Application security (also called app security or AppSec) is the security measures, security programs, and security controls designed to protect applications from being attacked by cybercriminals seeking unauthorized access to an organization’s IT ecosystem.
Why app security must be a top priority
Modern web applications and APIs are business-critical technologies, enabling virtually every online interaction. The more your organization relies on these IT assets, the more important it is to protect them from a wide range of threats. Yet securing these digital properties is more difficult than ever.
Known web vulnerabilities continue to pose risks and are frequently reintroduced into applications during the software development process by each new generation of coders. As apps and APIs become more complex, they create new vulnerabilities and potential endpoints for hackers. Cybercriminals have become very adept at using bots and multi-vector attacks to target web apps and APIs, seeking to discover vulnerabilities that will enable them to access databases, load malicious files, or flood a site with overwhelming amounts of traffic.
Akamai App & API Protector, a web application and API protection (WAAP) solution, offers comprehensive tools for website, API, and application security. Powered by an adaptive security engine, this Akamai technology delivers one-stop, zero-compromise security designed to secure applications and APIs from a broad array of network and application-layer threats — with less effort and overhead.
The challenges of app security
Traditional app security solutions deploy web application firewalls that are intended to mitigate many types of threats, including web-application attacks, DDoS attacks, and API attacks. However, these solutions require cybersecurity teams to continually analyze and tune rules as threats evolve and as apps and APIs are updated. This is typically a time-consuming, manual process that is difficult to scale, given that it requires skilled operators. As a result, security permissions quickly become outdated, creating alert fatigue as teams are unable to accurately differentiate real attacks from false positives. Since they are unable to tune authentication and validation rules effectively, security teams may remove them for fear that alerts will impact legitimate users and disrupt business. Ultimately, this creates a weaker risk posture that cybercriminals can exploit.
Attackers today have an almost limitless arsenal of techniques designed to wreak havoc, maximize damage, and penetrate application protections. When hackers can successfully exfiltrate sensitive information or render sites unavailable with a DDoS attack, they can cause a company to suffer significant harm, lose customer loyalty, miss business opportunities, and incur regulatory fines, lawsuits, and tarnished brand reputation.
Enhancing app security with Akamai
Akamai App & API Protector is a cloud-based solution designed to simplify app security while increasing protection from a constantly evolving threat landscape. This Akamai technology eliminates many of the issues that your security teams have with traditional firewall solutions. From a self-service onboarding wizard to self-tuning recommendations, App & API Protector’s security features offer automatic protection — fully managed by Akamai — that allows your teams to take a hands-off approach to managing security risks and app security.
App & API Protector is designed to defend entire web and API estates with comprehensive core technologies that include a web application firewall, bot mitigation, API security, and DDoS protection in a single solution that is easy to use.
For example, Akamai’s automatic protections from web attacks like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and local file inclusion offer strong protections while essentially requiring no ongoing maintenance. Heuristics (or frameworks) and machine learning allow this solution to accurately identify false-positive patterns across your traffic on a policy-by-policy basis rather than a generic network-wide check, delivering more actionable and relevant results. These self-tuning capabilities are designed to reduce operational friction in web services and administrative overhead while stopping both common and highly targeted attacks with real-time precision.
Benefits for improved app security
With Akamai App & API Protector, your security teams can:
Do more with less. Built for simplicity and customer-focused automation, App & API Protector lets you maximize your security investment with technology that includes web application and API protections, bot visibility and mitigation, DDoS protection, web optimization, edge compute, SIEM connectors, API acceleration, and more.
Simplify maintenance. Automatic updates ensure frictionless maintenance while self-tuning capabilities let your security and DevOps teams focus on investigating real security issues rather than chasing false alerts.
Shrink your API attack surface. With Akamai, your teams can automatically discover and protect APIs from security vulnerabilities like those on the OWASP API Security Top 10.
Count on broad protections from a single product. App & API Protector delivers superior app security and mobile application security to defend against a wide range of threats, including automated botnets, injection, volumetric DDoS, and API-based attacks.
App & API Protector is part of an integrated suite of technologies for app and API security. Additional solutions and security tools include:
- Prolexic. This Akamai solution is purpose-built to stop DDoS attacks in the cloud, before they can affect data centers, applications, operating systems, and internet-facing infrastructure.
- Edge DNS. Akamai Edge DNS is a global, highly scalable solution that ensures fast DNS service and 24/7 availability by leveraging thousands of DNS servers in Akamai Connected Cloud.
- Client-side Protection & Compliance. This technology strengthens web page integrity by detecting and mitigating suspicious script behaviors.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Most threats to applications are designed to exploit weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the software. These application vulnerabilities may enable attackers to access databases, corrupt information, exfiltrate sensitive data, download malware, or render applications unavailable with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
Application security best practices suggest that a multilayered approach to security is the best way to defend web and enterprise application software. Web application firewalls may be used to inspect and filter out malicious traffic. Bot management solutions enable organizations to allow access to good bots while stopping malicious bots. DDoS mitigation technology prevents attacks that can slow performance or take machines and applications offline. And API security solutions defend against attacks specifically designed to exploit weaknesses in APIs.
Why customers choose Akamai
Akamai powers and protects life online. Leading companies worldwide choose Akamai to build, deliver, and secure their digital experiences — helping billions of people live, work, and play every day. Akamai Connected Cloud, a massively distributed edge and cloud platform, puts apps and experiences closer to users and keeps threats farther away.