Are you aware of the fact that attack vectors is used on applications that are intelligent that human intervention no longer suffices. But there is a need for an intelligent approach of dealing with such attacks. Rather than focussing on the real deal, that would be the design flaws part of an application a software developer would be keen to adopt a traditional approach that would lead to failure in a security threatening scenario. The speed at which software manufacturers would be delivering applications on to enterprise solutions is higher and a challenge exists where you need to protect the application against any form of attack.
More about RASP
A significant aspect is to have the applications undertake self- protection where you identity and block attacks that too on a real time basis. One of the main reasons why runtime application self-protection was employed is to overcome this challenge with deployed applications and no more application security would be a casual approach to threat.
It is a form of application security technology that was developed to cope up with real time threat attacks that exists in the application layer. This is undertaken by checking out the hidden vulnerabilities as a real time visibility is provided on to the entire application layer. It uses artificial intelligence and integrates with the application in itself. Such a move would intercept any call to an application and figure out their security.
RASP software is not reactive as the proactive nature would not make it wait for any attack to emerge. It would check and flag out any malicious traffic making its way on to the application even before you execute such a malware in an application. Their main utility is to neutralize any form of threat or vulnerabilities. In fact it is a strong form of application that you may use against zero day attacks where there is no need for any form of human centric approach. More use of an artificial intelligence approach emerges like understanding behavioural changes that have taken place due to an attack and explains the logic behind such type of attacks.
If you are not using it to protect an entire network or not for an end to end protection, the focus is more in terms of a singular application. Though this may be better in terms of RASP security, there may be a necessity to monitor each input, output or the internal process where the application process that it is testing.
The benefits of RASP in OPS
- Cost effective and focus oriented-a RASP solution tends to be focus oriented when you compare it to a traditional firewall which relies on a general approach. It provides a deep view and vital insights on to the application layer as it would be integrated on to the application. Because of deep visibility it is possible to detect various forms of application vulnerabilities. Being cost effective it provides a true value for money when you compare it to the other security applications.
- Trims down false positives- RASP is known to deal with false positives as it is present in the application itself. It provides a deep view on how an application works. A way to figure this out is to have an idea on how the application execution workflow would be hindered by a potential form of an attack. This in built modules enables an organization to figure out which are genuine attacks like a SQL injection which did not go on to dish out a SQL query a false positive. The moment if there is a reduction in the number of false positives, the security team will be able to focus on genuine threats and not focus on the distractions that the false positives would be causing.
- Support of pan testing- one of the ideal ways to detect loopholes in an application is penetration testing. RASP is definitely going to substantiate the penetration effort of the security team through the visibility capability. With the help of the dashboard the application threat intelligence may be combined with all the areas that have been tested. It includes the exact lines of code where any form of vulnerability exists. It would be very crucial of the business goal of zero tolerance when it comes to the question of application security.
- Proactive nature- it is a proactive nature and not a reactive one. The best part is that it is going to monitor the application for any suspicious activity like data leakage, code tampering or networking sniffing. Event logging and incident management, by default would be of help during the process of auditing and provides more ideas for a company to invest. This for sure it is going to enhance their ROI.
- Easy maintainenace- the focus of RASP is not to overburden any team. Viable support is provided where it may integrate into an application and this is not by setting rules or any form of blacklisting. The teams have a liking for this application since it is cost- effective and will not go to develop unnecessary task for them.
RASP does not requiring training and even a layman is able to understand it with relative ease. It is part of an application as they are aware of what to do and what not. If the behaviour of the application changes, the RASP adopts and detects any form of an abnormal behaviour. It is not going to react based on any pre- set rules and Appsealing can be of help.
The technology is going to provide the developers with sufficient time to fix any vulnerabilities within the application or even when it is about to be released into the domain. Sometimes it would be taking months for developing such patches RASP is going to provide the much needed protection where it would block all incoming traffic or calls that would prevent further form of attacks. It can be integrated on to the cloud and once you integrate it you will have considerable piece of mind.
