Application Security

Application security defines security measures at the application layer with the aim of preventing data or source code within the application itself from being compromised. It is the practice of using security hardware, hardware, techniques, best practices and processes to protect applications from internal and external security threats. Furthermore, it is the process of establishing, adding and testing security features within a given application to prevent security vulnerabilities against security threats such as unauthorized access or disclosure, modification and disruption.

Application security addresses the security issues that occur during application development, design and deployment phases. Additionally, application security considerations may be addressed even after the application is put into practice or deployed in production environments through various security controls.

Organizations may ensure application security through hardware, software, best practice, processes and procedures that may identify or reduce overall security vulnerabilities. And application security measures include improving security standards and practices in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Besides, security should be built-in or baked within the application rather than retrofitted later on or considered as afterthought issue.

The purpose of application security endeavors is to minimize the likelihood and consequences when malicious threat actors try to gain unauthorized access to applications, systems, or the data. This will be helpful in preventing cyberattacks from accessing or disclosing, tampering or modifying sensitive data and disrupting businesses that make use of the application.

Application security may accommodate one or more of the following modules:

• Web application security
• Cloud application security
• Mobile application security
• Application security testing
• Identification
• Authentication
• Authorization
• Accountability
• Encryption controls
• Logging controls
• Access controls
• Threat modeling

Applications security controls may be preventative, responsive, compensating, detective and/or corrective measures.