OWASP: A Comprehensive Overview In 2021

Introduction

In the modern world, to be successful, tech companies have to pioneer in their field. Software development is strongly focused on speed nowadays. The competition to be first in the market is pressurizing. In this rat race, security is left somewhere behind. Security is often an addendum for frazzled developers and the top management pushing them to deliver faster. Undoubtedly, some work is still to be done, and here comes the importance of application security (AppSec). For AppSec, something like the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) can prove very useful.

In this article let us look at:

1. OWASP a source of impartial advice
2. The OWASP Top 10
3. Top AppSec challenges

1. OWASP a source of impartial advice

What is OWASP? The Open Web Application Security Project® (OWASP) is a non-profit establishment that works to improvise the safety of software. Through community-led open-source software projects, hundreds of local chapters worldwide, tens of thousands of members, and leading educational and training conferences, the OWASP is the basis for technologists and developers to protect the web. It provides unbiased advice and practical information to help you develop your AppSec program.

2. The OWASP Top 10

We will discuss the top ten OWASP vulnerabilities. We will split each item and examine how to check for them and their risk level.

• Injection:   When an invader injects their code into a program and is incapable of deciding the code injected in this manner from its own code, invaders can use injection attacks to access protected areas and classified information. Examples of injections include LDAP injections, command injections, SQL injections, CRLF injections, and.

• Broken Authentication: Improperly applied authentication top-management calls can be an immense security risk.

• Sensitive Data Exposure: Some Application programming interface (API)s depend on an unsafe data transmission system, which invaders can use to gain the right of entry to passwords, usernames, and other confidential information.

• XML External Entities: This danger occurs when invaders can include or upload hostile content due to unsafe integrations, code, or dependencies
• Broken Access Control: If access and authentication restraint are not appropriately implemented, it’s easy for invaders to take anything they want. With wrecked access control flaws, unofficial users may have access to confidential systems and files or user-specific settings.
• Security Misconfiguration: Just like broken access controls, more common configuration errors are immense risks that give invaders quickly, easy entrée to confidential data.
• Cross-Site Scripting: Invaders benefit from DOM and APIs maneuvering to recover data from or send instructions to your application. 
• Insecure Deserialization: Deserialization, or retrieving objects and data that have been burnt to CD or otherwise saved, can be utilized to distantly execute code in application or as a gate to further attacks. 
• Using Components with identified Vulnerabilities: Even if your code is secure, invaders can exploit APIs and other third-party components if they are not themselves protected.
• Insufficient Logging and Monitoring: Failing to register attacks or errors and inappropriate checking practices can bring in a human component to security risks. Hackers count on a lack of monitoring and slower fixing times so that they can accomplish their attacks before you have time to detect or respond.

3. Top AppSec challenges

Top three challenges to implementing AppSec in their organizations:

• Silos between security, development and business units, making it hard to establish ultimate responsibility and preventing effective collaboration
• Lack of funding and management buy-in
• Lack of application security skills, methods, and tools 

Breaking down silos and changing a company culture takes time, but the rewards reach well beyond application security. The possible cost of a data breach should be enough to convince management to take more stern steps and commit resources. There are other reasons, like no single testing tool can catch every vulnerability, and tools alone are not enough to keep you safe. There has to be a robust and continuous system for the security of applications.

OWASP testing tools to improve the security and quality of their code:

• (SAST) Static Application Security Testing Tools
• (DAST) Dynamic Application Security Testing Tools – (Primarily for web apps)
• (IAST) Interactive Application Security Testing Tools – (Primarily for web APIs and web apps)
• Keeping Open Source libraries up-to-date 
• Static Code Quality Tools

The OWASP CSRFGuard is one of the world’s most popular free security tools and is actively maintained by a pool of international volunteers.

OWASP guidelines on implementing a secure software development framework:

• Clearly define roles and responsibilities
• Provide development teams with adequate software security training
• Implement a secure software development lifecycle
• Establish secure coding standards
• Build a reusable object library
• Verify the effectiveness of security controls  

Conclusion

There are 14 areas o consider in the software development life cycle. Of those secure coding concepts, we’re going to focus on the top eight secure OWASP best practices to help you protect against vulnerabilities.

• Security by Design
• Password Management
• Access Control
• Error Handling and Logging
• System Configuration
• Threat Modelling
• Cryptographic Practices
• Input Validation and Output Encoding

Protecting and securing valuable data and software is a real-world challenge that no one can deny. Every organization has to perform its due diligence.

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