Developers are increasingly favoring containerization and microservice infrastructure when building apps, which accelerates development and can improve functionality. However, apps built this way have unique security vulnerabilities that must be addressed to prevent compromise.
Runtime Application Self Protection (RASP) is an important security tool that can detect application attacks and block malicious activity. Although you should also implement other security tools to complement RASP, it is one of the best tools you can use for stopping infiltration of your app.
What is RASP?
RASP is an application-level security solution that works by monitoring and blocking unusual application activity. Applications have a variety of typical use patterns, and when activity deviates from those patterns, it’s possible that an attack is in the works. To stop it, RASP halts continued executions and blocks attackers from further inputs. If necessary, RASP can end a user’s session entirely.
As it works within the application, RASP can provide real-time protection that works on both known and zero-day attacks. While other security solutions, like web application firewalls, prevent malicious traffic from reaching the application, RASP protects from within. Both tools are useful, but RASP tends to be more sensitive to unknown attack patterns. Additionally, attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, which means your initial defense won’t catch all of them.
Because RASP can detect both unknown and subtle attacks, it’s an important part of securing your cloud-based and client-facing applications. These apps have many potential vulnerabilities, some of which you won’t realize exist until they are exploited. Another advantage of RASP is that it increases security without requiring you to constantly take down the app to update or patch it.
Insider threats are another good reason to implement RASP. Because they are already inside the environment, your other security tools will not detect them. RASP works by using context clues and activity monitoring to flag and stop potential threats. For example, if a user normally writes a file in a certain way, a change that results in lower security will raise a red flag.
RASP and Cloud-Native Apps
Working within the application means that RASP is highly sensitive to changes in activity and unusual executions. This makes it better-suited to protecting applications with unique and narrow security needs, including containerized apps and microservices, than traditional solutions.
Many apps are cloud-based, which is great for business and not so great for security. Being hosted on the cloud opens up your apps to a growing number of security risks because of its online accessibility. Additionally, many developers have begun containerizing their apps to reduce the resources required to build them and to keep them separate from local hardware.
However, not all developers have effectively secured these containerized apps. For many, development comes first, and security is added later. While this is not necessarily best practice for a well-secured application, you can use RASP to mitigate resulting security flaws.
Whether or not your developers have prioritized security, your containerized apps can benefit from RASP. Some of the benefits include:
- RASP integration. RASP can be fully integrated with your cloud-native app. It does not have to be tied to any local hardware or servers; instead, it is implemented inside of the app to detect unusual behavior.
- Vulnerability protection. Generally, you should be regularly patching or updating your apps to protect against vulnerability exploitation. While this will always be important, RASP can help mitigate threats between patches.
- Accuracy. RASP does not require training or calibrating to work. It is fully functional at setup, saving your security team time and resources.
- Insider threat detection. RASP works inside the app, which means threats that are already present can be detected quickly. Even a legitimate user can be blocked if he begins acting outside the parameters of normal app use.
- Attack visibility. RASP detects and alerts you to potential attacks. It logs requests, sessions and executions, file reads or writes, and other activities, which can inform future responses.
These benefits are also relevant for apps built with microservice architecture. Microservices consist of a collection of services and functionalities that work together through API communication rather than common code and business logic.
Microservices enable developers to exercise more granular control over their apps and to speed up development, but the number of APIs and connection points built into them makes them vulnerable. This infrastructure is also highly complex, making security management challenging. Authentication and access control in particular are often poorly supported in microservices.
RASP is not an exhaustive solution, but it can help with access control enforcement. Unauthorized user sessions face termination. Additionally, RASP will protect your whole application even if it consists of multiple microservices. RASP monitors application behavior, which extends to every component of the app.
Secure Your Cloud-Native Apps
Security tools and a comprehensive defense strategy are essential for cloud-native apps, especially when containers and microservices are involved. RASP is a highly effective tool for detecting application attacks, and it can block vulnerability exploitation, XSS attacks, SQL injection, and other malicious activities.
However, your organization should also include other cloud security tools, including WAF or WAAP, bot and DDoS protection, and others. RASP is an important way to protect your applications from within the applications, but you should also have solutions that protect it from the outside.
In the ideal setup, your application will be protected by firewalls and bot protection that block attacks before they reach it. There are some attacks that will sneak past these protective measures, which is where the RASP comes in and catches those more subtle attacks and any insider threats. With the right set of security tools, you can protect your containerized apps and microservices from compromise.
