How do you anticipate emerging web application security trends?

In modern federal cybersecurity programs, the concept of shared security and privacy responsibilities has become the central theme for ensuring both agency customers and service providers are meeting the regulatory requirements for the web applications being built. This is especially prominent with cloud computing where cloud technology architectures can be built by a commercial entity, managed by another commercial or government entity, and consumed by a government customer. Modern cloud-deployed web applications can be built using FedRAMP baselines to achieve a high level of protection against modern threats.

Anticipating emerging web application security trends requires vigilance and proactive measures. This involves staying updated on technological advancements, monitoring threat intelligence sources, engaging with the security community, adhering to industry standards, conducting threat modelling, collaborating with peers,investing in research, implementing security automation,and maintaining agility to adapt to evolving threats.By embracing these strategies, organizations can better safeguard their web applications against emerging vulnerabilities and cyber threats.

Regularly review industry standards and frameworks such as OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). Stay informed about updates to regulations and compliance standards related to web application security. Changes in regulations, such as GDPR or HIPAA, often reflect evolving security expectations and may influence industry practices. Stay updated of the latest developments in web application security through continuous learning. Conduct comprehensive risk assessments for web applications. Identify potential vulnerabilities and assess their likelihood and impact, considering the evolving threat landscape.

It is said technology moves at the speed of light, while cyber laws and regulations move at the speed of Congress. New technology is not always the best thing to introduce to your network until you are certain all risks can be mitigated, and/or there are rules, regulations and standards in place to back up every aspect of the security controls being put into place. Without these, a company cannot build an effective policy to provide a legal recourse against those who wish to circumvent what is required to effectively secure the network.

Today's threat landscapes are mercurial. New vulnerabilities are found in existing code, political adversaries use cyberkinetic or pure cyber attacks on each other, and other attacks are 'because it can be done'. The motives vary, techniques evolve, and technology will help or hinder dependent on its use. FISMA and the EO 14028 mandates a viable, evolving training regime which should be adopted by ALL - not just federal/government entities.

It is often incredibly valuable to know how you organization uses behave. This allows you to do analytics based on their expected behavior and tag outlines witch might point to security breaches you wasn't aware of.

The weakest link of any network continues to be the User. How an application is designed to work, and how it actually works are sometimes two different things. This is where the critical aspects of the CI/CD pipeline come into play, ensuring security and privacy aspects are baked in, while having intensive User Acceptance Trials reveal the holes and kludgy aspects of an application. The UAT is especially important as it will give the end users faith in the application, which hopefully will lead to a loyalty of the company's product. Having said that, what a user WANTS is not always in the best interest of security, privacy or business NEEDS, and there are times when the user must accept they will not always get their wishes or demands.