Application hardening is a critical process that organizations should implement to protect their software applications. By hardening applications, companies can reduce security vulnerabilities and prevent exploits that could lead to data breaches or other threats. This comprehensive guide will explain what Application hardening entails, why it’s important, and provide actionable strategies to properly harden apps.
What is application hardening?
Application hardening refers to the act of securing an application by reducing vulnerabilities and closing off unnecessary access. The goal is to strengthen app security to defend against attacks like injection exploits, DDoS attacks, data breaches, and other threats that take advantage of vulnerabilities.
Hardening tactics create “defense in depth” by adding protective layers around apps and data flows. This protects critical business logic and sensitive information. Fully hardened applications only allow functional access to users and systems that legitimately need it. Any unnecessary functionality is eliminated.
Key Benefits of Application Hardening
There are many important reasons why properly hardening apps should be a priority:
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Reduced Surface Area for Attacks
Removing unnecessary features and access points gives attackers less surface area to exploit. Each vulnerability closed off reduces organizational risk.
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Prevention of Data Breaches
Hackers often use application exploits to infiltrate networks and exfiltrate sensitive data. Hardening apps closes vulnerabilities to prevent data breaches.
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Cost Savings
Data breaches and cyber attacks lead to major financial losses and reputational damage. Hardening apps increases security and saves money over time.
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Compliance Adherence
Application hardening helps companies comply with security regulations and industry standards to avoid fines and punitive measures.
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Better Customer Experience
Hardened apps protect customer data privacy with fewer breaches. This inspires greater trust and loyalty in customers.
Essential Strategies for Application Hardening
Proper application hardening requires implementing these key strategies:
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Input Validation
All user-supplied inputs should be validated on both the client and server sides before processing. This prevents malformed input from creating exploits like code injection, buffer overflow attacks, and more by verifying data integrity.
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Access Control
Enforce tight access controls and the principle of least privilege. Apps should only allow the necessary access, functions, and viewing rights. Unauthorized access attempts should fail and be closed. Integrate multi-factor authentication for sensitive data access.
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Disable Unused Features
Minimize the app’s surface area by disabling unused components, ports, pages, privileges, and anything else unnecessary for core app functionality.
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Continuous security monitoring
Actively monitor apps with web application firewalls, vulnerability testing tools, and penetration testing. Watch for anomalies and be ready to quickly deploy patches for any emerging weaknesses detected.
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Integrate security early.
Consider security early in design before launch rather than an afterthought. Building in security from the start allows robust protection of app infrastructure and data flows.
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Source Code and Secret Management
Use tools to embed security controls directly into source code, like input validation. Centralize the management of certificates, keys, and credentials into a vault with tight access policies for secrets.
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Session Management
Generate unique session IDs that can’t be guessed. Session keys should expire after a short period of idle time and be invalidated on logout. Limit concurrent sessions per user.
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Error and Exception Handling
Don’t reveal sensitive error data. Log errors securely and fail to close. Return generic responses to users and address exceptions gracefully to avoid crashes.
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Data Security
Apply data security controls like classification, retention rules, access restrictions, and proliferation barriers between environments. Prevent unauthorized viewing and leaks.
How to Get Started With Application Hardening
Follow these steps to begin application hardening:
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Inventory Your Apps
Discover all apps in use across the enterprise, classify them by sensitivity level, document current security practices, and note down vulnerabilities uncovered.
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Prioritize by Risk
Identify mission-critical apps that store or process sensitive, private data. These higher-risk apps take priority for hardening efforts.
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Assess Weaknesses
Uncover vulnerabilities in apps through extensive penetration testing, code reviews, and web application scanning tools. All new weaknesses are remediation items.
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Strengthen security practices.
Draft security hardening standards addressing people, processes, and technology. Provide developer training to build more secure apps with encoding schemes, input filtering, encryption, and access management.
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Implement Controls
Utilize web application firewalls, next-gen endpoint solutions with app controls, and runtime application self-protection tools. Harden the app infrastructure by removing unnecessary ports, protocols, etc.
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Test Defenses
Confirm defenses and prevent attacks by conducting assault simulations using techniques that hackers deploy in real-world scenarios. Successful tests validate the security posture.
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Formalize Monitoring
Set up continuous visibility with application security monitoring tools. Rapid detection allows immediate response to suspicious activities that could signal emerging compromise attempts.
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Regularly review and update
Application security is an ongoing discipline requiring regular app hardening reviews and vulnerability testing to address evolving threats and uncover new data flows needing protection. Maintaining strong application hygiene ensures hardened apps don’t regress over time.
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Sandboxing Environments
Run applications in a sandboxed environment separated from the underlying operating system and hardware. This adds an isolated protective barrier, limiting damage if an app gets compromised. Integrate sandboxing to restrict apps from accessing resources not explicitly permitted.
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Infrastructure Hardening
Harden the underlying infrastructure apps run on, including networks, operating systems, databases, cloud services, and hardware. Things like keeping systems patched or updated, setting up firewalls between enclaves, and disabling unnecessary OS services help minimize vulnerabilities for apps built on top.
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DevSecOps Integration
Make security intrinsic to app delivery pipelines using DevSecOps practices. Automated security scanning at all phases of the lifecycle, from code commit to post-deploy, ensures vulnerabilities get uncovered and addressed rapidly as apps iterate through agile sprints. Security checks become baked into the CI/CD workflow.
Conclusion
Application hardening provided by companies like Appsealing is critical for modern application security. By hardening apps and eliminating unnecessary access, companies can prevent data breaches, thwart cyber attacks, save money, and meet compliance demands. It requires dashboard visibility across environments, comprehensive developer training for staff, layered defense-in-depth tools, and consistently advanced security controls. Companies that fully embrace consistent practices like encryption, input validation, access management, continuous monitoring, and more can feel highly confident that their apps provide extraordinarily safe environments for customers and employees alike while still smoothly achieving core business objectives.
