devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: Synopsys

  • Synopsys Report Sees Steady Application Security Gains

    Synopsys Report Sees Steady Application Security Gains

    An analysis of the security automation practices of 130 organizations published today by Synopsys suggests significant progress has been made toward securing software supply chains in the last year. However, much work still remains to be done.

    The annual Building Security In Maturity Model (BSIMM) report found there has been a 22% increase in the number of organizations creating software bills of materials (SBOMs) this year. Additionally, there has been a 10% increase in the number of organizations tracking open source software risks.

    At the same time, there has been a 25% increase in the number of organizations that are fixing all defects found in software and a 15% increase in the number of organizations that can identify potential attackers and track attack patterns.

    The report also sees significant gains in activities related to software development practices (44%), penetration testing (35%) and compliance and policy controls (21%). Usage of application behavior monitoring and diagnostics grew 64% and monitoring automated asset creation grew 45%, respectively.

    The finding and publishing of secure design patterns, the required use of approved security features and frameworks and the use of application containers to support security goals all grew about 25%, according to the report.

    However, the report also noted that usage of possible attack lists dropped by 31%, while expert-driven tasks such as building and applying adversarial security tests declined 25% and use of centralized defect reporting dropped 18%.

    The most widely used processes are implementing security checkpoints and associated governance (91%), creating or interfacing with incident response (90%), identifying privacy obligations (88%), using external penetration testers to find problems (88%), ensuring host and network security basics are in place (87%) and automated code review tools (86%).

    Jamie Boote, associate principal security consultant for the Synopsys Software Integrity Group, said the report suggests more responsibility for cybersecurity is shifting everywhere as organizations rely more on automation to apply security controls. Application development and IT operations are, as a result, able to address vulnerabilities more proactively either before an application is deployed or as soon as a vulnerability is discovered, he noted.

    The challenge organizations will encounter when it comes to automating security processes is there is a tendency to set and forget. Once a process becomes automated, not enough organizations will reevaluate that process as the cybersecurity threat landscape continues to evolve, noted Boote.

    Of course, the rate at which security processes are being automated varies widely from one organization to the next, but the more automated they become, the less dependent organizations become on application developers who typically don’t have a lot cybersecurity expertise. All too often, application developers are rushing to meet software delivery deadlines at the expense of security best practices. Unfortunately, it’s usually only a matter of time before an issue that was avoided is later discovered in a production environment and is considerably more problematic to update, given all the dependencies between software and infrastructure that exist.

    One way or another, however, a pending wave of regulations will soon force organizations to pay more attention to securing software supply chains. The only thing left to determine in the absence of automation is how painful the reengineering of DevOps workflows to embrace DevSecOps best practices is going to be.

  • Survey Surfaces Spike in Generative AI Usage Across IT

    Survey Surfaces Spike in Generative AI Usage Across IT

    A survey of 800 DevOps and application security operations (SecOps) leaders published today found nearly all (97%) are making use of generative artificial intelligence (AI).

    Conducted by the market research firm Sago on behalf of Sonatype, the survey found that beyond writing code, a full 45% of the 400 security operations professionals have already embedded generative AI into their workflows compared to 31% of the 400 DevOps professionals.

    Security operations teams also reported greater time savings than their DevOps counterparts, with 57% saying generative AI saves them at least six hours a week compared to only 31% of DevOps respondents that saw the same benefit.

    The top benefits cited by security operations teams is increased productivity (21%) and faster issue identification/resolution (16%) compared to faster software development (16%) and more secure software (15%) cited by DevOps professionals.

    It’s still early days as far as embedding generative AI in workflows is concerned, but it’s clear the ability to write code faster is trumping concerns about the increased number of vulnerabilities that might find their way into application environments. The most widely used generative AI platforms are trained on a massive corpus of data that includes code of varying quality. As such, a lot of the code generated by a general-purpose AI platform will likely have as many errors, including vulnerabilities, as the code used to train it.

    The level of faith organizations will place in that code will be heavily influenced by use cases. A script used to automate DevOps workflows that are not externally facing may be one example of where a general-purpose AI platform can boost productivity. In other instances, code that contains vulnerabilities that find their way into a web application might be much more problematic.
    Despite those concerns, however, the survey finds nearly three-quarters (75%) of all respondents feel pressure to use generative AI.

    There are, of course, already large language models trained on code that has been vetted by software engineers. In the months ahead, the code generated by AI platforms specifically designed for that purpose should significantly improve.

    Sonatype CTO Brian Fox said it’s only a matter of time before IT organizations focus more on ensuring the generative AI platforms are tuned for specific tasks. In the meantime, however, application security may get worse before it gets better, with more than three-quarters of DevOps respondents noting that generative AI will result in more vulnerabilities in open source code. Only 58% of security operations professionals are similarly concerned.

    It will be up to the engineers that make up these teams to bring discipline to code quality practices and make sure the code running in a production environment is of high quality, regardless of how it was created, noted Fox. For the moment, the issue is that AI augmentation is now occurring at a faster pace than the AI advances that should one-day help DevOps teams cope with increasingly larger codebases, he noted.

    Survey respondents are also concerned about who might own the code generated by AI. A total of 40% said developers or the organizations they work for should own the copyright for AI-generated output, and most of them agreed developers should be compensated for the code they wrote if it’s used in open source artifacts in LLMs (DevOps 93% versus SecOps 88%). A total of 42% of DevOps respondents and 40% of SecOps respondents said a lack of regulation could deter developers from contributing to open source projects.

    DevOps and SecOps leads both want more regulation: Asked who they believe is responsible for regulating the use of generative AI, 59% of DevOps leads and 78% of SecOps leads said both the government and individual companies should be responsible for regulation.

    At this point, the proverbial generative AI genie is out of the bottle, so there is no going back. The issue that remains to be seen is how DevOps and security operating teams will adjust to that new reality.

  • Synopsys Preps Extensions to Polaris SaaS Platform

    Synopsys Preps Extensions to Polaris SaaS Platform

    Synopsys plans to extend the capabilities of its Polaris Software Integrity Platform for securing application development environments by adding dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools along with the ability to scan code used to provision infrastructure.

    As a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, the Polaris Software Integrity Platform was created by combining the static application security testing (SAST) tool Synopsys gained with the acquisition of Coverity in 2014 and the software composition analysis (SCA) tool it added to its portfolio by acquiring Black Duck Software in 2017.

    In 2015, Synopsys acquired the Seeker tool for analyzing the code created using interactive application security testing (IAST) tools from Quotium. The company last year acquired WhiteHat Security from NTT to add a DAST tool.

    Patrick Carey, senior director for marketing strategy for Synopsys, said that the company would add the capabilities of those latter two platforms to create a comprehensive set of best-in-class security tools that are easily accessible via a SaaS platform.

    At a time when more organizations than ever are moving to secure software supply chains, Carey said it’s critical to provide developers with more visibility into vulnerabilities across the entire software development life cycle (SDLC). Some organizations are opting to achieve that goal by embedding tools within the SDLC themselves, but many organizations would likely prefer to invoke a SaaS platform that they don’t have to maintain, noted Carey.

    He noted that a SaaS platform makes it simpler to point a collection of integrated tools at a code repository to surface those vulnerabilities.

    As DevSecOps workflows continue to evolve and mature, more responsibility for application security is shifted left toward developers. The challenge is that many developers have limited cybersecurity expertise, so it’s critical that they have access to high-quality security tools.

    In addition, a SaaS platform helps reduce the total cost of achieving that goal by providing multiple capabilities within a single integrated platform, said Carey.

    Naturally, most of the focus today is on reducing the number of vulnerabilities that find their way into production environments as applications are being built. However, there are already large numbers of unaddressed vulnerabilities in applications that have already been deployed. Organizations will need to find ways to address that technical debt in addition to providing developers with tools that help prevent those code vulnerabilities in the first place.

    As such, there is no one central place through which application security can be managed, noted Carey. Instead, application security needs to be addressed across every phase of the SDLC, he added.

    It’s not clear how quickly organizations are adopting DevSecOps best practices, but as calls for increased liability for software development increase—as outlined, for example, in the U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy— organizations should expect DevSecOps workflows to become a requirement. Otherwise, organizations will be severely penalized for vulnerabilities that find their way into code. In effect, there is now a race to embrace DevSecOps before any proposed liability legislation becomes the law of the land.

  • Report: Impact of Bad Software on US Economy Reaches $2.41 Trillion

    Report: Impact of Bad Software on US Economy Reaches $2.41 Trillion

    A report published this week by Synopsys in collaboration with the Consortium for Information & Software Quality (CISQ) estimated that software quality issues might adversely impact the U.S. economy to the tune of $2.41 trillion in 2022.

    Cybercrime losses due to a rising number of software vulnerabilities alone are on track to increase 42% in 2022 after growing 64% in 2021, according to the report.

    More troubling still, the number of failures due to weaknesses in open source software components accelerated by an alarming 650% from 2020 to 2021.

    Finally, the report estimated that overall technical debt would increase to $1.52 trillion in 2022.

    Dr. Anita D’Amico, vice president of cross-portfolio solutions and strategy for Synopsys Software Integrity Group, said that despite these issues, there is cause for optimism. The silver lining is that more organizations are aware of software supply chain issues in the wake of a series of high-profile breaches.

    As more responsibility for application security also is shifted further left toward developers, the number of vulnerabilities being introduced into applications should also begin to decline steadily, she added. In addition, more organizations will soon be following the lead of the federal government by requiring software bills of materials (SBOMs) that will make it simpler to remediate vulnerabilities once they are discovered, noted D’Amico.

    Of course, there are still many cultural and technical issues that need to be resolved before DevSecOps best practices are consistently employed across most organizations. However, the expectation is that cybersecurity teams will be able to concentrate more on crafting cybersecurity policies as application development and IT operations teams assume more responsibility for implementing those policies, said D’Amico.

    But while giving individual developers the tools they need to write more secure code is a major step in the right direction, there is also a need to make sure the builds to which they contribute code also remain secure. As such, DevOps teams need to implement guardrails across every stage of a DevOps workflow to make sure vulnerabilities are not created as code is merged. In addition, DevOps teams now need to be aware of any malware added to an open source software component downloaded from a compromised repository. Even once patched, there’s a good chance another developer will have downloaded the same vulnerable component to construct a different application.

    No one knows for certain how many vulnerabilities may have already been introduced into production environments, but it’s unlikely all those issues will ever be completely addressed. Organizations with limited technical resources will need to prioritize the patching of the most severe vulnerabilities in their application environment based on how accessible code may be to cybercriminals.

    Cybercriminals certainly are getting more adept at exploiting vulnerable code. Developers may soon find themselves being required to update software components deployed by someone else many years earlier. In the meantime, more accountability for application security should lead to better quality code that, over time, will reduce the current unsustainable level of technical debt.

  • Synopsys Sets Course After Agreeing to Acquire WhiteHat Security

    Synopsys Sets Course After Agreeing to Acquire WhiteHat Security

    Synopsys, Inc. plans to add dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools to its software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform in the wake of agreeing to acquire WhiteHat Security from NTT Security Corp. for approximately $330 million in cash.

    Jason Schmitt, general manager of the Software Integrity Group at Synopsys, said the DAST tools developed by WhiteHat will complement the existing static, interactive and software composition analysis tools that Synopsys currently provides.

    The goal is to provide an end-to-end application security platform, including consulting, to help organizations better secure software supply chains, he added. NTT Security Corporation previously acquired WhiteHat Security in 2019 to extend the reach of the services it provides. Since then, SaaS platforms for testing application security have become more widely available.

    The acquisition comes at a time when many organizations are trying to determine how far left to shift responsibility for application security toward developers. While developers have a role to play, Schmitt said that shifting responsibility for applications completely left is a fallacy. DevOps teams will need to rely more on platforms that provide guardrails that enable developers to build secure applications in a way that doesn’t create a lot of additional friction, he said.

    Unfortunately, cyberattacks against applications are increasing in complexity and volume. That makes it a challenge for both application developers, DevOps teams and security professionals to keep track of how threats to applications are evolving, said Schmitt. As more companies rely on software to drive digital business initiatives, Schmitt said the business risks those organizations will face are only going to increase. In an era where developers far outnumber security professionals, he added that the only way to rise to that challenge is to rely more on SaaS platforms that enable organizations to implement DevSecOps best practices within their existing application development workflows, he noted.

    Today, the challenge is that much of an organization’s security budget is allocated to networks and endpoints rather than applications, added Schmitt. It’s not clear to what degree that spending needs to shift toward application security or if a larger portion of the application development budget needs to be allocated to security. One way or another, however, it’s apparent that overall spending on application security needs to increase to combat the increasingly frequent attacks.

    In the meantime, the historical divide that has existed between developers and cybersecurity teams should narrow as more security tools are made accessible to developers and DevOps teams alike. Otherwise, security professionals will continue to point out security issues that might affect an application running in a production environment and developers will continue to ignore issues they don’t see as relevant or that they don’t have time to patch. Not surprisingly, most vulnerabilities in applications running in production environments remain unpatched; the only way forward is to rely on automation to eliminate them before the application is ever deployed.

  • Synopsys Software Integrity Group Expands Channel Partner Program Under New Leadership

    Synopsys appoints new VP of Channels and Alliances, aims to grow partner network and indirect revenue.

    MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 29, 2021 –  Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) today announced it is expanding the Software Integrity Group’s partner program under the leadership of Tom Herrmann, the newly appointed vice president of channels and alliances. The program is chartered with expanding customer access to the company’s industry-leading application security products and services by expanding its global channel partner network and streamlining its existing partner program to better serve the channel. Herrmann, who has built and led partner programs at Tanium, VMware, and Oracle, joined Synopsys in February.

    “We’re excited to accelerate the expansion of our partner program with a seasoned veteran like Tom Herrmann leading the effort,” said Jason Schmitt, general manager of the Synopsys Software Integrity Group. “With the right commitment and leadership, a well-tuned channel partner program will be instrumental in scaling our business. While our business unit has traditionally focused more on direct sales – especially in North America and Europe – we have had a lot of early success in building meaningful partner relationships and customer wins across all regions. We’ve reached a point where more aggressive channel investment and strategy provide a faster path to our growth goals.”

    The Synopsys partner network currently consists of key systems integrators, consulting firms, solution providers, cloud providers, and technology partners.

    The Synopsys Software Integrity Group is on pace to double partner revenue in 2021 while expanding the network of high-value partnerships and restructuring back-end operations and programs to facilitate further growth in 2022. The investment in new leadership and the decision to prioritize partner programs has been well-received.

    “Our partnership with Synopsys and access to their broad portfolio of industry-leading application security solutions presents tremendous opportunity in a high-demand market,” said Tom Holt, vice president of sales for InterVision Systems Technologies. “The level of collaboration and support we get from Synopsys makes it easy for us to create value and solve problems for our customers.”

    “Partners are a key part of a successful sales strategy in our industry,” said Tom Herrmann, vice president of channels and alliances for the Synopsys Software Integrity Group. “The Software Integrity Group is at a stage now where a significant part of our growth going forward will be in conjunction with partners. As we continue to scale our business to the next level, our expanded partner program will be focused on ease of doing business, predictability and profitability for our partners.”

    To become a partner or learn more, visit the Synopsys Software Integrity Group’s channel partner webpage.

    About the Synopsys Software Integrity Group 

    Synopsys Software Integrity Group helps development teams build secure, high-quality software, minimizing risks while maximizing speed and productivity. Synopsys, a recognized leader in application security, provides static analysis, software composition analysis, and dynamic analysis solutions that enable teams to quickly find and fix vulnerabilities and defects in proprietary code, open source components, and application behavior. With a combination of industry-leading tools, services, and expertise, only Synopsys helps organizations optimize security and quality in DevSecOps and throughout the software development life cycle. Learn more at www.synopsys.com/software.

    About Synopsys

    Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) is the Silicon to Software™ partner for innovative companies developing the electronic products and software applications we rely on every day. As an S&P 500 company, Synopsys has a long history of being a global leader in electronic design automation (EDA) and semiconductor IP and offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of application security testing tools and services. Whether you’re a system-on-chip (SoC) designer creating advanced semiconductors, or a software developer writing more secure, high-quality code, Synopsys has the solutions needed to deliver innovative products. Learn more at www.synopsys.com.

     

  • Synopsys: IoT, ICS More Vulnerable to Security Exploits

    Synopsys: IoT, ICS More Vulnerable to Security Exploits

    A new report shows that internet of things (IoT) implementations and industrial control systems (ICS) are more vulnerable than most to potential zero-day exploits of the open-source protocols, common file formats and APIs they rely on. The report, prepared by vulnerability test firm, Synopsys Inc., is based on 4.8 billion fuzz tests conducted on the company’s customers throughout 2016. The report focuses on six key vertical areas: automotive, financial services, government, health care, ICS and IoT.

    To rank the vulnerability of different protocols, Synopsys measured the time it takes between the start of fuzz testing and when a protocol crash is recorded along with how many crashes occurred over longer periods of time. Newer, less mature or proprietary protocols proved to be the most vulnerable. In some cases, time to failure was measured in minutes or even seconds. Fuzz testing is a method of testing code for flaws and security vulnerabilities that involves throwing large amounts of malformed, random data at the system being tested.

    Industrial control systems are the most vulnerable of the six areas covered by the report. To a great degree that’s driven by the fact that ICS uses a lot of proprietary or ICS-specific protocols, some of which may not have been tested thoroughly enough. Three of the most vulnerable protocols are IEC-61850 MMS, IEC-104 SERVER and MODBUS PLC. The ICS protocol IEC-61850 MMS failed in just 6.6 seconds.

    IoT is the next most vulnerable system. It mixes older, better-tested core IP protocols with newer niche categories such as wireless and ICS. The three most vulnerable protocols for IoT are CoAP Server (failed in 8.5 seconds), CIP and OPC UA.

    It’s important for enterprises to prioritize security in their zeal to build IoT solutions. In some cases, Synopsys revealed that security vulnerabilities stemmed from an incomplete or improper implementation of protocols or unpatched code.

    “The applicability of IoT across all vertical markets and within enterprises of all shapes and sizes has brought us to an important inflection point,” said Brad Shimmin, service director for IT Technology and Software at GlobalData. “Thanks to ubiquitous and readily accessible APIs, development frameworks and even pre-built but extensible apps, virtually anyone can stand up an IoT deployment with very little experience in the way of application development practices. This will undoubtedly reveal the many dangers inherent in building highly distributed systems—dangers affecting both data and logic.”

    Some interesting data from the report: The overall average time to first failure of a protocol was 1.4 hours. When the time to first failure is measured in seconds instead of hours, it indicates a higher potential for criminal exploitation. The most vulnerable protocol tested was the previously mentioned IEC-61850 MMS; the least exploitable was the TLS client, which had an average time to first failure of 9 hours.

    Of the vertical areas the report classifies, the two least risky sets of protocols are the ones used by government and financial services. Synopsys attributes this to the more mature aspects of the categories of protocols used by these industries. They had fewer overall failures and longer test times to their first failure. It would take black hats a lot longer to fuzz them into vulnerability.

    — Scot Finnie