The Application Software Security control has changed to number 16 from number 18 according to the new CIS Critical Security Controls Version 8.
Organizations rely on applications to control system resources and manage sensitive data. Rogue cybercriminals can exploit an organization's apps and compromise their data. CIS Control 16 offers guidelines and sub-controls to help companies manage the security life-cycle of in-house developed, hosted, or acquired software.
Most of today's app development occurs in highly complex and dynamic environments. Besides, applications run on diverse platforms with more complex architectural applications than legacy structures. Similarly, developers often use frameworks, libraries, and existing code to create applications. These new circumstances require robust software security solutions that minimize your organization's risk exposure.
Coding mistakes, weak authentication, insecure design, and insecure infrastructure can result in application vulnerabilities. Attackers love to exploit these vulnerabilities to access sensitive data. Also, cybercriminals can use these loopholes to control vulnerable assets and use them for further attacks. Implementing the application software security controls under CIS CSC 16 v8 can insulate your company's applications and systems from exploitation.
This Control has 14 cis controls that will help you introduce security measures as early as the software development life cycle. Training your developers on secure coding practices and application security concepts is essential in minimizing vulnerabilities.
Establish and Maintain a Secure Application Development Process
Your organization will need to address multiple items in this step, including secure coding practices, vulnerability management, and secure application design standards. Your application development process should also include developer training, application security procedures, and security of third-party code.
The goal is to create a security culture and cybersecurity awareness among your implementation groups and IT teams. This approach ensures that everyone is conscious of your system's security and works actively to minimize your risk exposure.
Establish and Maintain a Process to Accept and Address Software Vulnerabilities
Understanding your software vulnerabilities empowers you to deal with them better. A robust process for accepting and addressing your software vulnerabilities often includes a vulnerability handling policy that entails reporting processes.
Your strategy should also nominate someone to handle vulnerability reports. Create risk assessment processes that will reveal any loopholes within your network security.
Ensure that you create provisions for external entities to reach out to your security team. Such measures could free up your QA team to focus on other profit-making initiatives. Try to create laid-out strategies that can help your team members to submit a security issue to you.
Also, it would help if you create a process that caters to the intake, assignment, remediation, and remediation testing. A vulnerability tracking system can help you measure timing for monitoring the vulnerabilities comprehensively. Remember to include incident response processes in your security systems.
If you are a third-party application developer, work with this control as an externally-facing policy to set stakeholders' expectations.
Perform Root Cause Analysis on Security Vulnerabilities
It is essential to understand the underlying issues that create security vulnerabilities. The root cause analysis will help you resolve your app's security vulnerabilities proactively. Rather than putting off fires, root cause analysis reveals areas that you need to look out for during application development.
Essentially, this sub-control lets you take a proactive approach towards resolving any security vulnerabilities. Your security team can leverage root cause analysis to sniff out loopholes before they cause significant damage to your systems and processes. Any inactivity from your team could expose your systems to multiple attacks.
Establish and Manage an Inventory of Third-Party Software Components
Create an inventory of components slated for future use and third-party components your team uses during development. Ensure that you factor in any risks that each of these components poses to your apps. Evaluate this inventory regularly to find any changes or updates concerning these components.
Also, ensure that all third-party software components have ongoing developer support. Using software assets that continue to receive security updates helps to minimize your network's risk exposure. Leveraging managed inventories offers you consistent visibility to your devices’ security status.
Use Up-to-Date and Trusted Third-Party Software Components
Only use established and proven libraries and frameworks that guarantee maximum security whenever possible. Find trusted sources for these components and evaluate the software for any vulnerabilities before use. Also, be sure to install updates to supported software.
Regular updates offer security patches that maintain your system's integrity. Disable any software components that no longer have support from developers.
Establish and Maintain a Severity Rating System and Process for Application Vulnerabilities
Severity rating helps you improve risk management and fix bugs in order of their severity. Create a severity rating system and process that prioritizes how you intend to fix discovered vulnerabilities. Begin by setting a minimum-security acceptability level for your code or application releases. This systematic step ensures that you remain on top of your vulnerabilities.
Use Standard Hardening Configuration Templates for Application Infrastructure
Ensure that your in-house developed software applications do not weaken configuration hardening. Industry-recommended hardening configuration templates can help you out in this regard. Use these templates on underlying servers, databases, SaaS components, PaaS components, and web servers. Search through the internet to find templates that best suit your systems.
Separate Production and Non-Production Systems
Create and maintain separate environments for your production and non-production systems. Ensure that you use the non-production system for development and testing. Ensure that you also monitor how developers interact with production environments.
Essentially, developers should write code while the QA team tests this code. Separate your production environments to prevent unauthorized personnel from accessing them. If running a smaller company, ensure that you monitor what everyone else does within your settings.
Try to monitor user accounts to ensure that your administrative privileges don’t fall into rogue hands. Prudent account management will help you enforce proper data protection within various systems. Create a group policy that requires employees to surrender their privileges when they leave your organization.
Train Developers in Application Security Concepts and Secure Coding
Your developers need training on writing secure code. Provide training opportunities for development personnel working in specific environments. The training should include application security standard practices and general security principles. Additionally, regular exercise will help to enhance security awareness among your developers. The SANS institute could also be an excellent option for groups to learn about information security and cybersecurity.
Typically, it will be cheaper to write secure code from scratch rather than deal with vulnerabilities down the road. Consistent training ensures that you spend less on vulnerability detection and remediation. Encourage your developers to handle their login credentials to minimize the risk of cyber security incidences. Hackers can exploit such administrative privileges to cause harm to your systems.
Apply Secure Design Principles in Application Architectures
Typically, secure design principles involve the concept of least privilege and enforcing mediation. These principles validate all your user's operations while encouraging the idea of "never trust user input." Essentially, such practices ensure that you perform and document explicit error checking.
Besides, secure design helps you to minimize application infrastructure attack surfaces. Your developers can remove unnecessary programs, rename or remove default accounts, and turn off unprotected services and ports.
Leverage Vetted Modules or Services for Application Security Components
Developers can use various platform features in critical security functions to reduce implementation or design errors and minimize developer's workloads. Vetted modules or services for application security components are available for identity management, encryption, auditing, and logging.
Using modern operating systems guarantees effective identifying, authenticating, and authorizing different applications. Developers can also leverage updated features that let you create and maintain secure audit logs.
Be sure only to use standardized and extensively reviewed encryption algorithms. Creating a proprietary encryption algorithm will expose your systems to unnecessary risks. Besides, such algorithms might have numerous flaws that can compromise your systems.
Implement Code-Level Security Checks
Leverage static and dynamic analysis tools to help you ensure that your developers follow secure coding practices. This control ensures that you test for your developers' mistakes. Research the various available analysis tools to find what will work effectively for your code.
Conduct Application Penetration Testing
Authenticated penetration testing can help you quickly find business logic vulnerabilities. This process guarantees better results compared to automated and code scanning. However, penetration testing often relies on the tester's skills to manipulate applications manually.
As technology evolves, your organization needs to test your application's controls. The goal is to find gaps or loopholes and assess your system's resilience and defense mechanisms. Penetration testing will offer you valuable and objective insights to reveal vulnerabilities and protect your organization against any adverse effects.
Conduct Threat Modeling
Threat modelling lets you identify and address application security designs before your developers create a code. Specially trained developers will evaluate the application's design and monitor security risks across each access level or entry point.
With threat modeling, you can map out your applications, architectures, and infrastructures in a structured manner, enabling you to understand the weaknesses further. Besides, your team will be in an excellent position to monitor your system’s cyber hygiene and cyber defenses.