In recent years, the software went from being a support function of the business to an innovation centre, becoming the essential competitive differentiator for most businesses in every vertical and size.
With this shift in the role of software, businesses today are dramatically increasing the number of applications and the frequency of releases. As the time to market continues to be crucial for business, companies are adopting DevOps or similar agile methodologies for rapid development.
With business needs in the driver’s seat, applications are proliferating via websites, social media platforms like Facebook, Mobile and Cloud applications.
Furthermore, some applications are driven by marketing teams and created with 3rd party software. These applications are often outside the normal business processes with little or no governance.
On top of all the challenges created by an increased number of applications, increasing complexity and faster releases, regulations like GDPR and capturing customer data for business purposes has become the norm. Having multiple instances of customer data increases the likelihood and impact of a breach. This is especially concerning because the majority of security breaches today are due to application vulnerabilities.
According to Micro Focus® Software Security Research’s 2018 Application Security Risk Report, 80% of applications contain at least one critical or high vulnerability and 90% of security incidents are from exploits against defects in the design or code of the software.