Application Security

Standards, Guidance, and Vulnerability Management for Product Teams

AppSec Expectations

Shift Left

Security testing must happen early in the SDLC. SAST (Static Analysis) is required for every pull request, and DAST (Dynamic Analysis) must run in staging environments before release.

Dependency Management

All third-party libraries must be scanned for known vulnerabilities (SCA). Critical and High severity vulnerabilities must be remediated within 30 days of discovery.

Secure by Design

Threat modeling is mandatory for new features involving PII, payments, or authentication changes. Security Architects must sign off on major architectural shifts.

AppSec Guidance

OWASP Top 10 Prevention

  • A01
    Broken Access Control Enforce least privilege. Verify permissions on every request, not just at login.
  • A03
    Injection Use parameterized queries (Prepared Statements) for all SQL. Avoid `eval()`.
  • A07
    Identification & Auth Failures Implement MFA, stronger password policies, and rate limiting on login endpoints.

Golden Rules

Input Validation

Never trust client-side data. Validate type, length, and format on the server.

Output Encoding

Context-aware encoding is crucial to prevent XSS. Use framework template engines (React, Vue, Jinja2) which auto-escape.

Secrets Management

Never commit API keys or credentials to Git. Use environment variables or a Secrets Manager (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager).

Application Vulnerabilities

Top Critical Findings (Live)
Application Finding Type Severity Time Open Status
Billing-Service-API Log4 Shell (CVE-2021-44228) CRITICAL 2 Days In Progress
Customer-Portal-UI Cross-Site Scripting (Reflected) HIGH 15 Days Assigned
Inventory-DB Unencrypted Database Connection MEDIUM 45 Days Risk Accepted