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High Tech Solutions to Drive Business Transformation through Technology
Highlights
- Generative AI (GenAI) is transforming the application security landscape through continuous improvement, valuable insights for developers, and enhanced security measures.
- GenAI can efficiently address the challenges of modern IT application security assessments, from complex applications to limited resources and time constraints, by offering automated vulnerability scanning, threat modeling, and personalized recommendations.
- GenAI for application security assessment combines pre-trained GPT models with organization-specific context for consistent risk evaluation.
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Fixing security gaps
In today's digital landscape, it is crucial to protect applications against vulnerabilities and potential breaches.
GenAI can significantly enhance application security compliance. By utilizing the natural language understanding (NLU) and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities of large language models (LLMs), generative AI can assess application security compliance and provide guidance to architects and developers on how to make their applications more robust and secure.
In addition, GenAI assists in continuously improving security measures by analyzing application-specific information, application architecture, adhering to the latest threat trends and updated security policies and guidelines. This ensures the availability of valuable insights to developers, helping them refine existing security protocols and adopt robust countermeasures.
Overcoming hurdles
The complexity of modern applications can make security assessment challenging.
Enterprises currently need to work through:
- Complex modern applications: IT applications' complexity and diversity make security assessments challenging, as layered components complicate identification and resolution of vulnerabilities.
- Continuous change: Apps constantly update, making security assessments tough with the need for continuous monitoring to prevent new risks.
- Limited resources and budget: Limited resources and budget can restrict security assessments, leaving vulnerabilities unnoticed and reducing thoroughness.
- Time constraints: Rushed assessments due to time constraints can lead to security gaps, despite the need for thorough security assessments.
- Lack of awareness and understanding: Lack of stakeholder awareness makes it difficult to obtain cooperation, resources, and support for IT security assessments.
As per this study by Statista, the average spend per employee in the cybersecurity market is projected to reach $52.16 in 2024. This shows the upward trend of organisational spend on securing data, emphasising the need for a sustainable solution for application security assessments.
Using GenAI for security assessment
Generative AI can not only conduct continuous application security assessment, but it can also provide suggestions to further fortify the enterprise security.
GenAI can help develop security co-pilots to conduct comprehensive security assessments on user applications. These AI-powered co-pilots can summarize assessment results, assign application security ratings, and offer recommendations to enhance application security.
This envisioned approach (see Figure 1) harnesses the natural language understanding (NLU) and generation abilities of pre-trained GPT models. It augments the assessment with organization-specific context developed by understanding the enterprise's security policies, guidelines, and checklists.
Figure 1:
Reference architecture for GenAI-enabled security assessments
Figure 1:
This methodology empowers GenAI to apply security assessment solutions and evaluate application security, efficiently overcoming application challenges and guiding users toward human security experts based on risk levels and complexity. This transition to a human security expert is seamless, providing comprehensive security review summaries and personalized recommendations.
The Statista study cited above states that the application security market is projected to generate $7.40 billion by 2024, with an expected annual growth rate of 12.89% (CAGR 2024-2029), resulting in a market volume of $13.57 billion by 2029.
Optimum security
GenAI can create assessment summaries based on user response and security evaluation.
Through skillful prompt design, GenAI can assess user responses, conduct a comprehensive security evaluation and present the inspection summary in a predefined format. It then generates tailored recommendations across categories, assisting the user in achieving optimal security for their application.
This assessment determines the user's intent by collating relevant information from an application's code, configuration files, and architecture through a well-structured series of questions.
Application complexity and security compliance rating are determined based on set parameters and guidelines, provided information about the application, and the responses given by the user.
Table 1 is a proposed sample output from a GenAI-led application assessment.
| Assessment dimension | Description | Sample assessment summary |
|---|---|---|
| Application Complexity | Summary of application complexity along with the rating | Web application hosted on Azure that handles personally identifiable data of users across the world. Complexity rating: 6/10 |
| Compliance rating | Security compliance rating on a scale of 10 | Security compliance score: 7/10 |
| Risk score | Risk assessment score of the application based on the provided information | Medium (The lack of encryption for data at rest presents some risks) |
| Recommendations | Tailored recommendations across various categories to assist the user in achieving optimal security for their application |
|
Securing the future
The future of security assessments is poised for a significant transformation with the integration of GenAI.
By leveraging advanced natural language understanding (NLU) and processing capabilities, GenAI can revolutionize how security assessments are conducted. It can automate vulnerability scanning, threat modeling, and personalized recommendations, addressing the complexities and challenges of modern IT applications while ensuring continuous improvement in security measures. Organizations adopting Generative AI can expect more efficient, comprehensive, and proactive security assessments, ultimately enhancing their overall security posture and resilience against evolving cyber threats.
