What is ASPM?
Application security posture management (ASPM) helps to scale and enhance AppSec programs through automation.
ASPM solutions automatically identify applications and manage common AppSec tasks, such as vulnerability scanning.
ASPM persistently oversee risk in applications by gathering, examining, and ranking security concerns throughout the software development life cycle.
ASPM pull in data from various origins, harmonize and scrutinize the results for simpler understanding, sorting, and issue resolution.
ASPM facilitate the application of security protocols and aid in resolving security matters, all while providing an all-encompassing perspective on application-related risk.
ASPM Importance
Applications have grown increasingly intricate, and the isolation of data sources compounds the challenges of achieving clear visibility and effective control. ASPM Enhances the cohesion and compatibility between application security mechanisms and the DevOps landscape. Also, empowers organizations to seamlessly incorporate DevSecOps protocols and workflows into their software development life cycle (SDLC).
The orchestration ASPM capability allows for the implementation of tailored testing protocols and release safeguards. Furthermore, the prioritization and sorting functions help concentrate efforts on the most pressing security concerns, while evaluating risks in a manner that is comprehensible and relevant to all involved parties.
ASPM Impact
ASPM supports both security and software engineering groups by coordinating application security resources and systems, enhancing oversight and management capabilities, and facilitating risk assessment and mitigation.
By sifting through application security information (such as test results and monitoring data), it helps allocate resources more efficiently by highlighting the most urgent issues. ASPM also provides a clearer, more insightful understanding of application security, from both an operational and risk perspective.
ASPM Drivers
Evolution from ASOC: ASPM is the next-gen solution that supersedes Application Security Orchestration and Correlation (ASOC). It broadens the scope and introduces new features, resetting its position on the industry's Hype Cycle.
Streamlined Prioritization: DevOps and AppSec teams often find it hard to focus on the most critical vulnerabilities during the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), due to application complexity and a surge in data. ASPM efficiently absorbs this data from various sources, correlates findings, and automates the triage process.
Enhanced Support and Acceptance: Engineering teams often drown in security data, making it hard to prioritize and increasing the risk of errors. This has contributed to the perception that security is more of a hindrance than an aid. ASPM counteracts this by validating alerts and guiding teams to focus on high-impact security issues.
Meaningful Risk Reporting: Teams face challenges in converting technical security metrics into business-relevant risk indicators. ASPM helps translate raw vulnerability data into actionable insights that are meaningful to both executives and application stakeholders.
Flexible Policy Enforcement: Organizations often resort to a "one size fits all" policy due to the complexity of aligning security controls with varied development and deployment processes. ASPM centralizes the control management and enables a more tailored approach to security policy enforcement.
ASPM Addoption Stoppers
Preconditions for Effective Automation. Before fully benefiting from ASPM's automated security testing, organizations need to grasp their application's overall risk landscape, identify appropriate tests, and develop responsive strategies. Inadequate preparation complicates policy development and may limit the utility of ASPM solutions.
Vendor Focus Limitations. Many vendors specialize in either the development or operations side of security, hindering a comprehensive, "full-stack" view that covers both code and infrastructure. However, trends indicate movement towards more integrated solutions.
Data Aggregation Risks. ASPM tools inherently simplify data to make it manageable, which carries the risk of omitting crucial details. This could lead to false positives or a misleading sense of security.
Why ASPM?
Companies are already using Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)
Gap: No tool available for Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) in a live production environment
Limitations of Current AppSec Tools
Focus mainly on pre-production tasks: SAST, DAST, SCA
Depend on source code repositories for risk evaluation, not on the deployed applications
What is 'Application' in this Context?
Refers to deployable business logic, APIs, developer code
Includes microservices, APIs, third-party services, databases, and layer seven components
ASPM gives insights one layer deeper than CSPM
Is ASPM the next evolution in DevSecOps security?
ASPM empowers DevSecOps to monitor and secure applications in production and addresses critical security risks as new code is continuously deployed.
is agentless and easy to scale
Application architecture models are automated, complete, and continuous
Works well in large, complex distributed environments (e.g. microservices/serverless)
Reduces vulnerability alerts and noise from thousands to tens
Completes and provides deep visibility of your actual application security posture in production, showing all related dependencies and attack surfaces that are exploitable
Provides visibility into sensitive data flows for DSPM and data privacy use cases like GDPR
ASOC vs ASPM: Purpose and Focus
ASOC: Best for pre-production; focuses on application security testing
ASPM: Best for production; targets observability, visibility, risk scoring, and compliance
What ASOC Offers?
Consolidates data from multiple AppSec tools and code repositories
Reduces noise by deduplicating security alerts and vulnerabilities
Normalizes and reports on DevSecOps pipeline security
What ASPM Offers?
Provides real-time insight into application security in production environments
Measures the efficacy of DevSecOps processes and pipelines over time
Key Differences
ASOC: Pre-Production focus, reduces false positives, improves DevSecOps pipeline reporting
ASPM: Production focus, offers real-time risk assessment, measures DevSecOps performance
Summary
ASOC is essential for streamlining pre-production security measures
ASPM gives a snapshot of real-time security in a production environment
Both tools are complementary and crucial for a comprehensive DevSecOps strategy
ASPM is next evolution to ASOC?
Gartner report estimated that by 2026, 40% of security teams will have an ASPM tool, up from just 5% today. So, why is Gartner excited about ASPM?
Evolution from ASOC
ASPM has emerged as an evolved replacement for the outdated ASOC
Currently at the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" on the Hype Cycle
Solves the Challenges in the SDLC
Teams struggle to prioritize risks due to increasing complexity and data volume
ASPM steps in to make sense of data from diverse sources and streamline issue management
Helps gain buy-in for security measures among tech teams
Streamlines data consolidation, validation, and prioritization of remediation
Allows teams to focus on critical risks
ASPM translates raw vulnerability data into actionable insights
Provides meaningful metrics for senior executives and code owners
Simplifies the setup of automated controls in diverse development environments
Bridges the gap between development processes and security controls for centralized management
ASPM evolves beyond ASOC, offering more features and broader scope
Streamlines risk prioritization and issue management, easing the burden on DevSecOps teams
Provides actionable insights for executives and improves policy enforcement in complex development environments
In 2021, Asoc was assessed by Gartner for DevSecops adoption with 2 - 5 Years adoption timeframe
High Transformational Impact, 3 Gartner Hype Cycle™ for Application Security 2021
ASPM evolves beyond ASOC, offering more features and broader scope
While in 2023, Asoc Dissaperead from scope Replaced by ASPM at the peak
Application Security Posture Management Benefit Rating: Transformational, Market Penetration: 5% to 20% of target audience
ASPM Vendors
Synopsys is recognized as a leader in the Magic Quadrant for its comprehensive range of Application Security Testing (AST) capabilities. Key products include Coverity (SAST), WhiteHat Dynamic (DAST), Black Duck (SCA), Seeker (IAST), Polaris (Cloud-based AST), and Code Sight (IDE plug-in). Synopsys has a global presence, with significant operations in North America, Asia/Pacific, and Europe.
Synopsys stands out as a leader in the AST market, offering a broad range of capabilities and products with a strong global presence. Its recent acquisitions and product upgrades, particularly in SaaS solutions, reinforce its market position. However, challenges like complex pricing and UI issues, as well as limitations in SaaS delivery for certain products, are areas noted for improvement.
Synopsys ASPM tool is called Software Risk Manager. It has
Policy-Driven Security Scaling: Implement scalable Application Security (AppSec) through well-defined, enforceable policies that guide test procedures and vulnerability management.
Unified User Experience: Streamline your security processes by integrating a range of application security testing tools, thereby simplifying resource allocation and tool management across teams.
Holistic Risk Reporting: Aggregate and normalize vulnerability data across projects, teams, and tools, enabling a prioritized and comprehensive view of security risks.
Seamless Development Integration: Facilitate easy incorporation of AppSec protocols into existing development workflows, expediting project and build onboarding.
Optimized Security Testing: Utilize a singular, cohesive solution for effective deployment, management, and reporting of core application security testing functions.
Unified Security Dashboard: Collates all findings from manual and automated tests throughout the SDLC, providing in-depth visibility into your AppSec posture.
Consolidated Results: Correlates and deduplicates data from varied testing sources for a unified experience and simplified issue prioritization.
Comprehensive Tool Support: Compatible with 135+ leading security testing tools including SAST, SCA, DAST, IAST, InfraSec, threat modeling, mobile, containers, and cloud infrastructure.
Intelligent Tool Selection: Chooses the most suitable AppSec tools based on your codebase.
Auto-Discovery & Onboarding: Dynamically identifies SCM repositories, applications, developers, and security users. Automates onboarding for built-in SAST and SCA.
Accelerated Workflows
Prioritized Issue Management: Auto-identifies critical issues using a consistent risk assessment approach.
Developer Integration: Directly delivers high-priority vulnerabilities to developers, pin-pointing the exact line of problematic code.
Fast Vulnerability Detection: Uses built-in SAST and SCA engines to swiftly detect vulnerabilities, minimizing setup time with preset rules.
Contextual Remediation: Offers relevant remediation guidance and historical trend-based recommendations.
Branch-Level Activity Monitoring: Helps developers test fixes efficiently, reducing build disruptions.
Scan Orchestration: Central management of scans, whether from Synopsys or third-party tools.
Centralized Risk Visibility & Governance
Holistic Risk Insights: Offers a 360-degree view of risk scores, findings, and key performance metrics for all code types (custom, third-party, open source).
Compliance Mapping: Links findings to major regulatory standards like NIST, PCI, HIPAA, DISA, OWASP Top 10 and generates audit reports for severe violations.
Flexible Policy Management: Supports both UI and API-based workflows for creating, enforcing, and monitoring security policies.
Customizable Risk Thresholds: Allows security teams to define risk levels, select AppSec tools, set remediation time SLAs, and mandate developer notifications.
Ownership Status - Privately Held (backing)
Financing Status - Venture Capital-Backed in 4 rows
Primary Office - Tel Aviv – Israel
2 major venture capitals fundings (series B and A) of 135 MUSD since 2019
ASPM solution is named ASPM platform. Its features are
Automated Remediations & Processes:
Automatically resolves security issues and initiates necessary workflows.
Employs risk-based developer guardrails for continuous risk mitigation.
Unmatched Visibility & Prioritization:
Built on Apiiro's patented Risk Graph technology.
Enhanced by native solutions for both application and software supply chain security.
Provides unparalleled insights for prioritizing security tasks and risks.
Optimized Security Program:
Enables rapid and proactive risk addressing.
Streamlines your application security program for optimum effectiveness.
Ownership Status - Privately Held (backing)
Financing Status - Venture Capital-Backed in 3 rows
Primary Office - Palo Alto, California, United States
2 major venture capitals fundings (series B and A) of 82 MUSD since 2019
Main capabilities for ASPM
Real-Time Inventory: Constantly collects data to maintain an up-to-date inventory of every service, message broker, and database.
Multi-Environment Scanning: Discovers applications deployed across all settings.
Comprehensive Benchmarking: Audits your complete application architecture, including APIs, dependencies, and data flows.
Change & Drift Detection: Monitors critical changes and architectural drift based on your benchmarks.
Critical Risk Detection:
CI/CD Integration: Seamlessly fits into your CI/CD pipelines to identify risks in production.
Multi-Faceted Risk Detection: Flags architecture drift, critical security risks, and potential data exposure.
Business Context Visualization: Maps out application architecture and prioritizes risks based on business relevance.
Automated Policies & Alerts: Streamlines the remediation process through automatic policies and notifications.
Contextual Vulnerability Analysis:
Deep Code Scans: Reviews your code for critical CVEs and offers an extensive understanding of potential attack surfaces.
Smart Prioritization: Ranks vulnerabilities based on the broader application architecture and environment.
Out-of-the-Box Policies: Pre-configured policies for assessing CVEs, CWEs, architectural risks, and data breaches.
Custom Policy Options: Tailor policies to align with your organization's security standards.
Team Notifications: Alerts the relevant teams with specific best practices for remediation.
Ownership Status - Privately Held (backing)
Financing Status - Venture Capital-Backed in 2 rows
Primary Office - Palo Alto, California, United States
2 major venture capitals fundings (series B and A) of 60 MUSD since 2021
Main capabilities for ASPM
Code-to-Cloud Graphing: Connect to repositories and cloud environments for a complete development landscape view.
Insight into CI/CD Pipelines: Gain visibility into approved CI/CD processes.
Shadow Deployment Detection: Uncover unauthorized deployments and existing security gaps before exploitation occurs.
Intelligent Alert Management:
Alert Prioritization: Patented Root Cause Analysis Engine to automatically correlate, deduplicate, and prioritize alerts.
Noise Reduction: Streamline the alert management process to focus only on crucial issues.
Efficient Triage: Save valuable time in day-to-day triage and seamlessly manage remediation.
Speedy and Effective Remediation:
Automated Owner Identification: Instantly find the code owners responsible for specific issues.
Contextual Fixes: Provide developers with detailed, context-based remediation steps.
Native Workspace Remediation: Enable developers to fix issues quickly within their familiar workspace.
Seamless Integrations: Syncs easily with popular ticket management systems like Jira and GitHub.
Further reading.