introduction:
With the development of modern web applications, generational shifts in application environments and threats, the obvious trend towards decentralization and distribution of applications, the increasing sophistication of bots and automated attacks, the increase in mobile application usage and modern application development The proliferation of API endpoints has greatly expanded the threat surface and introduced unforeseen risks from third-party integrations.
As the pace of digital transformation accelerates, so does the pace of change in the threat landscape. In the first half of 2022, the number of global web application and API attacks increased significantly, with the number of attack attempts exceeding 9 billion, a threefold increase from the first half of 2021. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to expand in scale and complexity.
Facing the increasingly complex and severe network and data security situation, an updated set of technologies is needed to solve such problems. Large model and Agent technology have opened a new era of comprehensive automation. The results of the continuous development of the security market will meet these needs!
Figure Business, high-tech, and financial services are the vertical industries most affected by web application and API attacks
1. Network and data security situation
01 Web Application and API Protection Challenges
Web applications continue to evolve and become more complex, which creates new application security challenges for enterprises. Modern web applications and microservices increasingly rely on APIs for nearly all interactions, expanding the attack surface and providing new potential entry points for hackers. Currently, the number of known software vulnerabilities exceeds 180,000, and thousands of new vulnerabilities are discovered every year.
02 API attacks raise concerns about risks
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) has released a list of the top ten security vulnerabilities of APIs. From the new list, it can be seen that API attacks account for an increasing proportion.
Figure: The new API top ten security vulnerabilities include more API-related attacks, with an emphasis on authorization issues (occupying four of the top five attacks)
03 Protection dilemma of traditional security architecture
As application attack surfaces expand, cybercriminals launch increasingly sophisticated multi-vector attacks. Attackers often use automated bots, botnets, and vulnerability scanners to successfully compromise IT environments and take over user accounts to steal data, disrupt business operations, and launch destructive cyber attacks. In the face of complex attacks, the traditional stacked, building-block, and city-defense security architecture has disadvantages such as many loopholes, poor compatibility, cumbersomeness, inflexibility, and lack of efficient collaboration, making it unable to effectively respond to increasingly complex attacks.
Network security often faces more than just network security. Modern applications are borderless, and traditional network security protection systems can no longer adapt to new threats. Network security and data security issues are complex, and any vulnerability may directly cause data security leaks. Therefore, enterprises must seek integrated solutions that can more comprehensively address daily security threats, a newer approach that integrates security into the continuous integration/deployment process.
Figure Vulnerabilities at any layer of the traditional "building block and city defense architecture" can directly cause data leakage
2. Analysis of new technology directions and trends in the security market
In September 2023, Gartner released the five emerging technologies for data security in 2023. In this article, Gartner believes that dealing with quantum computing threats, the integration and integration of security tools, and management are unknown Shadow IT datais a priority.
01 Single point solutions have obvious shortcomings
According to statistics, 50% of large companies and 42% of small and medium-sized companies (SMBs) believe that compatibility issues with legacy systems are a major obstacle to the adoption of security processes and security technologies.
Today's enterprises mostly tend to purchase a single product or point solution from multiple vendors, and then choose the product with the best functionality and lowest cost to meet different aspects of security requirements. However, this approach fragments the infrastructure, which is more costly and time-consuming to manage in the long term. In addition, a fragmented security environment may leave gaps that not only allow attackers to exploit but also incur additional costs.
Figure Percentage of large and small and medium-sized companies that agree there are multiple barriers to adopting security solutions
02 The integration and integration of security tools are more efficient
It’s great to have a wide range of security products and tools, but building a three-dimensional defense is even better. Enterprises are beginning to look for converged and integrated security solutions, rather than purchasing a large number of technologies that do not interoperate and are difficult to manage. While integrated solutions have higher initial costs, such systems are more likely to prevent security breaches and require less maintenance and management costs in the long term. Integrate security solutions into operational processes and adopt more effective tools. These measures will achieve far more than just point solutions.
Taking all factors into consideration, it is worthwhile to choose an architecture that integrates and integrates security tools, which is more efficient and simpler than purchasing a large number of point solutions.
Figure Usage of various threat defense tools by enterprises in China and enterprises in other countries/regions (unit: percentage)
03 AI Agent is the key technology to enable comprehensive automation
With the emergence of large models, autonomous agents (AI Agents) are gradually becoming a new trend in comprehensive automation. AI agents (AI Agents) are intelligent beings with the capabilities of environmental perception, decision-making and action execution. The main difference from traditional AI is its ability to think, make decisions and act toward goals. With just one goal, it can plan and implement strategies on its own, using external feedback and self-thinking to achieve tasks. The key characteristics of an agent are the ability to perceive the environment, make decisions independently, have the ability to act, set clear goals and tasks, adapt to the environment and learn.
Figure AI Agent (AI agent)
3. WAAP-network and data security tool fusion and integration solution
Figure Passport Shield WAAP solution
Password WAAP is a collection of network and data security protection technologies that can continuously learn and adapt to the latest attack behaviors. It is an automated orchestration security system product with visual drag and drop function, and is an integrated AI Agent. , Web application protection, API security, Bot management, DDOS mitigation, risk intelligent decision-making and other security tool integrated solutions. Password WAAP adopts a modern technology adaptive system that integrates strategies, models, and graph analysis to identify fraud and batch risk decisions in real time. The adaptive engine can quickly configure and manage complex environmental changes, and can independently analyze the data transmitted in the network and traffic, effectively identify and intelligently intercept malicious attacks, and ensure the security of modern application networks and data.
01 Solve the shortcomings of traditional web protection
As modern web applications evolve, so do the techniques used by malicious attackers to compromise application security. With new capabilities and features, attackers have more surface area to try and target. The adoption of agile methodologies and DevOps practices has also resulted in a rapidly increasing pace of development, software updates, and new feature releases.
These development trends also cause traditional web application firewalls (WAF) to be unable to keep up with security needs. WAFs typically rely on manual tuning and ongoing maintenance, and typically only monitor the top 10 most severe threats listed by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP Top 10). All of this means that today's developers, application security teams, and DevOps need a better solution that provides security that scales with web application deployments.
02 Integration and fusion form three-dimensional protection
The web application security market continues to evolve to keep pace with the new digital economy. While web application firewalls (WAFs) have proven to be an effective tool for mitigating application vulnerabilities, the proliferation of APIs and increasing attacker sophistication have given rise to challenges in WAFs, API security, bot defense, DDoS mitigation, and application infrastructure protection. Fusion. WAAP solutions protect applications from breaches, downtime and fraud.
The highly competitive digital environment has driven organizations to adopt modern software development to achieve a leading position in the market, enabling rapid release cycles to introduce new features and a mashup of integrations, front-end user interfaces and back-end APIs. Therefore, the new digital economy requires a new era of web application security to securely unleash innovation, effectively manage risk, and reduce operational complexity.
03 WAAP is the fusion and integration of network and data security tools
Traditional Web security protection focuses more on the network security level. Data security requires additional data security products to supplement it. On the one hand, in the face of ever-changing network threats, traditional Web protection requires evolution and innovation. On the other hand, it also requires evolution and innovation. Uniform overall protection needs to be provided. The full name of WAAP is Web Application and API Protection. It is a collection of network security implementations that protect APIs and Web applications through a series of auto-scaling, cloud-native security models while reducing the risk of robot scanning. Each model There are different strategies to improve security and help customers improve the performance and protection of their applications. In the past, solving these web problems required different products and services to obtain protection. However, with WAAP solutions, one product or service can provide unified overall protection, and one vendor can provide support for the solution.
4. Problems solved by WAAP
WAAP solutions protect applications by integrating a variety of security controls to reduce the risk of system intrusions, data breaches, account takeovers and application downtime, including:
·Web Application Firewall (WAF)
·Bot Management
·API Security
·DDoS Mitigation a>
Figure Web Application and API Protection (WAAP)
WAAP discovers and manages data assets by performing vulnerability scanning and repair on APIs, and promptly discovers and repairs security vulnerabilities in APIs;
Prevent unauthorized access and malicious attacks by controlling and monitoring API access;
Through Web dynamic defense, attack entrances are hidden, site content protection is improved, and attackers' attack costs are increased;
Identify and intercept automated attacks, prevent data crawling, and protect data assets through models based on characteristics, behaviors, and human-machine recognition;
Through intelligent decision-making and dynamic application configuration, we can prevent application layer DDOS, reduce service load, and prevent excessive attacks;
Through systematic security models and protective measures, we strengthen API security management, defend against automated attacks, and prevent data leakage.
5. The role of WAAP solutions
01 Reduce application vulnerabilities
Protect applications from critical risks (such as those listed in the OWASP Top 10), provide protection against common vulnerabilities such as injection and cross-site scripting (XSS), and mitigate complex software supply chains, third-party integrations, and cross-cloud security configurations Wrong Emerging Risks.
02 API security
Detect APIs with deep discovery and classification of sensitive data for all API assets and provide continuous protection, comprehensive API discovery and classification of sensitive data for all endpoints, eliminating the threat of data leakage and API abuse.
03 Reduce bots and abuse
Just as businesses employ automation to make processes more efficient, attackers are leveraging bots and automation to scale attacks, bypass security countermeasures, and take over customer accounts. WAAP solutions remain resilient and automatically adapt to changes in attackers without relying on conventional security controls, ensuring business success.
04 Defense against DDoS attacks
Organizations of all sizes are at risk of denial of service attacks. The common goal of these attacks is to disrupt performance and availability, but the attacks themselves vary. WAAP solutions connect to any infrastructure to combat DoS and DDoS attacks on your business.
6. Analysis of benefits for enterprises to launch WAAP solutions
01 Achieve extensive protection
Get comprehensive protection for all websites, applications, and APIs from a wide range of cyber threats, including automated botnets, API-based attacks, injection attacks, and massive denial-of-service attacks.
02 Reduce API attack surface
Automatically discover and protect APIs from vulnerabilities, reduce API attack surface risk, automatically and continuously analyze traffic to discover known, unknown and changing APIs (including their endpoints, definitions and characteristics), and then use simple and easy workflows to protect APIs from DDoS, injection and credential stuffing attacks. For example, OWASP Top Ten Threats, OWASP Top Ten API Threats, etc.
03 Get more done with fewer resources
Manage WAAP protection, bot detection and defense, DDoS protection, web optimization, API acceleration, and more with a single solution.
04 Custom WAAP rules
Emergency adjustments can be provided for unexpected business security issues, and security teams can easily generate custom rules in a short time and with less effort to manage situations not covered by standard protection measures.
05 Block DDOS attacks
WAAP can immediately block application layer DDoS attacks, reduce service load, and prevent excessive attacks.
06 Flexible display of dynamic analysis
WAAP provides data visualization tools for multi-dimensional dynamic visual analysis. The analysis reports produced by the visualization tools can flexibly and efficiently meet the data analysis needs of different viewers, helping viewers to analyze layer by layer, grasp data development and changes, identify the causes of problems, and assist decision-making to help users solve problems quickly.
07 Automatically update WAAP protection measures
Automatically updates into the adaptive security engine to improve security protection while minimizing management overhead and operational friction.
7. Technologies applied in WAAP
01 Agent intelligent technology
Adaptation is an important capability for applying modern applications. For complex and changeable application protection situations, using traditional rigid configurations and responses obviously cannot meet the needs of modern application protection. A technical application in which an agent can perceive its environment and take action on it within a period of time to achieve its own goals. Agent can sense the environment through sensors (collect information) and act on the environment through actuators (take action). It can realize complex Process automation. Agent simulation is more human-like and credible. For complex scenarios, Agent can improve scene adaptation and decision-making capabilities, and improve decision-making efficiency and accuracy.
02 API asset discovery technology
The basic requirement for data security protection is to understand the protected data assets. The key technology for data asset sorting is firstly data discovery, to understand the base of data assets, to form a complete view of data assets, and to comprehensively and comprehensively analyze the data. Fine-grained security management. API asset discovery technology can automatically discover potential business API interfaces, lost interfaces, legacy APIs and historical APIs, from API asset inventory, to API path folding and standardization, to further inventory of sensitive data exposure surfaces. By sorting out and taking inventory of API interfaces, operators can quickly grasp the current status of API assets, and at the same time perceive the access status of each API interface in real time for comprehensive monitoring. . . . View full text》》》
Click the link below to learn the full content:
"In-depth analysis of Tongfu Shield WAAP network and data security agent (full text)"
8. Summary
The rise of modern web applications has led to the convergence of issues such as web application security, API security, operational security, network security, and business fraud security. The continuous development of automated attack technology has also reduced the difficulty of attacks, further exacerbating the seriousness of Web and API security issues. To protect network and data security issues, we need to break through the limitations of traditional architecture, upgrade the existing architecture and security protection capabilities, and rely on the fusion and integration solution of network and data security tools - WAAP to improve the compatibility between security tools and enhance the collaborative performance of each component. , reduce operation and maintenance costs, improve efficiency, enhance enterprise application protection and data protection capabilities, better ensure the reliability and stability of Web applications and APIs, ensure data integrity and security, and effectively achieve three-dimensional defense and reduce This increases efficiency.
-END-
Shuxin Cloud, a data security application and service platform based on blockchain