Application Security: How Prevention Beats Remediation?

We have heard time and time again that prevention is better than cure. It holds even with application security.  

Just think about it…  

The number of cyberattacks jumped 29% in H1 2021 as compared to H1 2020. Further, there is a proliferation of more sophisticated attacks and advanced threat vectors that are targeting sensitive business and personal information. Organizations were running from pillar-to-post to mitigate and remediate the multiple threats and attacks on their applications.   

Amidst these challenging conditions, what if application security was infused right into the SDLC stages and organizations deployed securely by design apps? What if security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities were proactively identified and fixed by application security solutions before the attackers gain access?  

In this article, we discuss how prevention beats remediation for application security.  

Prevention Vs Remediation in Web Application Security

What is Prevention in Application Security?

Prevention is the process of blocking threats, known or emerging, even before they reach the application/ network/ system, thus, eliminating any damage they may cause. Prevention enables organizations to usher proactiveness in web application security.   

Ways in which organizations can proactively prevent cyber threats include:   

• Automated vulnerability scanning tools to detect and identify all known vulnerabilities.

• Regular penetration testing and security audit to identify unknown vulnerabilities and business logic flaws.
• Securing all kinds of vulnerabilities using an intelligent, comprehensive, and managed Web Application Firewall (WAF) with next-gen capabilities and the expertise of security experts.
• Proactive intrusion prevention using SaaS application security that uses futuristic technology such as AI, self-learning systems, analytics, etc.
• Threat intelligence and hunting to stay ahead of the current threat landscape.
• Effective security awareness and education.

What is Remediation?

Remediation is the process of mitigating attacks and fixing systems after an intruder has breached the application/ system/ network. Remediation is a reactive approach to application security and focuses on mitigating/ reducing the damage that the intruder/ attack can cause.  

Typically, threats make themselves known in a malicious fashion such as website defacement, slower applications, service disruptions, and so on. This makes the removal of the threat more urgent.  

Reactive remediation techniques include:  

• Usage of traditional firewalls
• Usage of anti-virus and anti-malware
• Incident response and forensics
• Usage of intrusion detection systems
• Monitoring for anomalies, etc.

How Prevention-Focused Application Security Strategy Helps?

1. Minimizes Risks and Endpoint Damage

Prevention-focused strategies reduce threat exposure and business risks by proactively identifying vulnerabilities and preventing known and advanced/ emerging threats. It empowers organizations to gain the first-mover advantage and always stay ahead of the attackers.  

2. Ensures Scalable and, Comprehensive Protection Against Threats

Proactive prevention empowers organizations to stop all types of attacks and data breaches before they happen using advanced technologies, next-gen firewalls, global threat intelligence, security analytics, intrusion prevention systems, virtual patching, fixing critical/ high-risk vulnerabilities, etc. With intelligent automation, cloud computing, and other advanced technology, the best application security solutions ensure scalability of prevention and security.  

3. Minimizes Downtimes, Service Disruptions, and Loss of Data

Since breaches and attacks are pre-empted and prevented, organizations can save themselves from downtimes, service disruptions, and loss of data caused by attacks such as malware, DDoS, ransomware, account takeover, etc. 

4. Reduces the Need for Manual Threat Removal

The traditional detection and remediation approach involves arduous and time-consuming manual processes. So, remediation and recovery could take hours, days, and even weeks.  

Since the best SaaS application security solutions use intelligent automation and other advanced technology in tandem with the security expertise of certified professionals, they reduce the time, effort, and cost required in remediation. Further, they minimize and even eliminate the need for extensive manual efforts towards threat detection and removal.  

5. Enables IT Security Teams to Focus on Critical Issues

In continuation of the previous point, IT security teams are not constantly caught up in remediating attacks, escalation, and recovery. So, you do not need larger IT security teams. This is valuable for SMBs that cannot afford to keep increasing their IT security team-size with the growing threat landscape.  

6. Reduces Costs

One of the biggest myths is that remediation is cheaper than prevention. This stems from a narrow view of the cost of attempted and successful attacks and data breaches. Further, the lower cost of remediation tools such as anti-virus, anti-malware, and traditional firewalls add to the misconception.   

However, the reality is that data breaches and attacks are costly. They lead to financial damage, significant reputational damage, brand erosion, higher customer attrition, loss of trust, large escalation, forensic and legal costs, penalties, etc.   

With proactive, preventive application security services/ solutions, you can foster greater customer loyalty and trust, stay compliant and steer away from the big investigation and forensic bills. You could save 82% of costs that are spent on detection, containment, remediation, and recovery after attacks.  

The Way Forward  

While prevention is critical to any application security strategy, it is not to say that remediation is not necessary. With intelligent application security services like Indusface, you can find the right balance between proactive prevention and remediation.  

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