What is Application Security Life Cycle

The application security life cycle is about adding security steps to every part of the software development process. This process includes planning, designing, building, testing, deploying, and maintaining software. By focusing on security from the start, organizations can spot and fix risks early, from the design phase all the way through to maintenance.

These days, writing secure code alone is not enough because applications often rely on third-party libraries, open source packages, and cloud services. To mitigate risks from these sources, it is crucial to manage third-party risks by implementing Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools that identify vulnerabilities in these dependencies. Additionally, setting policies for third-party code usage and regularly updating and patching dependencies can help developers take practical steps to enhance security.

Adding security throughout the software development process helps organizations lower the cost of fixing issues, reduce vulnerabilities, stay compliant, and create safer applications.

Why Application Security Life Cycle Matters?

Applications are now a top target for attackers. Techniques like SQL Injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), insecure APIs, and exposed API keys are common. As technology advances, these threats continue to evolve and grow.

Implementing an application security life cycle gives organizations benefits :

• Proactive protection against vulnerabilities
• Lower remediation costs by fixing the vulnerabilities earlier
• Compliance with standard regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, etc
• Increase user trust with stronger security.

Application Security Life Cycle Stage

1. Planning and Requirement

Before coding begins, the team defines requirements for compliance needs, identifies risks, and decides security goals.

2. Design

The security expert conducts threat modelling and reviews the security architecture to address potential weaknesses in system design.

3. Development

Developer teams apply secure coding practices and use tools like Static Application Security Testing (SAST) to find vulnerabilities before going to deployment. One of the powerful SAST tools is Plexicus ASPM. In this phase, developer teams also run Software Composition Analysis (SCA) to scan vulnerabilities in dependencies used by the application. Plexicus ASPM is often employed for this purpose.

4. Testing

You can combine multiple testing mechanisms to validate the application security :

• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) to simulate a real-world attack
• Interactive Application Testing (IAST) to make a combination of runtime and static checks
• Penetration Testing to dig deeper into the security vulnerabilities that are missed by automation tools.
• Re-run Software Composition Analysis (SCA) in CI/CD pipelines to ensure there are no new vulnerabilities.

5. Deployment

Before launching your application, make sure your container and cloud settings are secure. It is also important to scan container images to find any risks before release.

6. Operation and Maintenance

The Application security lifecycle does not end with the deployment. The application is currently live in an environment that evolves fast, where you will find new vulnerabilities daily. Continuous monitoring is needed to monitor all application activity, which will help you detect new anomalies, suspicious activity in your application, or find new vulnerabilities in your existing libraries that in use in the application. Patching and updates to ensure both code and components are secure applications along the security lifecycle.

7. Continuous Improvement

Security needs continuous updates, refining dependencies, and training teams. Each iteration will help the organization build a secure application.

Best Practice for Application Security Lifecycle

• Shift left: address issues early, during planning and development
• Automate security: Integrate SAST, DAST, and SCA into CI/CD integrations. You can use Plexicus to help you automate your security process to find vulnerabilities and fix them automatically.
• Adopt DevSecOps : Bring Security, Development, and Operations together.
• Follow Security Frameworks : use OWASP SAMM, NIST, or ISO 27034 for security guidance.
• Educate teams : train developers to apply security coding practices in their development.

The application security life cycle is a continuous story of building, securing, and iterating software. By integrating security controls in every phase of the software development lifecycle, an organization can secure its application against attackers.