Start With Pentesting to Harden Your Site Against Cyberattacks
Cybersecurity for web apps has never been more important than it is today. Websites and online applications are under constant attack by people and groups looking to penetrate systems to cause damage or steal vital information. And it’s not just criminals and mischief-makers; government-sponsored attackers are at work as well. Consider these cybersecurity statistics compiled by Patchstack:
- A 2019 report found that security breaches had increased by 67% over the last five years.
- 73% of black hat hackers said traditional firewall and antivirus security is irrelevant or obsolete.
- A 2019 study found that hackers could attack users in 9 out of 10 web applications they analyzed.
- Another 2019 study found that 46% of web applications have critical vulnerabilities, and a whopping 87% had “medium” security vulnerabilities.
Even more, telling is a 2019 report that found that 47% of all hacked websites contained at least one backdoor, allowing hackers access to the website. And the costs associated with data breaches continue to climb. The average cost of a data breach among companies surveyed in a 2021 IBM report reached $4.24 million per incident, the highest in 17 years.
Security personnel has a number of tools at their disposal to thwart cyberattacks. One of the most valuable is pentesting — checking for vulnerabilities that could give a hacker access to the system. But although not as reactive as remediating a breach that has already occurred, traditional pentesting is still somewhat reactive in nature. You’re being proactive in checking for vulnerabilities that could potentially be used by an attacker, but the vulnerabilities already exist. It’s like calling in a plumber to check for leaks in your pipes that could potentially cause water damage. The leaks are expected to already be there and be found, just as the vulnerabilities are in a pentest. So, although a valuable tool, pentesting only takes you part of the way to a truly security-hardened organization.
How ASVS Benchmarks Go Beyond Pentesting
What you need is a way to check your security posture for conditions that might lead to a future vulnerability and remediate those issues as well. Only then can you consider your site truly security-hardened. It’s like that plumber fixing all the leaks in your pipes, then going back and making a systematic check of your pipes for conditions that could lead to a leak, such as rusting, pipes located in places where they are likely to freeze or improperly connected pipes.
ASVS provides for this by listing security conditions analogous to those that might lead to leaky pipes. This is how ASVS benchmarks enable proactive security.
Enhance Your Security Posture Further With ASVS Benchmark Tests
The Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) was developed by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) to help organizations examine the state of their cybersecurity. The primary aim of the ASVS Project was to normalize the range in the coverage and level of rigor available in the market when it comes to performing Web application security verification using a commercially-workable open standard. The standard provides a basis for testing application technical security controls and technical security controls in the environment that protect against vulnerabilities such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and SQL injection.
The ASVS benchmark provides a compilation of security controls that are expected to be in place in a well-secured application. It also provides developers with a list of requirements for secure development. The ASVS does not provide a framework to check for vulnerabilities. Rather, it provides a framework to check for controls that prevent, and conditions that could lead to, exploitable vulnerabilities. Synack recommends performing ASVS benchmark testing as part of an ongoing security process for maximum cybersecurity.
OWASP lists the following as objectives achieved by ASVS:
- Use as a metric — Provide application developers and application owners with a yardstick with which to assess the degree of trust that can be placed in their Web applications
- Use as guidance — Provide guidance to security control developers as to what to build into security controls in order to satisfy application security requirements
- Use during procurement — Provide a basis for specifying application security verification requirements in contracts.
When to Run ASVS Benchmark Tests
The ASVS framework is best suited for organizations that are relatively mature in their security posture. Since the tests don’t actually check for vulnerabilities, it is most appropriate to run ASVS tests after you have examined your system for existing vulnerabilities and remediated them through continuous and effective penetration testing. Once existing vulnerabilities have been discovered and remediated or resolved, then it is time to check your security controls for best practice implementations. Running the ASVS benchmark can then help the organization create a better defense in depth posture.
Proactive Vulnerability Testing With Synack’s ASVS Benchmark Product
There are three levels of ASVS benchmarks available in the Synack Catalog – Basic, Standard, and Advanced. You choose the Synack ASVS Campaign to run based on the level that is appropriate for the organization. Across levels, an ASVS Campaign can ensure that an application follows best practices to protect user data and prevent exploitation by adversaries. An ASVS Campaign does this while respecting the appropriate level of security for an application, one that thoroughly protects the application, while not hampering user experience or business needs.
This process to engage Synack to prevent vulnerabilities before they occur is unique. Testing the ASVS framework lets us look for and proactively address the systemic issues that let the vulnerabilities come to an exploitable state and unlock the door for an attacker.
With an ASVS benchmark test, you will receive a detailed report from a researcher on the Synack Red Team, our community of global ethical hackers, regarding their findings on the security posture of your assets. Their mission is to evaluate your assets relative to the ASVS framework. The goal of this assessment is to determine if your security controls are adequate for the application use case your organization has.
This report can offer guidance on where efforts would be best applied to further harden and future-proof assets. It can also be used to show a year-over-year improvement in the asset hardness, and can help quantify the effectiveness with both the ASVS metrics and a reduction in vulnerability findings. Long-term, the ASVS campaign can help support a multi-year effort to reduce the attack surface and improve the controls in assets against flaws.
Complete an ASVS Assessment With Synack ASVS Campaigns for Maximum Security Posture
Completing an ASVS assessment for your organization is easy with Synack Campaigns. The ASVS campaigns are listed in the Security Benchmark section of the Catalog. Once credits are purchased, you can activate your campaign on-demand any time in the Synack Platform.
Synack researchers complete the missions specified by the ASVS benchmark tests. After completing them, your team can leverage Synack’s Custom Report feature for audit-ready reports that will provide you with a view of security issues discovered by our testing.
When you are comfortable that pentesting and resulting remediation has moved your site to a sufficiently secure security posture, evidenced by pentesting not finding a significant number of new vulnerabilities, then you can move on to running the Synack ASVS Campaign. After completing the ASVS Campaign and remediating any discovered issues, it’s time to set up a plan for periodic testing going forward. Then you can be assured that you have applied the most comprehensive security testing to protect your assets.
Learn What Synack ASVS Benchmarks Can do for You
To learn more about Synack ASVS Campaigns and how it can expose conditions that could lead to exploitable vulnerabilities, contact Synack at [email protected].
