The Application Security Testing AST Report for 2024 sheds light on critical trends and findings in the application security landscape. As the technology evolves, so do the threats to application software.
The findings in the report underscore the urgency of stronger security practices at organizations to develop safer applications to employ and offer to the general public.
The data and the evidence provided in the AST report for 2024 offers reference for organizations to ensure app infrastructure withstand common security threats .
This report provides insights to help organizations benchmark and compare the status of their security to the current state of the industry.
Moreover, the AST Report for 2024 contains case studies of past and current organizations’ confrontations with potential security threats.
Here are the key findings of the 2024 AST Report that underscore the need to strengthen security practices, protocols, and governance policies pertaining to application development:
1. Market Growth: The global Application Security Testing Tools market reached USD 3075 million in 2023 and is expected to reach up to USD 8632.9 million by 2030, at 15.7% CAGR for the period from 2024 to 2030.
This indicates the importance of application security continues to be recognized to a greater extent by organizations.
2. Open Source Vulnerabilities:According to the report, 96% of the audited codebase had open source libraries and components. 84% of these analyzed codebases contained at least one open source vulnerability.
The report further revealed that 74% of the scanned applications had high-risk vulnerabilities, which defined CVSS score higher than 8.0 on the scale from 1 to 10.
3. Prevalence of Vulnerabilities: The report further revealed that over 53% of codebases had license conflicts, which can lead to compliance and legal issues. In addition , these code bases consisted of vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting, indicating systemic issues in application security practices.
4. Need for Early Testing: The report emphasizes that application security testing should be integrated early in the software development lifecycle. Starting AST during the design and planning phases can significantly reduce vulnerabilities that persist after deployment.
5. Comprehensive Testing Approaches: A combination of static and dynamic testing techniques is recommended for a thorough assessment of an application’s security posture. Static Application Security Testing (SAST) focuses on analyzing source code for vulnerabilities, while Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) evaluates how an application behaves during runtime.
1. AppSec Tools are not enough
You can’t protect what you can’t see. Organizations need visibility into their growing number of cloud applications and the data to understand what’s at risk. CISO’s need to be able to prioritize and remediate application vulnerabilities and security alerts as they learn about them.
For a majority of survey respondents, 57% said it’s a struggle to get full visibility into their apps and APIs to understand what’s at risk.
Nearly 90% of respondents said that CISOs continue to struggle in gaining visibility into their applications.
2. Traditional Security Tools Are Not Scalable
Organizations developing an increasing number of applications face higher risks if an increased number of these apps carry code level vulnerabilities. Though security reviews prior to production deployment are vital, only 54 percent of major code changes undergo full security reviews, leaving half of them vulnerable.
At the same time, traditional security reviews are expensive and time-consuming.Adversaries can potentially exploit 81 percent of the software not passing the security reviews. The challenge is to scale the security review process.
3. Increased Focus on API Security
APIs have become key components of present-day applications. Securing them has emerged as a major security thrust for organizations. To prevent unauthorized entry of threat actors, companies need to put in place tighter identification processes and periodically check their APIs for any weaknesses.
APIs have become key components of present-day applications. Securing them emerges as a major goal for the organizations. In order to stop people from gaining entry they are not supposed to, companies need to put in place tighter identification processes and periodically check their APIs for any weaknesses.
The 2024 AST Report highlights the criticality of AST in maintaining the safety of applications throughout their lifecycle. AST is required to detect software vulnerabilities and fix them before deploying to production.
The sooner you begin AST, the fewer vulnerabilities, and the smaller the scope of vulnerabilities that will remain after deployment.
AST should ideally begin as soon as the application development process takes place, during the design and planning stages. This will assist organizations in preventing important security errors in advance and reducing remediation costs and complexity.
In addition, the report indicates that the use of both static and dynamic testing techniques can help obtain a more extensive picture of the security of an application.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) analyzes the application’s source code to identify potential vulnerabilities, while Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) assesses the application’s behavior and interactions with external systems.
By employing both techniques, organizations can gain a deeper understanding of their application’s security strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to make informed decisions about remediation strategies.
On a final note, Application Security Report 2024 points towards a key challenge organizations face while securing their applications. In addition, the report also shows the existing processes are not efficient, and there is a renewed urgency to find new approaches to evaluating the levels of security and maintaining the required performance.
As threat actors evolve their techniques and operate with greater speed, it is imperative for organizations to strengthen their security posture.
