As the demand for web applications grows, robust application security becomes even more essential. Here’s how building with Unqork keeps your business safe.
The demand for accessible web applications across industries has exploded in the past few years. A new report from IDC shows that worldwide revenue in the enterprise applications market grew 7.5% year over year in 2019, amounting to a staggering $224.6 billion.
This demand was catapulted even further in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Many businesses were forced to implement stopgap digital solutions to keep day-to-day operations running, but it’s become clear over the past 12 months that digital transformation is here to stay. According to a recent McKinsey survey on consumer sentiment during COVID-19, 65% of consumers have adjusted their behavior in response to the pandemic—like doing the majority of their shopping, banking, and working online, for instance—and will continue to do so moving forward. Web applications aren’t accessories, they’re essential tools that will help businesses, consumers, and everyone in between navigate the “next normal.”
For these reasons, web apps will inevitably continue to see explosive growth—IDC predicts revenues in the enterprise application market will reach $265.7 billion by 2024. From a business standpoint, enterprises must be able to build applications faster than ever before to tap into billions in business value and meet customer demands. But as the pressure mounts, they must also find a way to accomplish these tasks without compromising security.
The Risk of a Web Application Attack
As demand for web applications skyrockets, it’s easy for businesses to throw caution to the wind in their rush to get products to market and push past their competitors. The availability and reliability of the apps they put out are essential to business success, but businesses can’t afford to cut corners when it comes to security—not when attacks on web applications pose such a huge threat.
The average total cost of a data breach in the United States in 2020—including legal fees, loss of reputation, reduced customer loyalty, and operational disruptions—adds up to a horrifying $8.64 million.
According to a 2019 NTT Security Global Threat Intelligence Report, application-specific and web-application attacks comprise over 32% of all cybersecurity threats, making it the most common attack vector. Nine out of every 10 web applications have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers to attack end-users, whether through malware infections to phishing attacks.
For organizations offering web applications that deal with sensitive data and personally identifiable information, the effects of a single data breach can be devastating. The average total cost of a data breach in the United States in 2020—including legal fees, loss of reputation, reduced customer loyalty, and operational disruptions—adds up to a horrifying $8.64 million.
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How Code Increases Web Application Vulnerabilities
How and why do data breaches of this magnitude keep occurring? It’s true that hackers get more sophisticated year after year—but for many enterprises, the real culprit is closer to home. The true vulnerability and common denominator in all of these hacked web applications is code. For example, the hackers who gained access to the Equifax system and exposed the confidential data of over 143 million people were able to do so because of buggy code in an unpatched web application.
A whopping 82% of identified web application vulnerabilities are located in the application’s code, which isn’t surprising given how large codebases have grown recently. In a 2020 Sourcegraph survey of software professionals, 51% of respondents reported that they have more than 100 times the volume of code they used to have, while 18% reported a 500x increase. When there’s this much code to contend with, it’s physically impossible for software developers to double-check every line for security vulnerabilities—which gives hackers the opportunity to exploit flaws in the code.
Even if an application’s codebase is more manageable, many organizations find it difficult to keep up with a rapidly changing IT landscape. 43% of organizations worldwide say they don’t have the in-house infrastructure or resources to keep up with known and unknown security threats, which increases the pressure on already short-staffed teams. The thorough testing that web applications require to maintain security makes lengthy project timelines even longer, which prevents teams from meeting deadlines and achieving optimal project management triangles. Today’s organizations can’t afford to sacrifice security for speed, but the two will always be at odds when code is involved. It’s time for a better solution.
Prioritize Security With Unqork
The Unqork platform proves that speed and security no longer have to be mutually exclusive. By removing code, it’s possible to build secure and sophisticated enterprise-grade applications without compromising innovation or speed-to-market.
With Unqork, built-in security features mean that you no longer have to comb through endless lines of code for potential vulnerabilities. Everything we build is designed to meet the strictest information security and privacy standards. With our platform, your web application lives in a single-tenant, cloud-agnostic infrastructure, so you don’t have to share server space with other companies and risk unintentional data loss. We regularly assess our platform security with quarterly penetration testing, in-house application review and testing, annual SOC Type 2 examinations, and vulnerability monitoring. Plus, we constantly deploy patches so you don’t have to, freeing up more time to work on value-adding projects.
To cross items off of your aPaaS security checklist while focusing on innovation, put application security in the hands of a trusted partner like Unqork. To learn more about how we can help you build the secure web application your customers want, schedule a personalized platform demo with one of our in-house experts.
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