In our digital world, applications (or apps) power everything we do. We rely on apps for work, entertainment, communication, managing finances, and more. But with this great app power comes great app responsibility. The apps we use every day contain troves of sensitive data and access critical systems, making them prime targets for cyber attacks. Fortunately, protecting your apps is easier than you may think. In this article, we’ll explore the key benefits of safeguarding your applications with application protection to help convince you to make app protection a priority.
- Bolster App Security to Reduce Breaches
App vulnerabilities have become the foremost digital threat vector in recent years. Applications access tremendous amounts of sensitive user, customer, employee, and business data while also connecting to critical enterprise systems and cloud environments. This makes apps extremely attractive targets for cybercriminals seeking to infiltrate networks and steal valuable data.
Far too often, flaws in the way apps are coded, designed, or configured create security holes that attackers manage to find and abuse. These vulnerabilities enable intruders to break into apps, traverse connected systems and databases, extract sensitive information, commit fraud, and pursue other malicious aims. High-profile breaches at major corporations all originated from unpatched weaknesses in web and mobile applications which hackers successfully exploited.
Addressing vulnerabilities through comprehensive app protection makes these pivotal business tools far more secure. Rigorous security testing procedures help developers identify flaws in their app code, architecture, and configurations before products ever ship. Access controls then limit data and functions exposure only to authorized, authenticated users. Encrypting stored and transmitted information keeps data safe even if somehow improperly accessed. Regular patching closes off newly found vulnerabilities while updates to latest versions bring additional protections.
- Guard Users’ Private Information
Mobile apps and web applications collect vast troves of sensitive personal data from users and customers. This includes private information like emails, phone numbers, location histories, browsing habits, purchase details, and even medical records or financial account credentials. Applications gather this data to provide customized services, tailor experiences, process transactions, and more. However, the same information prized by apps for legitimate functionality also attracts cybercriminals.
Hackers increasingly target user data held within apps to misuse in identity theft, stalk victims, harass people by making private information public, sell data on the dark web, and various fraud schemes. Individual lives can be severely impacted through public exposure of confidential medical diagnoses, sexual orientation details, workplace information and more. Plus stolen financial and identity data fuels massive global cybercrime rings.
That’s why locking down user and customer data through app security protections is so vital. Privacy preserving measures like granular access controls, anonymization techniques, and data encryption safeguard sensitive elements even if a malicious party manages to infiltrate an application backend. Controls restrict data access only to properly authorized users and purposes. Anonymization scrubs data of uniquely identifying details. Encryption transforms information so only those with decryption keys can see underlying personal details.
- Stay Compliant, Avoid Fines
With cyberattacks and data breaches increasingly targeting vulnerabilities in applications, governments and industry groups have enacted strict security and privacy regulations for apps that handle sensitive information. Standards for health data, PCI DSS for payments, SOX for financial reporting, and GDPR for EU citizen privacy mandate controls like data encryption, access auditing, security testing, and breach notifications. Apps that fail to comply risk steep fines of up to 4% of global revenue as well as lawsuits and reputational damage.
Yet too often, apps launch without adequate protections aligned to major compliance rules, immediately putting organizations in danger of enforcement actions. For example, a healthcare SaaS company may design medical apps gathering patient data without proper consent controls, access limitations, encryption, and auditing required under HIPAA. An e-commerce site may store customer payment card numbers without following PCI data security standards. Such compliance gaps exponentially increase risks to consumer privacy while accruing substantial regulatory penalties.
Making app security protections an integral part of design and operations avoids these consequences by ensuring continual adherence to all relevant regulations. Building access controls, encryption, security testing, and data disposal procedures in line with rules into app architectures maintains compliant data safeguards. Establishing AppSec pipelines automatically scans for new threats and policy violations before anyone can access new releases. Making app protection rules comply-by-default reduces organizational risk, averts fines, prevents lawsuit settlements, and preserves your reputation with users. Staying compliant through app protections pays dividends across key business health metrics.
- Contain Costly App Downtime
App crashes and outages can seriously disrupt business operations, leading to lost revenue, productivity declines, and damage to your brand reputation (not to mention frustrated users!). Often, app availability issues stem from vulnerabilities being actively exploited in cyber attacks or flaws inadvertently triggered, made worse if apps lack resiliency measures.
Building comprehensive protection, including availability safeguards, into your application portfolio reduces exploitability while maintaining maximum uptime even if attacks occur. Controls like data redundancy, load balancing, auto-scaling, and disaster recovery mechanisms allow apps to minimize crashes, fix issues faster, and continuously serve users. App protection yields app resilience and reliability your business depends on.
- Accelerate Secure Software Delivery
To keep pace with the market, development teams need to release new app features and code revisions rapidly without compromising security. However, typical app dev lifecycles struggle to incorporate adequate protection quickly enough, forcing teams to choose between speed and security.
Modern app protection approaches like DevSecOps embed security controls and testing at every phase of coding, while automated policies and infrastructure security enforcement maintain compliance and vulnerability management. With security ingrained in the app delivery pipeline, teams can speed releases to users while still launching resilient, compliant, trustworthy apps.
- Lower Application Expenses
Between licensing specialized security tools, manual processes like code audits and penetration testing, security staffing, and cloud infrastructure protections, app protection stacks up hefty associated costs over time. However, by investing in automated app security testing suites, consolidating tools, applying infrastructure-as-code techniques, and training in-house development staff on secure coding, you can drive down expenses substantially.
Optimized app protection spending focused on the right mix of automation, tool integration, and staff skills effectively reduces application risk at a fraction of typical security costs. Careful review and management of app protection budgets yields robust cybersecurity without overspending on redundant products and capabilities.
Conclusion
In today’s web and mobile-centric world, Appsealing app protection drives business success through uninterrupted availability, valuable user data collection, and efficient performance. However, without vigilant security protections in place, your precious applications also endanger your organization via vulnerabilities, compliance gaps, outages, and data leaks. Implementing robust, continuous protections across your app portfolio requires forethought, expertise, and some investment – but it more than pays for itself in risk reduction and avoided losses.
