2015: Top 5 application security trends to watch out for

Indusface has highlighted the top application security trends to watch out for in 2015. The application security solutions company believes that even as attackers continue to look for newer ways of exploiting online vulnerabilities, some of the key trends can be predicted on the basis of major security lapses that haunted 2014 for most part of it. Be it cloud storage risks, widespread attacks through popular apps or services like Darknet that empower amateur hackers. With even big corporate giants falling prey to security breaches, small and medium enterprises too are coming around to understand that they cannot ignore these threats.  Venkatesh Sundar, CTO, Indusface, said, “2014 saw the likes of Heartbleed and Shellshock take a huge toll on many organisations. Right from Amazon to Hollywood, most had to bear the brunt of it. These are clear signs of what is to come in the succeeding year. Many organisations today are not prepared to deal with a breach of high magnitude. The top security trends in 2015 are going to be based on the kind of vulnerabilities that we witnessed in the past year.” [caption id=“attachment_1999373” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image: Reuters[/caption] Exploiting the logical flaws: As developers get aware of the CSRF and XSS issues, the attackers too will try and find new ways to harm and exploit the systems. With hackers trying to breach the security systems by understanding the logic behind the coding, rather than capitalizing on an evident vulnerability, it is going to be harder to protect oneself against such an attack. Trust Breach: Solutions like OpenSSL and UNIX are starting to come of age.With security bugs like Heartbleed and Shellshock, we witnessed the vulnerabilities in UNIX Bash shell and OpenSSL cryptographic library. More security lapses of this kind are likely to surface in the coming year. Alleviating the risks in Cloud Storage: Security breaches have become extremely huge today. Cloud technology is undoubtedly revolutionary, but it poses severe threats. Security compromise that occurred last year when iCloud was allegedly hacked proves the fact that cloud storage carries big risks too. As organisations throughout the world continue to embrace cloud computing, managing the risks that it poses is going to be difficult in near future.  “As cloud usage continues to grow with more devices and technologies connecting to the internet, the chances of data exposure shall also multiply opening up doors for the hackers to exploit the system,” Sundar added. Mere Compliance Not Enough: Organisations today need to be proactive when it comes to web security. Most organisations consider the OWASP Top 10 Vulnerability List to be the be all and end all of security measures. Mere compliance with the same is not going to resolve much of the issues. It is important for the organisations today to establish a strong security trend of their own. The Darker side of the Internet: With services like the Darknet including Deep Web providing a patform to hackers, even amateurs can now cause a lot of damage. A collection of such crimeware will pose as a serious threat to intelligence agencies all across the globe. Talking about the Darknet, Sundar explained, “Darknet services have been a source of trouble throughout the world, but what adds to the trouble is the fact that such implements are available on forums where the hackers converse. Access to such a forum eases the process of exchange of peer to peer network loop software for eluding detection.A rookie hacker with access to Tor, Freenet or I2P can cause significant damage.” The issues related to web application security are likely to be fuelled in the coming year, which leaves no room for conventional defense mechanisms. Organisations need a more holistic approach in order to tackle the threat of security breaches in an efficient manner.