While many organisations can defend against published application vulnerabilities, they often neglect to build security into the application production process. This leaves the door wide open for vulnerabilities to be exploited by the adversaries. In fact, zero-day attacks are on the rise: Google researchers discovered that the number of zero days exploited had doubled within recent years, with 97 zero days exploited in the wild in 2023, compared with 62 in 2022.
Zero-day vulnerabilities present a significant cybersecurity threat to organisations because there are no immediate patches available. Malicious threat actors often exploit these vulnerabilities before vendors can address them, leaving systems exposed and at high risk. The outcomes of Log4j2 and Spring4Shell vulnerabilities demonstrate the widespread damage zero-day attacks can inflict.
In a conscious effort to improve software security at the source, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) introduced its voluntary Secure by Design pledge. By participating in the pledge software manufacturers are committed to reaching seven distinct goals within their software within a year including MFA, default passwords, reducing entire classes of vulnerability, security patches, vulnerability disclosure policy, CVEs and evidence of intrusions. By building securely by design, organisations can prevent attacks later down the line.
This week at Black Hat USA 2024, Contrast Security announced the release of its Application Detection and Response (ADR) to empower security teams to identify vulnerabilities, detect threats, and stop attacks that target custom applications and APIs. Contrast Security ADR positions defences inside the application, enabling developers to enforce security from within.
The release of Contrast Security ADR is the next evolution in Application Security (AppSec), empowering security teams to:
- See Attacks on Applications and APIs: Security Operations teams can now get real-time alerts that include crucial context and fewer false positives on devastating attacks such as command injection, path traversal and SQL injection.
- Stop Attacks on Applications and APIs: SecOps teams can choose to utilise Contrast ADR’s real-time attack blocking capabilities or perform incident response actions as defined by their standard security workflows.
- Improve Detection & Response with new SOC Integrations: Security analysts can now take faster action armed with better attack intelligence on application and API attacks by leveraging the consoles of leading security information and event management (SIEM), cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP), and extended detection and response (XDR) platforms.
“Companies have invested in detection and response capabilities across the network, including EDR (endpoint), NDR (network), CDR (cloud) and ITDR (identity threat) and are gaining even greater security control using XDR and next-gen SIEM solutions. But attackers continue to leverage gaps in applications and APIs. ADR closes that critical gap and blocks many zero-day attacks by removing these vulnerable blind spots,” said Rick Fitz, CEO of Contrast Security.
