Vulnerabilities within the applications can lead threat actors straight to sensitive user data.
Once cybercriminals gain access to an app, they can also move deeper inside, monitor your activity, and misuse or alter the information they come across.
Therefore, businesses that rely on applications require security that can defend the assets of the company inside out. That means blocking threats before they breach the system as well as identifying unauthorized access early.
Where can you start?
WAF, or Web Application Firewall is what comes first to mind when it comes to application protection. While it’s effective in guarding the app against external threats, WAF is powerless in the face of internal exploits.
Most companies pair it with a Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) solution that is designed to protect the app from both internal and external threats.
How does RASP security work exactly and does your organization need it?
RASP Security Explained
RASP security is dedicated to the protection of apps from versatile exploits.
The key specialty of RASP is that it guards the system against the threats that might be coming from inside as well as inside.
Another feature that differentiates this solution from others is that it can also discover unknown threats.
RASP runs in the background all the time to discover hacking attempts and mitigate them in real-time. That’s possible because it relies on artificial intelligence that continually scans and analyses the surface.
What does it protect the companies against, exactly?
Protecting Against New and Well-Known Threats
RASP is calibrated to defend an app against zero-day exploits and common threats as well as identify whether there are existing flaws that require patching up before they turn into incidents.
It finds any vulnerabilities, malware injections, or attacks that pose a threat to the application.
The tools are being continually updated in order to be ready to mitigate the threats — whether they’re coming from yet unknown exploits or flaws that are relevant to most applications today.
Discovering Zero-Day Exploits
Zero-day exploits (because you have zero days to solve the issue) are the hacking methods for which an organization can’t yet have the proper security.
They refer to new threats that can bypass the security of a company. Namely, regular tools don’t seek the signs of these new ways that hackers might exploit vulnerabilities.
While it’s not possible to calibrate RASP security to discover an unknown malicious code, what it can identify is any activity within the application that doesn’t match its regular patterns.
Basically, RASP is on the job non-stop and scans the movement within the app, learning, collecting data, and comparing it with what has been normal thus far.
For instance, it can realize that an employee has been using their credentials to log into the app outside working hours. As that might indicate that the hacker is misusing stolen passwords, RASP blocks such attempts.
Protecting Against Common Flaws
Besides zero-day threats, RASP is also calibrated to protect the app from common vulnerabilities that applications are likely to have. They’re described in the OWASP’S Top Ten.
Every application is different because of the organization’s unique infrastructure, but hackers generally aim at the flaws that are mentioned in the OWASP’s lists as their starting point.
OWASP frequently tests the applications and updates the list of the main threats for which they concluded that could have led to successful cyber exploits.
Currently, at the top of the list of common weaknesses according to OWASP’S Top Ten are:
- Broken access control
- Cryptographic failures
- Injection
- Insecure design
- Security misconfiguration
Comprehensive App Security That Protects Data
As your application changes and business grows, it’s important to deploy security that can keep up with it.
For example, if you’ve recently introduced remote work for the members of your team, you’ve made significant changes to the architecture of your company. That requires new protective tools that can guard novel parts of the infrastructure.
Security should be able to keep up as you add new components to the multi-cloud structure, purchase virtual storage, and move your application from one environment to another.
RASPS can be moved and scaled with the organization, which means that it can prevent gaps in the security that appear when the systems are shifting from one environment to another.
It outsources the security and allows your teams to focus on other work within the company such as the protection of information coming in and out of the application.
Ultimately, RASP seeks whether threat actors are trying to access your data. If they get access to the application, they can change, delete, add new information, or even leak sensitive information about your users and the company itself. A costly danger.
Therefore, keeping the information safe is a priority for any company.
By preventing exploitation of the common and new weaknesses that are prevalent for applications, businesses are protecting the data as well.
Do You Need RASP Security?
RASP is designed as a tool that protects the application from exploits that have been described on the list of the OWASP’S top ten as well as zero-day threats that could compromise your company.
Businesses of any size that rely on applications to offer their services to consumers and clients or need it for remote workers are great candidates for comprehensive RASP security.
What’s more, organizations that can benefit from RASP solutions are also the ones that lack resources they could allocate towards security.
It’s an affordable way to mitigate the threats within the application in real-time with less manpower.
Considering that it’s designed to not leave any security gaps in the runtime, it’s also helpful for organizations that want to deploy their applications faster, regardless of the scaling and changes they make in the meantime.
