A critical reality of AppSec is that preventing attackers from entering your environment is an effective security measure, but it isn’t enough to counter every attack. Eventually, an attack is bound to slip through your defenses and find its way into our application, which can wreak havoc on your environment and compromise your data.
To address this problem, consider implementing RASP, a solution that complements other security tools to ensure all of your potential attack vectors are covered. If an attack does make it past your firewall, for example, you should have a tool that can detect malicious activity and stop it before it is able to do any damage. RASP can do this, making it highly effective for catching zero-day attacks and highly sophisticated bots that your firewall may not detect.
What is RASP?
Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP), often used in conjunction with a Web Application Firewall (WAF), is an increasingly necessary security measure for organizations with online applications. As software shifts to being hosted in the cloud rather than on individual machines and threats become more sophisticated and hard to detect, your organization needs all the tools it can get to keep the threats at bay.
A RASP performs a few important functions, including:
- Monitors application behavior. While a WAF prevents threats from accessing your applications in the first place, it isn’t foolproof. RASP monitors how your applications behave normally so that if there is a change in activity during runtime, you will be alerted. RASP also learns from typical behavior, so it can become more sensitive to malicious activity over time.
- Stops executions. RASPs both detect and shut down suspicious activity. When unusual activity occurs, RASP can stop the application from executing atypical commands. This function is critical for stopping SQL injection attacks, for example.
- Protects against unknown attacks. Many security tools are designed to counter known attacks, but because RASPs block unusual activity, they do not need to be instructed to counter specific types of malware or other attacks. Although effective RASPs do also protect against known attacks, the advantage lies in their ability to differentiate typical application use and potentially malicious use, regardless of whether it follows a known pattern. This protects you from zero-day attacks.
Key Benefits of RASP
Implementing RASP has some important benefits for your organization. Specifically, adding RASP to your security suite provides:
- Improved security. Although it is not a comprehensive security solution on its own, RASP integrates well with other security measures and fills in some of their gaps. Many of your other security tools likely focus on preventing attackers from getting inside of your environment in the first place, but RASP is important for preventing exploitation on the off-chance that attackers slip by all of your other defenses.
- Real-time threat detection. RASP works by detecting unusual activity, which means the threat will be detected (and eliminated) immediately. Although you will still receive an alert with a well-conceived RASP solution, the problem doesn’t need to fester until you have time to address it. Ultimately, this vastly reduces the damage that your application incurs during an incident.
- Reduced false positives. Because RASP is integrated into your application, it is sensitive to how the app is used. RASP’s integration enables it to detect suspicious activity more quickly and more accurately than other tools, and as a result, it creates fewer false positives. False positives occur when a security tool interprets unusual but legitimate activity as malicious, which can create unexpected downtime and frustration for your organization. Especially when the RASP is informed by machine learning, however, it can effectively discern between unusual activity and malicious activity.
Enhancing AppSec with RASP
RASP should not be implemented on its own. Instead, consider using it to complement your organization’s existing AppSec tools. If you already have a WAF in place, RASP works very well with both WAF and WAAP to keep your application secure.
If you don’t already have either a WAF or WAAP, consider a security solution that integrates multiple tools. Ideally, the solution you choose will provide a WAF for mitigating DDoS attacks and blocking malicious bots as well as RASP for zero-day and unknown attacks. RASP also helps prevent and mitigate supply chain, command injection, and cross-site scripting attacks, among others.
Not all RASPs are created equal, so be sure to look out for one that uses LANGSEC, which minimizes the amount of direction and tuning the RASP will need before implementation. Also, highly effective RASPs should emphasize vulnerability protection and insider threats.
Although RASP may not seem necessary if you have protected your applications with firewalls and other preventative security tools, these tools are not foolproof. Especially when your applications are built on open-source code, you’ll want to have as many extra layers of security to ensure that an attacker can’t exploit a vulnerability that you haven’t discovered yet. RASP does this and more, and it can do it without creating lengthy downtimes or inconvenience to you and your team.