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Category: SAST

  • What is SAST? Overview + SAST Tools

    What is SAST? Overview + SAST Tools

    Static Application Security Testing Overview

    With the growing number of cybersecurity threats, you must ensure that your software is protected against potential vulnerabilities and threats. One of the most beneficial practices is to use static application security testing (SAST).

    What You Need to Know
    Static application security testing is a type of software test used for inspecting and analyzing code to identify security vulnerabilities. Software security tools — such as static code analyzers — scan your code as it’s being written to identify potential weaknesses, errors and bugs. These kinds of tools are invaluable to software developers, as they are able to detect the most prevalent and common software security vulnerabilities.
    How It Works
    In the simplest terms, static application security testing works by having a static code analyzer check your code for design and coding flaws that could make your software vulnerable to security vulnerabilities. During this inspection, the static code analyzer will identify security issues, including programming errors, unsensitized input processing and vulnerable constructs.
    Problems That It Solves
    In general, static application security testing has been designed to solve three main software development problems:

      1. Detecting source-code vulnerabilities. The most significant benefit of using a static application security testing tool is identifying software security issues early on in development when they are easier (and less costly) to fix.
      2. Eliminating late diagnostics. A common cause of massive technical debt is late diagnoses of problems in the source code. However, by using a static application security testing tool, you are able to easily diagnose the vulnerabilities and errors in your code.
      3. Enhancing root-cause analysis. With a static application security testing tool, you receive notifications that pinpoint the exact location of vulnerabilities and errors in your code.

    To learn more about static application security testing and how it can help ensure the security of your software, please visit: https://www.perforce.com/blog/kw/what-is-sast?utm_source=content-syndication-devops&utm_medium=content-syndication&utm_campaign=kwk-global-2021-wtl-demo&utm_content=what-is-sast

  • How to Prevent Cybersecurity Threats With Secure Code

    How to Prevent Cybersecurity Threats With Secure Code

    Unfortunately, cybersecurity attacks are an ever-present threat for organizations of all sizes and industries. In fact, a cybersecurity threat is estimated to occur every 39 seconds. For that reason, it is important to understand the how, what and why of cybersecurity threats.

    The How, What and Why of Cybersecurity Threats

    Any malicious attack that threatens to damage software applications is considered to be a cybersecurity threat.

    In order to ensure that your software is safeguarded against any and all cybersecurity threats, you must take the appropriate steps, which includes:

    • Having an understanding of what the most common types of cybersecurity threats that you’ll most likely encounter.
    • Adopting effective secure coding practices.
    • Providing your team with software security training.
    • Using secure software tools — like static code analysis and SAST tools.

    By following these steps, you can more effectively safeguard your software.

    How to Prevent Cybersecurity Threats

    In order to prevent cybersecurity threats, you should use the following secure software development best practices:

    Establish Software Design Requirements

    You should establish software design requirements specifically to prevent and/or mitigate cybersecurity threats. By doing this, you can better address and eliminate potential threats.

    Enforce Secure Coding Standards for Cybersecurity Threats

    Software that is developed with secure coding standards—such as CERT and CWE—helps to prevent, detect and eliminate cybersecurity threats.

    Test Early for Cybersecurity Threats

    You should test your code early and often to identify potential vulnerabilities in your code that could lead to a cybersecurity attack.

    How SAST Tools Help to Prevent Cybersecurity Threats

    With the appropriate tools — such as static code analysis and SAST tools — you can better ensure the security and quality of your software. The reason for this is that both a static code analysis and SAST tool are able to automate vulnerability detection, test all of your code as it is being written, and easily integrates into your DevSecOps processes.

    To read more, please visit: https://www.perforce.com/blog/kw/best-practices-to-prevent-cybersecurity-threats

  • What is Differential Analysis?

    What is Differential Analysis?

    Differential analysis is an emerging solution for static analysis tools. It is a relatively recent solution, but it’s important to understand what it is, how it works and why you should care.

    What’s Differential Analysis?

    Put simply, differential analysis is a form of “fast feedback” static code analysis. By using system context data from previous analysis builds, the static analyzer examines only the files that are new or that have changed. This enables the static code analyzer to provide you with analysis results as if your entire system had been analyzed — meaning differential analysis provides you with the shortest possible analysis times while maintaining the accuracy and detail of your analysis data.

    Differential vs. Incremental Analysis

    Differential analysis is an improvement upon the more traditional incremental analysis, as it requires no prior analysis build of the software on your workstation. This is also what makes differential analysis ideal for DevOps processes — like CI/CD pipelines.

    The Importance of Differential Analysis

    Differential analysis shortens analysis times and provides you with faster feedback, which is incredibly beneficial. Especially if you need to comply with some kind of coding standard, which often involves running a local or pre-commit analysis of your code. In general, this involves running an analysis on the entire codebase to identify any new issues. While this works well for smaller projects with smaller codebases, problems – such as extended analysis times –  can arise when working with a larger codebases. However, with differential analysis, you analyze only the changed files, significantly reducing the amount of time the analysis takes.

    How Differential Analysis Works

    Without getting overly technical, here is how differential analysis works.

    1. The static code analysis tool connects to a server project.
    2. You run an integration analysis.
    3. You run an analysis of the changed code.

    To read more, please visit: https://www.perforce.com/blog/kw/what-is-differential-analysis

  • 5 Ways to Improve Developer Output With Static Analysis

    5 Ways to Improve Developer Output With Static Analysis

    Developers often have to produce efficient, effective code under tight deadlines. Without the proper software development tools to support this work, coding errors and vulnerabilities could occur. For that reason, it is important to use a static code analysis tool, which verifies the security, quality and compliance of your code as it is being written.

    In this webinar, we will outline three best practices for effective use of a static code analysis tool to improve your output, including:
    1. How to effectively achieve thorough coverage with a static code analysis tool.
    2. How to best use a static code analysis tool with mission-critical systems.
    3. How to achieve gains through effective, automated code analysis.

     

    To read more, please visit: https://www.perforce.com/webinars/kw/5-ways-improve-developer-output-static-analysis

  • What Is AppSec? An Overview

    What Is AppSec? An Overview

    An estimated 84% of security incidents happen at the application layer. And, with the number of cybersecurity threats steadily rising year-over-year, application security (AppSec) has become absolutely essential.

    Application security refers to finding, fixing and preventing cybersecurity vulnerabilities throughout the entire development life cycle. By enforcing application security measures, you are able to ensure that weaknesses and vulnerabilities in your software are identified and dealt with as soon as possible in development before they can become serious security breaches. This also helps to keep the overall costs low and enables you to deliver a secure, reliable product on time.

    AppSec Best Practices

    In order to ensure that your application is secure against security threats and vulnerabilities, you must enforce application security best practices. While you and your team may have application security best practices that are specific to your own process, we recommend that you consider also using these best practices:

    • Conduct an application security risk assessment to effectively identify potential security vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
    • Eliminate—or, if elimination is not possible, mitigate—the security vulnerabilities and weaknesses that were identified in the risk assessment.
    • Examine open source and third-party software for security vulnerabilities. Properly address any weaknesses that your examination may have uncovered.
    • Use AppSec tools such as SAST and DAST.
    • Provide your team with application security training.

    By adopting the above best practices, you can be assured that you and your team will have a strong application security process.

    AppSec Tools

    As previously mentioned, one of the most effective ways to ensure application security is to use AppSec tools.

    The most common AppSec tools are:

    • SAST: A static application security testing (SAST) tool analyzes your code as it’s being written in order to detect and report weaknesses that can lead to security vulnerabilities.
    • DAST: A dynamic application security testing (DAST) tool enables you to identify security errors, runtime issues and environment-related issues later in the development of your software.

    By using these AppSec tools together, you are able to ensure application security throughout development.

    Important Secure Coding Standards for AppSec

    In order to effectively enforce application security, you should use secure coding standards to efficiently identify, prevent and eliminate software vulnerabilities.

    The most important coding standards for application security include:

    • CERT
    • CWE
    • DISA STIG
    • OWASP
    • ISO/IEC TS 17961

    A static code analyzer should be used early in development to effectively enforce coding standards to ensure effective application security.

    To read more, please visit: https://www.perforce.com/blog/kw/what-is-appsec

  • SAST vs DAST: What’s the Difference?

    SAST vs DAST: What’s the Difference?

    One of the most effective practices for ensuring that your software is secure and safeguarded against security vulnerabilities is using the right secure coding tools — like SAST and DAST.

    The Key Differences Between SAST and DAST

    Both SAST and DAST are used to find software security vulnerabilities in your code. However, these DevOps tools are used at different times during the development process.

    Here are the key differences between SAST and DAST.

    SAST:

    • White Box Security Testing
    • Source code is required.
    • Vulnerabilities found earlier in development and are less expensive to fix.
    • Unable to identify timing- and environment-related issues.
    • Generally, supports all kinds of software.

    DAST:

    • Black Box Security Testing
    • A running application is required.
    • Vulnerabilities found later in development and are more expensive to fix.
    • Can identify run-time and environment-related issues.

    The Main Advantages of Using SAST Tools

    The main advantages of using SAST tools include the following:

    • SAST tools find coding issues by looking for known vulnerability patterns in internationally recognized coding standards for quality, safety, and security — such as CERT, OWSAP, and CWE.
    • SAST tools detect and fixes defects early in development. This leads to lower costs to fix defects.
    • SAST tools often features a Shift-Left approach, which enables analysis to be done anywhere — including on your desktop and in your CI/CD pipelines.
    • SAST tools are easy to automate, able to effectively scale to your project, and automatically provide the highest levels of code coverage.
    • SAST tools provide fast feedback along with the exact location of vulnerabilities and their cause.

    The Main Advantages of Using DAST Tools

    The main advantages of using DAST tools include the following:

    • DAST tools analyze the entire application as it runs within the full system environment.
    • DAST tools are able to “look inside” your application and dynamically analyze execution logic and live data.
    • DAST tools are language and source code independent.
    • DAST tools check for memory consumption and resource use.
    • DAST tools attempt to break encryption algorithms from outside of your program.
    • DAST tools verify permissions to ensure the isolation of privilege levels.
    • DAST tools check for cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and cookie manipulation.
    • DAST tools test for vulnerabilities in third-party interfaces.
    • DAST tools understand arguments and function calls.
    • DAST tools record application execution for post-mortem test failure analysis.
    • DAST tools catch hard application failures.
    • DAST tools perform unattended script-based dynamic analysis. In order for an effective security program, you will need both a SAST and DAST tool.

    To read more, please visit: https://www.perforce.com/blog/kw/sast-vs-dast