Strengthening security; optimising application performance

Organizations are increasingly reliant on applications to engage with and deliver services to customers, which leads to huge volumes of personal user data being housed within the application. As a result, organizations face increased vulnerability to cyber threats and security incidents. This challenge is further exacerbated as they continue to support more employees working from home who are using laptops and devices connected to the public internet. This is testing the limits of monitoring practices and vastly expanding the IT perimeter, creating new weaknesses and vulnerabilities in even the most secure IT estates. Failure to have the right processes and solutions in place to safeguard data housedin applications not only puts brand reputation and consumer trust at risk, but also may cost organizations millions of dollars in the event of a breach.

With applications now running anywhere from on-premise to multi-cloud and cloud-native microservices, combined with accelerated innovation, the need for an application-led approach to security is paramount. This critical shift will enable technologists to identify vulnerabilities within the application during production, correlate vulnerabilities and breaches with business impact, and bring together Application and Security teams to facilitate speedy remediation. 

With Secure Application, IT teams will no longer sacrifice security for velocity. Secure Application is the only solution that uniquely brings together business performance and security insights with zero friction​ to protect brands against slowdowns and exploits. 

“A slow or under performing application can significantly impact the user experience, but when an application’s security is breached and exploited, it can be life altering for the end user. Companies simply cannot afford to ignore the risk,” said Jeetu Patel, senior vice president and general manager, security and applications, Cisco. “Secure Application is the first of its kind to deliver this level of security insight that empowers both Application and Security teams to safeguard customer and organization assets while delivering a best-in-class digital experience.”

With Secure Application, enterprise IT teams will have access to:

§  Automatic runtime protection: Visibility into an application's true behavior to easily detect attacks, identify deviations, and block attacks automatically.

§  Simplified vulnerability management: Access at the code level to detect dependency and configuration level security vulnerabilities in production.

§  Security insights informed by business impact: Security details correlated with the application topology to apply business relevance to security events and helps teams focus on the incidents that matter most.

§  Collaboration between Application and Security teams: Shared context for Application and Security teams for optimal collaboration, improved security posture, and healthy digital business.

"Enterprise IT Organizations are often considering how to transform and align their security, application development, and operations tools, processes, and teams,” said Stephen Elliot, IDC program vice president, DevOps and I&O team. “Application vulnerability management is one of the key capabilities where transformation can be accomplished, while delivering substantial business benefits."