Contrast Security has fully extended its vulnerability scanning and runtime application self-protection (RASP) platform to now include application programming interfaces (APIs).
Company CTO Jeff Williams said the Contrast Secure Code Platform embeds agents directly into code to detect vulnerabilities using a combination of integrated static and dynamic application security testing tools. That approach makes it simple to embed vulnerability scanning and exploit prevention capabilities within a DevOps workflow as an application is built and deployed, he noted.
In contrast, traditional approaches to application security depend on legacy platforms such as web application firewalls (WAFs) that are deployed by cybersecurity teams to protect applications in a way that doesn’t provide the same level of granular control at the API level, said Williams.
Contrast Security claims the Contrast Secure Code Platform improves scan times by a factor of ten while fixing defects 45 times faster. It also reduces false positive alerts by being 200% more accurate, the company claims.
As more organizations start to embrace best DevSecOps practices to better secure software supply chains, many of them are trying to achieve that goal without slowing down the rate at which applications are built and deployed. That approach, however, requires giving developers and DevOps teams the tools needed to build and deploy secure applications without requiring a lot of direct intervention on the part of a security operations team.
In general, there is also now a lot more focus on API security as more organizations build and deploy microservices-based applications that rely on APIs to interconnect discreet components. Those APIs should be built, deployed and secured by DevOps teams before they are deployed just like any other software component, noted Williams. The current process of building applications is at its core, from a security perspective, fundamentally broken, he added.
Application security, in general, has always been somewhat problematic. Cybersecurity teams tend to fund the tools and platforms they regularly employ. The assumption is that application development teams will invest in the tools they need to build and deploy applications. Alas, application development teams that have limited cybersecurity expertise assume that cybersecurity teams are securing both the underlying infrastructure and the applications deployed on top of it. As a result, application security is frequently underfunded.
In the wake of a series of high-profile breaches of software supply chains there are now at least more reviews of application security being conducted. Contrast Security is making a case for securing the entire application, including the APIs, it invokes using agent software that is injected into the application at the time it is constructed.
It’s not clear to what degree application security issues will be addressed using agent software rather than traditional cybersecurity platforms managed by security operations teams. Responsibility for application security is shifting left toward developers and the DevOps teams that support them, but as long as humans write code, mistakes will be made, said Williams
The issue, of course, is many of the members of those teams are still focused a lot more on writing code and deploying applications than they are on cybersecurity.
