Cyberthreats are constantly evolving and increasing in terms of frequency and severity. In fact, web-application and application-specific attack volumes increased in 7 of the top 10 most targeted industries in APAC last year. Additionally, close to 95% of applications were revealed to have some form of embedded vulnerabilities.
What is driving this worrisome trend? It has been found that with companies investing heavily to secure various components of a business’ IT infrastructure, the point-of-entry for most of these capabilities is through web applications. These security postures leave a lot to be desired. Between a continued shortage of cybersecurity workers and increasingly sophisticated threat landscape, web applications have slipped through most enterprises’ security radar.
As the pay-out of a successful exploit spikes exponentially, the incentives for malicious actors to carry out these attacks grow in tandem. A single breach can have a devastating impact on an organization, be it, financial, reputational, or even legal. Notably, the hit to the brand’s reputation may be the death knell for any company that experiences a data breach.
Despite the current landscape, it is important to note that this isn’t necessarily the be-all and end-all. A significant volume of threats and risks faced by businesses can be secured through holistic security solutions. Organisations are encouraged to utilize these solutions to ensure proper protections are in place to mitigate the severity of such attacks, which can disrupt regular operations.
Protection of sensitive data
Given that most modern web sites allow the capture, processing, storage, and transmission of sensitive customer data, this hoard of information is a lucrative target for cybercriminals. This means that the effort-reward ratio has never been more favourable for attackers.
Furthermore, with the growing variety of vulnerabilities – from SQL injections, cross-site scripting (XSS), to remote code execution (RCE) and path traversal attack – the quality of an organisation’s web infrastructure has never been more critical to its operations.
One way that a company can improve its web application’s security is by monitoring, filtering, and mitigating malicious traffic traveling to and from applications through a web application firewall (WAF). By deploying a WAF in front of a web application, this essentially forms a “shield” between the web application and the Internet.
A WAF operates through a set of security rules often called policies. Their usefulness comes in part from the speed and ease with which policy modification can be implemented, allowing for faster response to varying attack vectors.
Beyond the legacy WAF model where only a single set of configurations are deployed at any single time, the sector has been a hotbed of innovation. For instance, Edgio offers a unique Dual Web Application Firewall model that offers end users the flexibility they need to do their testing and analysing, while ensuring there is no downtime.
Round-the-clock ongoing website operation
Half of all internet traffic are made up of bots – from the common web crawler bots to the malicious content scraping bots. The challenge for organisations is knowing good bots from bad bots. Bad bots are not only used to carry out automated tasks such as stealing personal data, but malicious actors are using them programmatically to visit websites and identify vulnerabilities in code to execute subsequent attacks. The scalability of the bots also compromises the speed of the website that results in customer churn and conversion.
Furthermore, an unsecured website can get blacklisted from a search engine. When this happens, a website can lose up to 95% of its organic traffic which puts a heavy toll on the revenue. In a digital-first economy, businesses cannot overlook the impact of malicious bot activity as it contributes to more account compromise, higher infrastructure and support costs, customer churn, and degraded online services.
However, a company that adopts a holistic application security solution would be able to gain insight into the bot traffic on their websites and APIs. This will allow them to accurately determine in real time if an application request is from a fraudulent source, and if so, to take the necessary corrective mitigation measures.
DDoS Mitigation
DDoS attacks have always been a common tool in cyber criminals’ arsenal. This perennial cyberthreat is a crude but effective form of cyberattack where malicious actors flood the network or servers of the victim organisation to take them offline and prevent legitimate users from gaining access. Exacerbated by the growing availability of ‘DDoS-for-hire’ services which can cost as low as US$500, it has become cheap and easy to launch attacks on any organisations – in fact, various industry studies have corroborated the significant uptick in attack volume, intensity as well as session duration compared to yesteryears.
Furthermore, the growing reliance on digital services means that any disruption to key digital services will have far-reaching impact on all parties involved. On the end user front, it can be a case of lost productivity over the restricted access. Conversely, for the victim organisation, impact can range from remediation costs to damage to brand reputation where the consequences will continue to be felt even after numerous months.
A company that has invested adequately into their security and network capabilities will be able to prevent any impact on its operations by detecting and mitigating the attack instantly. However, given the significant sum of investment required, a more feasible alternative that enterprises can explore is to outsource the support needed. Businesses can have access to advanced mitigation and protection resources for a fixed budget with quality service providers. This is defined by the size of their bandwidth capacity as well as the globally distributed network. At the same time, these systems are upgraded and maintained on a regular basis, patching any vulnerabilities before malicious actors have access to it.
Key to holistic application lies with resource management
While signs are pointing to how organisations are working towards improving their security and adopting solutions to combat the increasingly hostile cyber environment, it is an uphill battle besieged by a multitude of challenges. This ranges from shortage of skilled professionals to integrate the security solutions, limited financial ability to invest or own the full suite of solutions needed, as well as the resources to keep abreast with the latest innovation within the space.
Security threats will remain a preeminent focus for organisations in 2023 as malicious actors exploit organisations’ hybrid working practices and geopolitical tension. Enterprises will face mounting pressure to deliver a holistic application that can withstand any existing and future threats on customers’ data but also the companies’ reputation.
Against this backdrop, the role of service providers becomes increasingly vital on this journey. The advantages do not just extend to cost optimisation and maintenance. It also focuses on innovating the business further through emerging technologies and secure applications and processes that enable businesses to take advantage of new opportunities amidst an increasingly troubling landscape.
