Inside AppSec

In this Inside AppSec podcast, Contrast Security's CISO David Lindner and Data Scientist Katharine Watson discuss findings from the September–October 2020 Application Security Intelligence Report from Contrast Labs. Serious vulnerabilities and attacks are on the rise and .NET applications are an increasing focus area for cyber criminals, with four of the top five attack types increasing in prevalence for .NET applications by 20% or more.

The Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice for Application Security Testing (AST) recognizes AST vendors based on their customer reviews. Contrast scored the highest in the AST category with a 4.8/5.0. In this Inside AppSec podcast, Contrast's VP of Customer Success Scott Chaykin and Head of Customer Marketing Jaweed Metz discuss what Contrast does to ensure customers have great experiences and support using its technology.

The transition from the public to private sector can be difficult for some. This wasn't the case for Jimmy Xu, who serves as the director of Cloud Security and DevSecOps at technology integrator and consultancy Trace3. In this Inside AppSec podcast, Jimmy discusses how he became interested in InfoSec and how he built a successful career in the DoD that set the stage for a transition into the private sector. He also provides insights into key cloud and application security trends and what security and development professionals can do to secure their application environments.

Some of the world's top-performing development teams are in the technology sector. It should not be a surprise that Agile and DevOps adoption rates are the highest among these teams, with pace of change and speed are often critical business differentiators. Those unable to keep up discover their revenues and customer base shrinking. This Inside AppSec podcast examines findings from a recent survey report published by Contrast Security that sought to discover the state of application security with developers in technology companies. Contrast CTO and Co-Founder Jeff Williams comments on the survey findings and provides his unique perspective on what they mean—from challenges to opportunities.
Download the report: https://www.contrastsecurity.com/higher-quality-code-higher-productivity

Contrast Labs’ latest bimonthly research findings (“Application Security Intelligence Report”) unearthed some positive vulnerability and attack trends. Overall application vulnerabilities decreased, and the number of attacks hitting an existing vulnerability in production also shrank to just 1%. But a deeper look reveals cause for concern due to the lack of prioritization in vulnerability management, attacks on .NET applications, and more. Listen to this Inside AppSec podcast with Contrast Security’s CISO David Lindner and Data Scientist Katharine Watson for their insights on these and other trends.

From almost day one of development, Contrast has used the Contrast Application Security Platform to secure and protect TeamServer, the UI and analytics engine for the Contrast platform. In this podcast, David Hafley, the vice president of engineering whose team oversees the development of TeamServer, discusses features and integrations in the Contrast platform that his team uses. Tim Franklin, the business value analysis program manager at Contrast, joins the conversation to overview the cost savings and efficiency gains the company is realizing by using the Contrast platform over a legacy application security approach.

Too often, DevOps and AppSec are spoken about in two different vernaculars. The reality is that they are intertwined at the hip and their individual successes are contingent on one another—whether faster business acceleration, improved efficiencies, or better risk management. In this Inside AppSec podcast, EVOTEK's IT Strategist Greg Sternberg discusses how DevOps and AppSec must be thought of together and spells out some of the key trends that he sees taking place in DevSecOps. Greg also explores his successful career and provides recommendations on how application security professionals can gain the right level of experience and build the right network of connections for career advancement. 

As cyber criminals have become more advanced in their use of attack techniques and the digital world expands at a record rate, the need for organizations to assess their risks and develop policies to manage those risks continues to grow. Applications are certainly on the front battle lines, with almost half of data breaches in the past year being tracked back to application vulnerabilities. This podcast features award-winning author and risk assessment and policy development expert Doug Landoll, who discusses strategies that can be deployed to assess application risk, how security frameworks can be used to mitigate and manage that risk, what the future of application risk management may look like, and more.

Contrast Labs’ latest bimonthly research findings (“Application Security Intelligence Report”) looks at application vulnerability and attack trends against COVID-19 data—identifying potential areas of alignment. Attacks on SQL injection and broken access control vulnerabilities were up considerably. With SQL injection vulnerabilities found in more than twice the number of applications than vulnerabilities in general, this serves as a warning light for those responsible for application security. .NET applications were also in the crosshairs of cyber criminals; five .NET vulnerabilities saw double-digit increases over the previous bimonthly report. Contrast Security’s CISO David Lindner and Data Scientist Katharine Watson discuss these and other application vulnerability and attack trends in this Inside AppSec podcast.

Digital transformation is driving a dramatic acceleration in the development of new applications and the evolution of existing ones. But the expanded application attack surface and demands for greater velocity in application development cycles ratchet up risk and impede innovation. Contrast’s “2020 Application Security Observability Report” provides development, security, and operations professionals with a deep dive and analysis around application vulnerabilities, attacks, open-source frameworks and libraries, and median and mean time to remediate. In this Inside AppSec Podcast, Contrast’s CTO and Co-Founder Jeff Williams discusses key highlights in each of these areas and explores actionable insights that will empower organizations to accelerate application security to the speed of the business.