Web application security is becoming a critical part of cybersecurity operations. Web applications hold sensitive data and are often responsible for a significant part of an organization’s revenues. There are many security tools available to secure web applications—in this article, I’ll focus on two types of tools:
- Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)—a black-box testing tool that can scan web applications at runtime to discover vulnerabilities.
- Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)—an agent that can be deployed on a web server and helps detect, block, and respond to successful cyber attacks against the server.
What is Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), and how does it work
Dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools analyze web apps in production and runtime, looking for security vulnerabilities and weaknesses. DAST is a black box test performed externally without access to the application’s source code or architecture. The test simulates an external attack to identify exploitable vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
DAST simulates actual attacks to test the app’s resiliency. For example, DAST can involve using injection techniques to inputting malicious software (malware) into the software to determine if the application is exposed to cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection (SQLi) attacks. Here is how DAST usually works: