disclosure
QA Can Do Security Testing
Does your appsec team struggle with trying to perform security testing on all of your applications? Do you struggle with trying to find more resources for your team to scale your team? What is your relationship with the QA team? Often times, we focus on the developers and overlook the QA team. Why? QA engineers are professional testers. The big difference is that they focus on verifying functionality works instead of focusing on how functionality could be mis-used. This shouldn't be a reason … [Read more...] about QA Can Do Security Testing
HTTPS Isn’t Just For Sensitive Info
When we think about HTTP vs. HTTPS, we often focus on the risk to sensitive information. HTTP transmits our data in clear-text, while HTTPS encrypts the data to stop people from snooping. But that is not all that HTTPS does. What about tampering? One of the other key aspects of HTTPS is to protect our communication with the server from tampering. In this case, we would be concerned with someone being able to manipulate the responses that are sent back to the user's browser. While no sensitive … [Read more...] about HTTPS Isn’t Just For Sensitive Info
How critical is your app in your customer’s process?
Everyone has heard of the Colonial pipeline attack that happened a while back. The company that provides fuel across the East coast shut down that fuel supply due to ransomware on their systems. This sparked a huge push for ICS security. It got a lot of people talking about critical infrastructure and how the world will end with a single cyber attack. I don't disagree that these systems are at risk or that they shouldn't be secured. This is something that we should be focusing on in general to … [Read more...] about How critical is your app in your customer’s process?
3 Tips to get your secure development program started
The hardest part of anything we do is typically just actually starting it. How many things have you thought about doing, but were not sure on how to proceed? What is that first step? We know we have to do something, but what? This is no different when we think about application security and a secure development program. We have to start it. It is absolutely a necessity for any development program. So what should we do? It is important to understand that security doesn't happen overnight. There … [Read more...] about 3 Tips to get your secure development program started