How to manage web application security with Coverity

by Charlie Klein on April 3, 2019

Improve your web application security management by finding and fixing security vulnerabilities earlier and achieving compliance with industry standards.

Organizations in many industries use web applications to collect and handle information such as credit card numbers, emails, and customer behavior data. They rely on these web apps to run their businesses and gain a competitive edge. Clearly, many organizations are enjoying the automation and wealth of data made possible by this ecosystem. But their growing dependence on web applications has resulted in an urgent need for better web app security.

Hackers can steal sensitive data from web applications by exploiting software vulnerabilities introduced during application development. They’re likely to target financial services, insurance, healthcare, and e-commerce web apps. And if they succeed, a data breach could result in significant financial costs, legal liabilities, and damage to business reputation.

Global markets have noticed and need assurance that their sensitive data is safe. Customers, executives, and auditors need proof that production environments are secure. In response, CISO organizations are taking measures to improve their web application security management. They seek to gain visibility into their web application risks to demonstrate security and compliance.

Sponsorships Available

How to improve web application security management

Coverity (SAST) helps security teams gain awareness of exploitable software vulnerabilities in their production web applications and demonstrate compliance with key industry and security standards. By integrating early in the software development life cycle (SDLC), Coverity scans code as it’s written so developers can quickly identify and fix security issues before they reach production.

Find and fix vulnerabilities in your code

In terms of vulnerability analysis, web application security management takes many forms. Some organizations send a long list of vulnerabilities back to busy developers once an application is complete. But that’s not ideal. Coverity is for CISO organizations who’d rather enable their development teams to build secure applications the first time around. With multiple options using the Coverity analysis engine, teams can implement static analysis according to their preferences:

Coverity on-premises. Teams that deploy Coverity on-premises use Coverity Connect to triage issues, manage projects, and set security policies.
Coverity on Polaris. Coverity can run on the Polaris Software Integrity Platform™, which helps security and development teams manage risks comprehensively, providing centralized, integrated, and highly scalable deployment and operation of Synopsys tools.
Code Sight™. The Code Sight IDE plugin helps developers find and fix security weaknesses and vulnerabilities in code as they write it, without slowing them down.

Users often integrate Coverity into their software development processes. But security practitioners can generate their own results by running analyses without first building the application. This “analysis without build” feature allows those without a background in software development to scan source code easily. They can also assign security weaknesses to developers or create reports. Unlike competing solutions, Coverity automatically includes dependencies during analysis without build to ensure complete and accurate analyses.

Demonstrate compliance with security standards

Web application security management doesn’t stop with analysis but continues with compliance. Once analyses are complete, security teams can easily create reports on specific critical vulnerabilities named by security standards such as OWASP Top 10 and CWE/SANS Top 25 or industry standards such as PCI DSS and AUTOSAR. Coverity can help security teams demonstrate security and compliance by providing:

Reporting against security and industry standards. Auditors, executives, and customers expect proof of compliance with security and industry standards.
Automated vulnerability prioritization. Prioritizing vulnerabilities according to compliance standards makes it easy for developers know where to focus their attention.
Comprehensive security coverage. Security and compliance standards demand coverage of a wide range of security issues.

Learn how Coverity addresses these requirements to help security teams improve their web application security management, gain visibility into their web applications, and demonstrate compliance.

Download the white paper