Achieving Security Coverage and Control Over Application Risk

Modern applications are complex ecosystems pieced together from first-party code and countless open source packages. They are shipped as container images, provide and use APIs, and are configured and deployed via infrastructure-as-code templates. This process is getting even more complex–and faster–because of the increasing influence of AI. Organizations face a significant and often underestimated challenge: the pervasive threat of "unknown unknowns" within their application portfolios. 

While this structure fuels innovation and speed, it also fundamentally changes the security equation. How do you maintain genuine visibility and control when your application’s components are so numerous, dynamic, and interconnected? For many security teams, the honest answer involves significant gaps. 

This lack of complete awareness creates dangerous “blind spots” throughout the software development lifecycle and across the different technologies used. Relying only on traditional security measures, often focused on addressing known vulnerabilities at specific stages of the development lifecycle, is becoming increasingly insufficient. These “unknown unknowns”–maybe an unmanaged repository with sensitive data or a vulnerable base image–represent unmitigated risks. To effectively manage application security today, you need the ability to see, understand, and secure the entire picture. 

The blind spots: Where unknown vulnerabilities hide:

What exactly are security “blind spots”? These are the areas within an organization's software ecosystem where visibility is lacking, creating fertile ground for undiscovered vulnerabilities. These blind spots come in various forms. 

• Legacy applications: Systems still running but no longer actively updated or monitored. They might be assumed to be stable but potentially harbor old, unpatched flaws or no longer supported libraries. 

• Shadow IT: This refers to projects or tools developed without following established security procedures, potentially involving unapproved vendors or cloud environments. These initiatives typically lack adequate oversight.

• Forgotten Assets: Infrequently updated code repositories or overlooked container images can still introduce pathways for attack. 

The truth is you can’t secure what you can’t see. These unknown and unmanaged assets become prime targets, allowing the "unknown unknowns" to pose a significant and unmitigated risk to the business.

The three cornerstones of comprehensive coverage:

To move beyond reactive measures and effectively address these hidden threats, organizations need to build foundational capabilities that provide comprehensive application security coverage.

1. Achieving universal visibility

You can’t protect against what you don’t know exists. The first step is to know your assets–mapping out and continuously tracking your entire software ecosystem. In other words, cataloging all application assets, including code repositories, package manifest files, container images, cloud configurations, APIs, runtime application instances, and more. 

This inventory should capture details and context of each asset, like its ownership, the underlying technologies, and, most importantly, its business context and criticality. Understanding which applications are critical or handle sensitive data is paramount for effective risk management.

Let's take a look at an example:

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You can see that out of the organization's 832 assets (which could be a repository or application), only 376 or 45% of these assets are compliant. This means that 55% of my assets are not actually being scanned by SAST (Static Application Security Test) or SCA (Software Composition Analysis) controls. You can see similar figures for secrets and container scanning. 

This level of detail is necessary for security teams to understand their coverage. It’s also important to recognize that not all assets require identical security controls. Therefore, implementing finely-grained policies tailored to the specific needs of your company's workflow is essential.

2. Establishing intelligent security policies

Once you have that clear view, you can move beyond generic, one-size-fits-all security controls and define policies specific to your unique risk appetite and business needs. These policies should be designed to enforce security coverage by clearly outlining the required security controls based on the business criticality or type of different assets. 

For instance, a policy might mandate more stringent scanning and monitoring for business-critical "Class A" assets compared to less critical "Class D" assets, which may only be used for testing and not deployed to production. 

These policies also play a vital role in identifying gaps in security coverage, highlighting assets not currently being protected with appropriate controls, and ensuring that critical applications receive the appropriate level of attention and scrutiny.

Let's take a look at this example where we establish a policy to initially identify critical applications (assets) by searching for specific tags, such as PCI, which indicates handling sensitive customer data.

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You can see the policy then classifies these assets as 'Class A' or 'critical,' ensuring they are treated and prioritized differently when addressing security issues compared to less critical assets.

Using the asset classifications from the prior policy, we select 'Class A' or critical assets, which could be repositories or container images, and define enforceable coverage controls. 

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This helps us implement varying rules, for example, requiring daily SAST scans for critical repositories while setting a 48-hour scan frequency for SCA. This level of customization ensures we focus on our most critical assets with targeted policies, resulting in a security coverage strategy that is highly specific to our business.

3. Prioritization augmented by context

Identifying every single potential vulnerability can often result in overwhelming backlogs and frustrated developers. The key to effective risk reduction lies in prioritizing remediation efforts based on actual business risk. To do this, we can layer in context: how critical is the affected application? Is it exposed to the internet? Is the vulnerable code actually reachable, or is it loaded in runtime? 

Knowing these answers helps security teams cut through the noise, ensuring that remediation efforts are aligned with the highest business risks. Look at this example to see the power of context in action.

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Consider this: we started with a daunting, open backlog of approximately 41,000 vulnerabilities. By applying key risk factors like whether the application was "Deployed," "Public Facing," or had "Loaded Packages," we’re able to significantly reduce this to a more manageable list of the 53 highest-risk vulnerabilities. This refined list can be further filtered by leveraging the asset classifications discussed earlier (e.g., 'Class A' or 'critical' applications) and by considering CVSS scores and other relevant internal and external factors. This targeted approach ensures that security teams focus on the most critical risks first.

Moving towards proactive risk management

Implementing the pillars of visibility, intelligent policy, and context-aware prioritization can help organizations shift their approach to application security posture. Instead of constantly reacting to newly discovered vulnerabilities teams can be proactive and focus on managing overall business risk before issues escalate. Additionally, when development and security teams operate from the same clear view of the application landscape, understand risks based on agreed-upon business context, and have automated policies guiding protection, collaboration between the security and development teams naturally improves. This creates a clear, shared path for effective remediation, focusing everyone's efforts on the risks that pose the greatest threat to the business.

To truly combat the “unknown unknowns” and eradicate security blind spots, a shift is essential. It’s important to prioritize building core capabilities: achieving universal visibility of all software assets, implementing intelligent, risk-based security policies, and employing context-aware prioritization. Embracing this holistic, proactive approach enables effective management of modern application complexity and significantly reduces overall security risk in today's challenging environment. This transition to proactive risk management yields tangible business benefits, including:

• Minimized business disruption and reduced risk exposure

• Optimized security investments and improved cost efficiency

• A stronger regulatory and compliance posture

• Improved collaboration & security culture 

• Enhance business resilience & stronger competitive differentiation 

• Accelerated innovation & faster time-to-Market

Is your current security approach truly equipped to uncover hidden risks across your entire application landscape and focus your teams on the threats that genuinely matter to the business?

Learn how Snyk Essentials can help your teams manage their AppSec program and prioritize business-critical issues to reduce risk.