According to an article in CIO magazine, a typical USD500+ million organization has 3,000+ applications. While average, organizations (excluding financial firms) have around 600 business-critical applications. On the other hand, financial firms have about 800 business-critical applications.
Every day growing numbers of both small and large enterprises are falling victim to hackers, resulting in data breaches and financial losses. According to the 2020 Cost of Data Breach Report, customers’ personally identifiable information (PII) was the most compromised data with the average cost per compromised data was $150.
For organizations, application security testing is no longer optional and has become a necessity. With companies in the digital age are constantly either developing their apps or are purchasing apps from third-party vendors, the vulnerabilities and threats linked to these apps have also grown drastically.
Below are some of the benefits of application security testing, which should motivate companies to tighten their application security.
Vulnerability Coverage
Application security testing validates both mobile and web applications across various threat vectors. Not only do they focus on some of the most common and most security flaws found in applications, but these testing also permit custom instructions to personalize the threat analysis for a specific organization.
Security of Confidential Data
The security of confidential data is a primary concern for almost all companies. Firms go to considerable lengths to ensure customers that their personal information is secure with them. With the growing shift towards online shopping, the PCI (Payment Card Industry) has implemented security measures and guidelines to limit credit card fraud cases. This is where application security testing can help companies to ensure their applications are secure from security threats.
Identifies Actual Risks
Testing experts exploit identified vulnerabilities to view what a hacker could do in a real scenario. Accessing sensitive information, executing operating system commands, etc. are some of the attack areas.
Security Gaps
Application security testing reduces the false-negative number and identifies all security gaps in an organization’s applications. Testing targets insecure session management, weak password authentication, hosting platforms, among others, to identify security flaws and gaps.
Today, applications are vulnerable to a host of threats prone to both inherent platform-based unpatched vulnerabilities and configuration or deployment flaws. Governed by OWASP, SANS, and NIST standards, StrongBox IT’s security testing services validate web and mobile applications across various threat vectors.