Enterprise Application Security: Benefits and Use Cases
Enterprise application development hasn’t been the same for the last 20 years. With companies transitioning from on-premise to cloud-native infrastructure, modern AppSec plays a critical role in ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and availability of business critical applications and their data — protecting against sophisticated cyber threats and maintaining stakeholder trust in your business.
In this post, we’ll discuss the importance of enterprise application security infrastructure. We’ll also share best practices to streamline operations and mitigate risks.
What is enterprise application security and why does it matter?
Enterprise application security refers to the processes, technologies and policies in place to protect digital assets from potential cyber threats. It involves secure software development, authentication and access controls, vulnerability management and threat detection.
According to IBM’s report, average data breach costs reached a record high of $ 4.35 million in 2022, marking a 3% increase compared to 2021. With the rise of cyberattacks, a proactive approach toward application security becomes more important than ever. A single security breach has devastating consequences, from tarnishing a company’s reputation to incurring significant financial losses.
Challenges of traditional enterprise application security infrastructure
Given the complexity of modern enterprise software environments, relying solely on traditional security measures and manual handling of security applications proves inadequate at best and potentially dangerous at worst.
Let’s take a closer look at the key challenges:
Scalability
As enterprises scale in size and adopt new applications, APIs and cloud services, the attack surface widens, offering cyber threats more opportunities to penetrate the system. The sheer number of entry points makes it difficult for traditional security measures to keep up with identifying and addressing vulnerabilities.
Complex application architecture
Enterprise applications are often built on elaborate architectures making them increasingly complex, with intricate codebases and multiple integrations. Threat actors can exploit security vulnerabilities within applications to access critical data without authorization, endangering sensitive information and valuable resources.
Diverse technology stack
Organizations use various technologies and platforms to develop and run their applications. For instance, a large enterprise with hundreds of interconnected systems might have web applications, mobile applications and cloud services running concurrently. Each of these technologies may have unique security requirements, making it difficult to maintain a consistent security strategy across the entire ecosystem.
This fragmentation can create security blind spots, leaving vulnerabilities unaddressed and increasing the chances of a successful cyberattack.
Insider threat awareness
Human error remains a common cause of security breaches. According to a Verizon report, 74% of breaches involve the human element, via error, privilege misuse, stolen credentials or social engineering. Employees with access to sensitive data may unintentionally or maliciously compromise application security.
Compliance and regulations
Companies must navigate complex frameworks and adhere to various industry-specific requirements to ensure their applications meet the necessary standards. For instance, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) applies to organizations handling credit card transactions and sensitive authentication data. This compliance policy requires that organizations establish a vulnerability management program to ensure that systems and software are secured and regularly updated.
Scanning is not enough
Traditionally, application security has mainly revolved around scanning and detecting issues within the IT environment. However, merely identifying an issue without a plan for resolution does not effectively reduce the risk. On the contrary, it might even increase liability, as you may intentionally leave potential threats unaddressed. The challenge lies in efficiently understanding which vulnerabilities you should prioritize in order to minimize business risks.
Enterprise application security best practices
Here are five standard enterprise cybersecurity best practices to mitigate risks and improve software development productivity:
1. Secure the Software Development Life Cycle
Each stage of the software development life cycle presents an opportunity to address potential vulnerabilities proactively. Secure coding practices, thorough code reviews and vulnerability risk assessments are pivotal in protecting the application against cyber threats. Continuous testing and quality assurance are equally essential, guaranteeing that security protocols remain effective amidst evolving risks.
2. Implement authentication and access controls
Requiring users to verify their identities strengthens the application security posture because only authorized users have access to sensitive information and critical functions within the application. Access controls are crucial to ensure users only have the necessary permissions to perform their designated tasks. The combined power of strong authentication and access controls protects applications against unauthorized entry, reducing the risk of data breaches.
3. Protect data using encryption
By employing robust encryption methods, businesses can shield critical network data from being compromised, even if unauthorized access occurs. Encrypting data in transit prevents interception and eavesdropping while securing data at rest ensures protection when stored within databases or file systems.
4. Assess your application security posture
Enterprise application security posture management (ASPM) helps address security gaps, protect critical assets, assess the efficacy of your security measures and identify areas of improvement. Automation plays a vital role in ASPM because it enables real-time insights for the detection and remediation of security gaps.
With an ASPM platform, enterprises automatically collect and correlate vast amounts of data from diverse sources, including security tools, vulnerability scanners and threat intelligence feeds. This automation eliminates manual work, saves valuable time and resources and enables security teams to focus on critical tasks, such as analyzing and mitigating security risks.
5. Unify your enterprise AppSec efforts
A unified approach to enterprise AppSec enhances team communication and ensures all stakeholders are on the same page regarding application security. Brinqa, for example, facilitates seamless collaboration in an enterprise environment by integrating various security testing tools — static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), infrastructure as code (IaC) and software composition analysis (SCA). By additionally integrating the results from both penetration tests and bug bounty programs into a unified platform alongside application security testing (AST) results, businesses can centralize their application security data. This way, you can eliminate application security silos, creating a connected ecosystem where data and insights flow effortlessly.
Watch our webinar on incorporating business context for accurate cyber risk prioritization.
The Importance of a Modern Approach to Enterprise Application Security
The complexity and interconnectivity of today’s business ecosystems makes application security more challenging and vital. A modern approach to enterprise application security requires consolidated vulnerability scanning across IT, cloud systems, and applications to provide a full, accurate picture of potential risks. It’s no longer enough to address these environments separately; an integrated view is essential for understanding how vulnerabilities interact across systems, prioritizing remediation efforts, and mitigating the greatest threats to the business.
Recent vulnerabilities, like MOVEit Transfer, Spring4Shell, and Microsoft Azure’s SynLapse vulnerability, highlight the critical need for such a holistic approach. These incidents exposed how fragmented, siloed security strategies fail to adequately protect enterprise assets. By consolidating vulnerability data and understanding it within the context of both the business and the broader threat landscape, organizations can make smarter, faster decisions about which risks to prioritize, ensuring limited resources are directed where they are most needed.
Key Components of a Modern Application Security Strategy
A modern application security strategy goes beyond detecting vulnerabilities in isolated environments. It requires consolidation, automation, and context-aware risk prioritization to effectively protect the enterprise.
- Unified Vulnerability Management: Vulnerabilities can arise in various places—IT infrastructure, applications, cloud environments—but managing them separately often leads to dangerous blind spots. Take the MOVEit Transfer vulnerability (2023), for example. This critical vulnerability in file transfer software allowed attackers to steal sensitive data from a range of organizations. Without consolidated vulnerability management across IT and cloud environments, it would have been difficult for security teams to fully identify the scope of the exposure or prioritize remediation efforts efficiently.
- Contextual Risk-Based Prioritization: Not every vulnerability poses an equal threat. In the case of Spring4Shell, a remote code execution vulnerability that affected Java applications, organizations needed to quickly assess not just whether they had vulnerable systems, but how critical those systems were to the business. This business context is essential—knowing that a vulnerability affects a low-risk internal system allows teams to focus on more significant threats, like vulnerabilities in customer-facing or mission-critical applications. With hundreds or thousands of vulnerabilities emerging across different systems, the ability to contextualize and prioritize based on both business impact and the threat landscape becomes essential.
- Automation and Continuous Monitoring: With the sheer volume of vulnerabilities identified in modern environments, manual processes are not sustainable. Automation plays a key role in ensuring vulnerabilities are identified, triaged, and remediated quickly. For example, the Microsoft Azure SynLapse vulnerability (2023) exposed serious risks in multi-tenant cloud environments. Automated scanning and monitoring across cloud environments would help identify such risks in real-time and ensure that they are immediately prioritized for remediation based on their potential impact on business operations.
Why Consolidated Monitoring of IT, App & Cloud Vulnerability Intelligence is Essential
Modern application security must integrate insights across IT infrastructure, applications, and cloud systems to provide a comprehensive view of vulnerabilities. Many recent high-profile vulnerabilities have shown that leaving any of these areas unchecked can lead to significant exploitation.
- Complete Attack Surface Visibility: Fragmented security approaches can lead to vulnerabilities slipping through the cracks. For example, the MOVEit Transfer vulnerability affected both on-premises IT systems and cloud environments, allowing attackers to steal sensitive data across multiple touchpoints. Without a unified view of vulnerabilities across these environments, organizations could miss critical risks that span both IT infrastructure and cloud systems. Consolidated monitoring ensures that no part of the attack surface is left unmonitored.
- Visibility into Ownership and Accountability: Consolidated monitoring also helps organizations gain visibility into who owns specific IT assets, applications, and cloud environments. This transparency makes it much easier to understand who is accountable for remediation efforts once a vulnerability is discovered. For example, when a vulnerability like Spring4Shell is identified, knowing exactly which teams are responsible for the affected applications or systems accelerates the patching process and ensures that no critical tasks fall through the cracks. Without clear accountability, remediation efforts can become delayed, as teams struggle to figure out who should be responsible for the necessary fixes.
- Contextual Understanding of Vulnerabilities: Consolidation is not just about better visibility but also about understanding vulnerabilities within the context of business operations and real-world threats. For instance, the Spring4Shell vulnerability affected applications in a variety of industries, but not all of those applications were equally critical. Organizations with consolidated vulnerability data, combined with business context, could prioritize remediation efforts for their most critical applications and resources. This ensures that remediation is aligned with business priorities, avoiding the inefficiencies of treating all vulnerabilities as equally urgent.
- Efficient Resource Allocation: Consolidating vulnerability intelligence across IT, app, and cloud environments allows security teams to allocate resources efficiently. Instead of spending time on vulnerabilities that pose minimal risk, they can focus on the issues that truly matter. For example, when dealing with the SynLapse vulnerability, which exposed sensitive information in multi-tenant Azure environments, organizations with a consolidated view of their cloud infrastructure could act quickly to protect customer data, whereas those relying on fragmented systems might have struggled to respond effectively.
Leveraging Automation to Improve Application Security
Automation is indispensable in modern application security, as it enables security teams to manage the sheer volume of vulnerabilities and streamline response processes.
- Automated Vulnerability Detection: Vulnerabilities like the Fortinet FortiOS flaw (2023), which enabled remote code execution, demonstrate the need for real-time detection across the entire enterprise ecosystem. Automated scanners continuously monitor all systems and applications for vulnerabilities, ensuring that new flaws are detected as soon as they are introduced, whether from updates, new configurations, or external threats.
- Patch Management Automation: Patch management can be a time-consuming task, but automation can ensure that critical vulnerabilities are remediated quickly and consistently across the entire environment. In the case of the Apple WebKit vulnerability (2023), which affected millions of devices, automated patch deployment ensured that critical updates were applied to all affected systems, minimizing the time attackers had to exploit the vulnerability.
Enhancing Security with Continuous Monitoring
Cyber threats evolve rapidly, and continuous monitoring is essential for keeping pace with emerging risks. Continuous monitoring provides real-time visibility into security posture and ensures that new vulnerabilities are detected and addressed immediately.
- Proactive Risk Management: Continuous monitoring helps security teams catch vulnerabilities like Log4Shell or ProxyNotShell as soon as they emerge, allowing for immediate action to reduce the potential window of exposure. This proactive approach is essential for preventing breaches before they occur.
- Adaptive Defense: Threat landscapes are dynamic, and continuous monitoring allows organizations to adapt their defenses based on changing conditions. New vulnerabilities, configurations, or attacks can be identified and addressed in real-time, ensuring the security posture remains aligned with the current threat landscape.
Effective Incident Response in Enterprise Application Security
Despite best efforts, vulnerabilities will still be exploited, which makes incident response a critical part of any application security strategy.
- Automation in Incident Response: In modern application security, automation extends to incident response. Automated playbooks can be triggered based on specific vulnerabilities or attacks, enabling rapid containment and mitigation. For instance, in the wake of the MOVEit Transfer breach, automation could have quickly isolated affected systems, preventing further data loss.
- Business Context in Incident Response: Understanding the business context of vulnerabilities and incidents ensures that the most critical assets are protected first. During an incident like Spring4Shell, organizations with a clear understanding of their most critical Java-based applications could prioritize their defense, ensuring business continuity even during a widespread vulnerability.
- Accountability in Incident Response: Just as with remediation, knowing who owns which assets and applications is critical in incident response. When a breach occurs, having clear visibility into asset ownership allows for a faster and more organized response. The more clearly defined the responsibilities are, the more effectively teams can coordinate their efforts and minimize the impact of the breach.
Unlocking Risk Intelligence to Modernize Your Enterprise AppSec Program
The Brinqa Unified Exposure Management platform enables organizations to implement a modern application security strategy by consolidating vulnerability data across IT infrastructure, applications, and cloud systems into a single, unified view. With Brinqa, you can contextualize vulnerabilities within both your business operations and the evolving threat landscape, ensuring you understand the real risks that matter. Brinqa also provides clear visibility into ownership and accountability, making it easier to assign and track remediation efforts.
Schedule a demo today to see how easy it is to start leveraging automation and continuous monitoring to speed remediation of the most critical risks and strengthen your overall security posture.
Not sure how to weave in:
Enterprise Security Considerations Checklist (Could we add a Table with a checklist of considerations?)
These topics are integral components of a comprehensive enterprise application security strategy because they address various aspects of securing applications, infrastructure, and cloud environments against evolving threats. Here’s how each topic relates to enterprise application security:
1. Zero Trust Architecture
Zero Trust is a security model that assumes no user or device—inside or outside the network—can be trusted by default. Every access request must be verified and authenticated. In the context of enterprise application security, Zero Trust ensures that applications are protected by controlling access to sensitive systems and data. This approach minimizes the attack surface by limiting unnecessary access, making applications and their supporting environments more secure from both insider threats and external attacks.
2. Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Pipelines
CI/CD pipelines automate the software development and deployment process. Application security must be integrated into CI/CD workflows to ensure that security vulnerabilities are identified and mitigated early in the development lifecycle. By embedding security controls such as automated code scanning, testing, and vulnerability assessments within the CI/CD pipeline, organizations can reduce the risk of deploying insecure applications, closing the gap between development and security.
3. Cloud Security Controls
As more enterprise applications are hosted in the cloud, security controls designed specifically for cloud environments become crucial. Cloud security controls, such as encryption, identity and access management (IAM), and secure configurations, ensure that applications and data are protected in multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments. Since many modern applications rely on cloud infrastructure, securing these components is an essential part of enterprise application security.
4. Threat Modeling
Threat modeling involves identifying potential security threats and vulnerabilities in an application’s design and architecture. It helps organizations understand how an attacker might exploit weaknesses in an application or system. By conducting threat modeling, security teams can proactively address risks before an application is deployed. This is critical in enterprise environments, where applications often handle sensitive data or are integral to business operations.
5. Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR)
SOAR platforms automate the response to security incidents and orchestrate workflows across different security tools. For enterprise application security, SOAR helps by automatically managing the response to application vulnerabilities or security alerts, reducing the time it takes to remediate issues and preventing threats from escalating. This is particularly important when dealing with large, complex environments where manual processes would be too slow.
6. Microservices Security
Many modern applications are built using microservices architectures, where applications are composed of smaller, independent services. Each microservice introduces its own security challenges, such as securing APIs, managing data flows, and protecting service-to-service communication. Ensuring robust microservices security is crucial to protect applications against vulnerabilities in any individual service that could compromise the entire system.
7. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
MFA adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to verify their identity through multiple forms of authentication (e.g., a password plus a token or biometric verification). For enterprise applications, MFA significantly reduces the risk of unauthorized access, especially for applications that store or process sensitive data. It is a critical component of application security for protecting user accounts and preventing account takeover attacks.
8. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
SIEM platforms collect and analyze security event data from across the enterprise, including application logs, to detect potential security incidents. In the context of application security, SIEM helps identify abnormal behavior in applications that could indicate a security breach or vulnerability being exploited. SIEM solutions allow enterprises to respond to threats in real-time and ensure application security is continuously monitored.
9. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
EDR solutions monitor and respond to security threats at endpoints, such as desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. For enterprise applications, EDR is essential to detect and respond to attacks targeting end-user devices that access the application. This is especially important for applications used by remote or distributed workforces, as compromised endpoints can be entry points for attackers looking to exploit vulnerabilities in enterprise applications.
In summary, these technologies and concepts are interconnected and help create a robust, defense-in-depth approach to enterprise application security. By addressing application security from multiple angles—such as network access, development pipelines, cloud environments, and incident response—enterprises can protect their applications and data from a wide range of threats.
Strengthen your enterprise application security program with Brinqa
Brinqa prioritizes risks based on business context and threat intelligence to strengthen your enterprise application security program. With Brinqa, remediation and security teams can efficiently allocate resources and address the most significant threats to the organization.
Want to know more about how Brinqa can help protect your enterprise assets? Request a demo.
Frequently asked questions
What are the common vulnerabilities that enterprise application security aims to address?
The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 provides a comprehensive list of common vulnerabilities that enterprise AppSec teams must prioritize to minimize risks and produce secure code. The list includes injection flaws (e.g., SQL and NoSQL) injections, authentication and session management issues, sensitive data exposure, XML external entities (XXE) attacks, security misconfigurations, cross-site scripting (XSS) and cross-site request forgery (CSRF), insecure deserialization, broken access control, and insufficient logging and monitoring. By actively mitigating these vulnerabilities, enterprise applications can ensure robust protection against potential cyber threats, and safeguard sensitive information and assets.
What is the difference between enterprise application security and application security posture management?
Enterprise application security broadly focuses on securing the applications used within an organization to safeguard critical data and systems. It involves implementing application security testing (AST) — i.e., scans in order to detect vulnerabilities. Application security posture management (ASPM), on the other hand, complements AST by managing and improving the overall application security posture and securing the software development lifecycle (SDLC). In essence, enterprise application security is a broader security process, while AST and ASPM are two key components that play a vital role in this process.
