Application Security Testing

Application level security plays a vital part of the defense in depth strategy. Some recommendations that an organization should do are:

Identify the fitting application security systems which we can execute in application in every situation.

Since the system/application domain involves business’s mission-critical systems and applications, as well as data, it is important to ensure security of this domain. Failure to do so can result in a large loss of information and can ultimately lead to the cease of productions. This will ensure the protection of confidential data and its integrity. By implementing monitoring software tools, this will analyze any potential vulnerability that may exist on the

Modern organizations that utilize technology must now use their resources to protect themselves from malicious cybercrime activities. A “hacker” could illegally intrude into an organizations information network and use accounting software to mine information and steal assets at a relatively low risk of being caught.

Statistics show that most security breaches are direct results of insider misconduct rather than being hacked. According to the most recent Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, about “285 million records were compromised in 2008.” Seventy-four percent of the incidents were from inside sources. Users are more likely to be victims of computer virus infections, inquisitive students/co-workers, and hardware failures than to be victims of an Internet security attack.

This case study, written in 2009 is not the only case where a major data breach has occurred within organizations. In the late 2011 Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) was breached impacting up to 77 million user’s accounts including data on names, address and possibly credit card details. In late 2013 Target had a cyber-attack that compromised a large quantity of its data and had 110 million accounts compromised. Finally in September 2014 Apple had their iCloud server breached by hacking that compromised all the users of the online server. These occurrences still have some unanswered questions and several experts have yet to decipher the actual reason as to why the security breach occurred.

The article, which addresses security loopholes in modern computing environments, by Loscocco et al highlights what is and has been being done security wise in the past and how secure these implementations were and going forward what should be done to ensure in depth security which guarantees system wide security (1998). The article first explains features of secure operating system and why current systems implemented under the notion of application space security ultimately failed to safe guard the integrity and confidentiality of our assets. The article then continued with general examples of access control and cryptography implemented in the application space with no or little support from operating system and showed their vulnerabilities to attacks such as tampering, bypassing and spoofing. The article supplied real-life examples to support the evidence that building security in the application space without secure operating system is meaningless. The article raised concrete examples on mobile code security, Kerberos network authentication service, IPSEC and SSL network security protocols and firewall. The paper finally put an interesting remark that security implemented in application space without secure operating system is like “building a house in a pile of sand” and it also emphasized that secure operating system without better security on the

System/application attacks fall within three categories: denial or destruction, alteration, and disclosure. This paper will cover some common system/application domain vulnerabilities: unauthorized physical and logical access to resources, weaknesses in server operating system and application software, and data loss.

A successful business works on the basis of revenue growth and loss prevention. Whenever an organization start a project, they first plan for security because security breach can impact on overall project like data leakage, down-time and reputation loss. This may, in turn, impact on the company’s bottom line and ultimately profit margins. A virus attack on project or a network breach can cost a business thousands of dollars. In some cases, it may even lead to legal liability and lawsuits.

In the last decade it’s amazing how technology has advanced over the years and will continue to advance for many years to come. Every year there is a new cell phone from Apple or Samsung, with new features that make our lives more convenient. From faster software to higher picture quality and so on. I am unable to recall the last time I used a camera to take pictures or went to the bank to deposit a check. Technology advances every day and many can’t wait to see what’s next to come. But with new technology comes greater risk for violations of privacy. In the following research paper I will discuss the types of security breaches and the cost associated with these breaches that businesses around the world face on a daily basis.

When firms like Home Depot and Target invests a lot of financial and non-financial resources to curb the menace, one is left to wonder why such vices continues to affect them and their clients. Hacking of companies in the United States have reached a sky high and notable names in the industry have been affected by the vice. The firms like Home Depot, JPMorgan, Michael, Nieman Marcus and Target, have had its share of this vice. The United States Postal Services have not been left behind also, because it was also affected by the hackers ( 'Cybercrime a

Injection flaws, such as SQL, OS, and LDAP injection, allow attackers to relay malicious code through Web applications to another system, such as backend databases. This injection flaws, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query with the purpose to access unauthorized data. This type of vulnerability can be very dangerous and can potentially lead to all types of application attacks. To compensate this, organizations can use commercial WAFs (Web application firewalls), to identify when an injection flaw is successful by identifying information leakages. Other caution that enterprises should take is implementing access controls in database and the use of parameterized queries in which application API is used to set SQL parameters.

Web applications are nowadays serving as a company’s public face to the internet. This has created the need to identify threats and attacks directed to data servers and web applications. Hackers exploit vulnerabilities in input validation and authentication affecting the web application in order to gain illegal access and disclose sensitive data or manipulate it to their benefits.

It is important to note that whether an attack is perpetrated by a hacker group, other corporations or individuals, organizations must always prepare adequately through intrusion detection and prevention systems in place. Data breaches can have very devastating business and social impact to large businesses and their customers – the users. For instance, were Cloudflare attacked by a competing company, their trade secrets could have given the opponents ammunition to take them out of the field. In addition, lost data could influence criminal activity if for instance particular client information, for

Almost all kind of large and small organizations might face increasing number of attacks into their network or intellectual property. This may lead to data disclosure, data destruction, and damage of organization’s reputation. There are numerous threats in the cyber space which might be capable of stealing, destroying or making use of out sensitive data for financial and non-financial gains. As the amount of computer, mobile and internet users increases, so does the number of exploiters.