In the age of privacy and data security, a cybersecurity breach is as damaging to a business’s reputation as unethical behavior. According to PCIPal, over 80% of US consumers would seize to engage with a business after experiencing a digital breach. This poses a problem for companies and developers who want to create and enjoy the perks of open-source applications without the increasing vulnerabilities of said platforms.
Some of these vulnerabilities become risks for close source applications as well. This is because developers of these platforms use third-party open-source components for productivity’s sake. Thankfully, there has been an effort to protect the open source and its affiliates from common cyberattacks. The Open Web Application Security Project (or OWASP) is a global non-profit organization focused on web application security.
Its biggest project is a regularly updated report on the OWASP Top 10. We’re talking about a comprehensive report on the ten most eminent risks facing open-source applications. We’ll explain 2 of them below.
Sensitive Data Exposure
The process of caching information can improve the user experience of an application but can simultaneously expose sensitive user information. A good example here is financial data and access information like passwords. Cybercriminals can gain access to said information and use it to nefarious ends.
A common method of this attack is called the on-path attack. The attacker intercepts and alters information between 2 networks. To guard against such vulnerability, avoid caching all sensitive data. Instead, they should all be encrypted.
Access Mismanagement
Proper access management in an application includes limiting information for users on a need-to-know basis. In enterprise software, executives, managers, and specialists are usually given more access to company data than other staff members. But in the event of a cyberattack, hackers could bypass access control procedures to get hold of vital company data. Open application security is the continuous process of preventing these attacks.
What is Open Application Security
It’s an approach to the application security process where you foil cyber attacks and strengthen vulnerabilities by making open-source the application’s source code. The idea here is that the source code is open to contributions from developers and security experts worldwide through transparency. They analyze code for vulnerabilities via a process called code review.
That’s just one step in the open application security process. Here are some of them:
- Code Review;
- Security Testing;
- Vulnerability Reports.
Code Review
This involves reviewing an application’s source code by developers and security teams to identify cyber attacks like cross-site scripting (XXS), insecure input validation or SQL injection. It also points out design flaws and vulnerabilities in the application’s source code. Code review is but one type of security testing.
Security Testing
Stepping away from code review to see the bigger picture of security testing, there are five types of securing testing. They include Security-Focused User Acceptance Testing, Code Review, Penetration Testing, Vulnerability Scanning, and Threat Modeling. Security testing aims at offering solutions to application vulnerabilities to prevent cyber attacks.
Vulnerability Reports
This is an assessment to find and rank vulnerabilities in an open-source application. A vulnerability report has three components: an Executive Summary, an Assessment Overview, and Assessment Findings. The Executive summarizes the overall assessment through a testing narrative, remediation summary, primary objectives, and more.
Assessment Overview focuses on the method of analysis, its verification, and the tools used. It’s basically an explanation of the validity of the assessment method in use. Assessment Findings or Mitigation Recommendations go into the details of each vulnerability found. Some of these details include:
- Vulnerability Name;
- Date of Finding;
- Vulnerability Score;
- Proof of Concept;
- Impact on Systems;
- Fixing Guide.
Benefits And Setbacks Of Open Application Security
open-appsec is an open source web application firewall (WAF). It stops OWASP-Top-10 and zero-day risks against APIs and web applications. It also creates efficient API and Web security. open-appsec has many benefits, and we’ll discuss four below.
Developer Focus On Product Development
With open-source application security, developers have communities that check code so that they can focus on product improvement. The resulting increase in functionality improves user experience.
Faster Scanning and Solutions To Vulnerabilities
We just talked about open-sourced applications having communities of code checkers. A benefit of that many people scan for vulnerabilities is that security risks get found quickly, and solutions are offered much quicker. Having that many people testing code would bring to light vulnerabilities that application developers would overlook — since they’re too close to the project. Open application security procedures like these constantly eliminate severe system risks.
A Robust Source Code
According to IBM’s data breach report in 2022, the average data breach cost is nearly $ 10 million in the United States. And the costs only go up from there. A robust source code is a residual benefit of the two advantages listed above. Instead of relying solely on developers of closed-source applications to fix bugs and boost application security, you have an open-source community of security experts and debuggers working on open-source code to boost its ability to withstand cyberattacks.
Transparency
Working in such a transparent environment acts as a disinfectant to cyberattacks like malicious source code. On the other hand, these malicious codes could be hidden in close source code long enough to do severe damage.
Conclusion
As with anything of value, enterprise applications have to be protected from bad-faith actors looking to exploit them for selfish gains. Take, for example, the $190 million cost of compensation and remediation of victims Capital One had to pay in 2019. These victims were their customers whose personal information had been leaked via data breaches. There were over 100 million customers attacked by cybercriminals from that attack.
The two Yahoo data breaches in 2013 and 2014 that exposed the personal information of all 3 billion of their customers are not too far off from the above incident. Big corporations like Marriott International, Equifax, and Target have experienced similar digital damages in 2018, 2017, and 2013.
Big brands can weather the storm of these financial losses and reputational damages arising from inadequate application security, but that could be the end of SMBs.
