A successful application security risk program is a partnership between an enterprise and its IT security provider. Each partner brings its own expertise to this collaboration.
The skills and experience of an external partner provide a different perspective on the security problem. With their knowledge from previous projects, the IT security experts from outside can accompany the formulation and implementation of a strategy from the very beginning and thus help to avoid unnecessary mistakes.
If developers don't know what exactly is expected of them to make an application secure, they can't be expected to succeed.
But it's not a matter of simply telling the development team what to do. Instead, developers should be involved in the entire process of the security risk program from the beginning. This creates synergies and allows new creative ideas to emerge.
Companies can set up an internal IT security site where all stakeholders can share information. The key to the success of a security program is effective and transparent communication.
Customers should make an inventory of their business-critical applications and categorize them into risk groups. This is important because there are not unlimited resources available for an application security risk program. If a company wants to protect, say, 20 applications at the start of its security offensive, priority must be given to those that are most at risk. These may be apps that process personal information or credit card data.
Knowing the importance of a particular app to one's business success ensures that this app receives the necessary attention in terms of security, but also performance. Such a risk ranking of apps is a good start for a comprehensive security risk concept.
Numbers and metrics abound in IT security. It is important to look at the specific number of applications a security program covers.
In addition, the success of the program can be very well assessed by measuring the compliance rate over time. After that, a company's head of security can judge very well whether his security risk program is performing well or whether there is still a need for improvement.
Security policies are usually defined by IT security risk experts. They might prescribe which security vulnerabilities must not occur in an application. However, companies often issue these policies in a hurried and haphazard manner - creating more chaos than order.
Having ten different policies in a security program that includes 20 applications only creates confusion.
Another mistake is to set the rules too narrowly, especially for new apps. Not only does this negatively impact compliance, it also creates some potential for frustration for the development team.
In addition, policies are sometimes used that are simply not relevant. For example, a legacy application that is no longer being developed does not need quarterly scans.
Don’t take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give — with a few exceptions — generalize whatever they did. Don’t over-analyze everything. I myself have been guilty of over-thinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.
