Security at the Speed of development for software: DAST in the SDLC
Large enterprises are managing 946 custom apps on average and developing 193 more: a 20% increase from 2020. This scale and pace of development is a key reason for the ongoing security crisis.
SDLC Definition
The software development lifecycle (SDLC) is the series of steps an organization follows to develop and deploy its software. There isn’t a single, unified software development lifecycle. Rather, there are several frameworks and models thadt development teams follow to create, test, deploy, and maintain software.
The agile framework is built around continuous improvement to the development process. Agile developers collaborate constantly, developing a framework with a clear set of principles and objectives to guide their flexible development process.
In the waterfall method, the development process only progresses to the next phase when all work is completed. This means a slower and more costly work stream.
The spiral method often relies on some of the other frameworks, such as Agile or Waterfall, depending on the components or projects. The spiral framework is a risk-based approach that helps determine the right choices for the situation at hand.
What are Software and Application Security Testing?
Application security testing is a robust and rigorous analysis of security-related weaknesses and flaws in a software or application. The goal is to ensure that no vulnerabilities are missed and that the application and its data are protected after release.
An experienced security tester looks for all potential weaknesses in the product that make it a target for attacks and could lead to problems like loss of information or revenues, non-compliance, or a damaged reputation.
The growth of the DEVOPS movement
DEVOPS grew from a few early practitioners to be more widely adopted. It can be defined as a set of practices intended to reduce the time between committing a change to a system and the change being placed into normal production, while ensuring high quality. Typically, it provides a significant focus on factors such as automation, the definition and management of all artifacts–including infrastructure components–as code, and continuity of delivery.
Here are examples of sprints used for DEVOPS Agile development:
- Coding sprint – code development and review.
- Building sprint – continuous integration tools, building status
- Testing sprint – continuous testing tools that provide quick and timely feedback on business risks
- Packaging sprint – artifact repository during pre deployment
- Releasing sprint – change management, release approvals, release automation
- Configuring sprint – infrastructure configuration and management along with change control
- Monitoring sprint – application performance monitoring and the end-user experience
How is security testing done within DEVOPS Agile work sprints?
The following work streams should be considered during an agile project for application development.
- You should test for bugs and vulnerabilities before releasing an app.
- The most common attack vector for web applications is through the use of APIs.
- It is essential to test the security of your API endpoints.
- They should complete code review security testing after every sprint
- They should enable security scans during the testing sprint.
- They should report all potential vulnerabilities to SECOPS after the test
- They should prioritize any security issues based on risk contextual score.
Organizations that leverage non-developers for testing often discover other vulnerabilities and risks within the code platform. Developers of the specific agile project follow a normal routine based testing sequence they know. Non-developers who have little or no background, tend to follow industry methods without any initial bias.
What is DAST?
Modern DAST automated application security testing and integrates it into agile software development workflows. The development cycle of an application stack should include a sprint for DAST.
Accurate dynamic testing is the only way to build scalable web application security and move towards DevSecOps. A product could only reach the maturity level if the entire software implementation phase passes DAST.
DAST is a white or black box tool that tests for real-world attacks against web applications.
It can simulate common attack vectors, such as SQL injection, cross site scripting, and others.
- Penetration testing is done manually by humans.
- As the industry matures, there’s an effort to automate this process.
- Each software component should be tested dynamically.
DAST often is called a web application vulnerability scanner or application security scanner. It looks for security vulnerabilities by simulating attacks on an application while the application is running in production. DAST leverages several real world application testing processes, including brute force login attacks to synthetic transactions.
Web applications enable many mission-critical business processes today, from public-facing e-commerce stores to internal financial systems. While these web applications can influence business profitability, they also often hide potential weaknesses that, if left unidentified and not remediated, could quickly lead to a damaging data breach. Many security tests need to be repeated in case the test cycle was compromised.
DAST is good at discovering external issues and risk vulnerabilities within the platform. This includes several security risks from OWASP’s top ten. One of DAST’s advantages is its ability to identify runtime problems without scanning the source code. DAST is excellent at finding server configuration and single and multi-factor authentication problems, as well as flaws that are only visible when a known user logs in. These tools are excellent for discovery a variety of security risks, including:
- Cross-site scripting
- SQL injection
- Command injection
- Insecure server configuration
- SSRF
Why Should You Make Penetration Testing a Part of the SDLC?
Pen testing should align with DevOps so that it does not slow down releasing new code.
Making penetration testing a critical part of your software development life cycle ensures that the end product turns out to be safe for your customers. What normally happens is that a product is first developed and then, at the end, a security assessment is conducted to check for vulnerabilities or security breaches. They usually fix the issues with patching software, but this turns out to be much more costly than addressing the genuine issue.
If issues are fixed during the software development process, the costs will be reduced by avoiding multiple cycles of testing–patching–retesting. Ever since the threat landscape has changed, organizations look forward to providing more secure applications at a greater profit.
The process of application security starts right after you begin the development process. Here is an example of DEVOPS CI/CD security sprints during a SDLC application cycle:
- Security Sprint: Design phase–In this phase, you make a secure design process and review, along with formal methods like specification and modeling languages.
- Security sprint: Build phase–Developing code that can be tested and used for automated review and inspection later.
- Security sprint: Deployment and execution – Inspecting the executed application, static (white box) testing and dynamic (black box) testing recommended.
- Once the product is complete, it is recommended to carry out a final penetration test before the product goes for the user acceptance test.
Importance of pen testing in the application workflow
Penetration testing is less effective for general purpose software testing. This is because rigorous test scenarios need to be unique and tailored to a particular software product. A “one size fits all” approach can never address all possible secure coding practices, security flaws found in every line of code, and many critical vulnerabilities may only be a mirror issue in some pieces of software that it tests.
