The Challenge: New Business Areas contain new Security Risks and demand Compliance
Companies increasingly utilise the Internet for their business. Thus the need for security also rises continuously. Web applications can be controlled or shut down very quickly. The number of vulnerabilities on application level is growing alarmingly fast, and is a downright invitation to hackers to exploit them.
Security Challenge: How do you effectively protect Web applications against attacks and secure their availability?
Business processes are at the focus of attention when developing Web applications – not protection against attacks. In the best case, Web application developers may cover already known threats at the time of development. However, as soon as the application is going live and is exposed to new attacks or filter evasion methods, each single application would have to be re-adapted regarding its security level. Accordingly, the challenge for security administrators is huge: Web applications are continually faced with new attacks. It is crucial for business that all Web services in the Internet and intranet are secure around the clock and available with fast response times – even under the most difficult conditions, such as traffic peaks, manipulation attempts or Denial-of-Service attacks.
Cost Challenge: How do you reduce your costs for integration and implementation of application security?
Continuously maintaining Web applications and Web services at a high security level and connecting them with surrounding systems (e.g. user directories, IAM solutions, anti-virus gateways) quickly skyrockets costs – particularly in operation. New applications require all security measures to be incorporated and updated time and again. This makes implementing a secure application environment a slow, involved and therefore expensive process. Results of security reviews have to be incorporated into all applications repeatedly. Security administrators today are expected to implement secure solutions rapidly and in a flexible, efficient and cost-efficient way.
Compliance Challenge: New security standards require clearly defined measures in Web application security.
Security measures so far do not provide adequate protection against application level attacks. Companies need to upgrade their security infrastructure in order to meet compliance demands. New standards such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) or ISO 27001 define measures to increase Web application security. Large companies such as the major credit card industry demand compliance. An efficient and cost-effective implementation with fragmented, manual measures in the individual applications while fulfilling compliance demands is impossible. Only a strategic security product such as the Web application firewall visonysAirlock enables a speedy and reliable implementation of the security measures required. Companies that do not meet standardised security requirements today violate their duty of care, risking business advantages and reputation.