Web Application Security Vs. Network Security

A recent headline of an article in security magazine touted the availability of a new guide, “Guide to Web Application Security vs. Network Security”, which reminded me that many still consider their network security devices sufficient security for their web applications.  As the lead in to the article states:

Is the difference between network security and web application security a bit of a puzzle for you? If so, you’re not alone.

Part of the confusion arises because many network security devices claim to handle all the application security that an organization needs.  But in reality most organizations need a defense-in-depth strategy, as there really isn’t one solution that’s going to handle all of their security needs.  While network security is the outermost defense, and the typically the first defense mechanism a cyber criminal will interact with in the organization’s defenses, it shouldn’t be the only defense.

While the advertising for many “Web Application Firewalls” (WAFs) tout application security as one of the main features of the device, the WAF remains a network security or an edge security device.  And in many cases enterprises are findiing that the WAF solution isn’t fulfilling all their application security needs.  In addition to having security on the edge, security on the application server itself should be and is a requirement.  The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) group has also recognized that security on the application server in the form of RASP (Runtime Application Self-Protection) is now a requirement in their latest draft of the SP800-53 security framework.

If you haven’t started looking at a RASP solution for your web application and application workloads, there’s no better time than now.  With the increase in demand for use of cloud based web applications due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a greater need than ever for application security that works.

K2 Cyber Security can help address these needs by providing application security that issues alerts based on severity and includes actionable alerts that provide complete visibility to the attacks and the vulnerabilities that the attacks are targeting including the location of the vulnerability within the application, providing details like file name and line of code where the vulnerability exists.

K2 can also help reduce vulnerabilities in production by assisting in pre-production testing and addressing issues around the lack of remediation guidance and the poor quality of security penetration testing results.  K2 Cyber Security Platform is a great addition for adding visibility into the threats discovered by penetration and security testing tools in pre-production and can also find additional vulnerabilities during testing that testing tools may have missed.  K2 can pinpoint the exact location of the discovered vulnerability in the code.  When a vulnerability is discovered (for example, SQL Injection, XSS or Remote Code Injection), K2 can disclose the exact file name along with the line of code that contains the vulnerability, details that testing tools typically are unable to provide, enabling developers to start the remediation process quickly.

K2 Cyber Security Platform offers two use cases, for additional visibility during pre-production (development) penetration testing, while the other is runtime protection for applications in production.  In the second use case,  K2 offers an ideal runtime protection security solution that detects true zero-day attacks, while at the same time generates the least false positives and alerts.  Rather than rely on technologies like signatures, heuristics, fuzzy logic, machine learning or AI, we use a deterministic approach to detect true zero-day attacks, without being limited to detecting attacks based on prior attack knowledge.  Deterministic security uses application execution validation, and verifies the API calls are functioning the way the code intended.  There is no use of any prior knowledge about an attack or the underlying vulnerability, which gives our approach the true ability to detect new zero-day attacks. Our technology has 8 patents granted/pending, and has minimal false alerts.

Get more out of your application security testing and change how you protect your applications, and check out K2’s application workload security solution.

Find out more about K2 today by requesting a demo, or get your free trial.