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Why Observability Is the Next Big Thing in Security

Observability for Application Security Is a Must-have

It's not easy to tell modern security stories to users of legacy security solutions still attached to squeezing some fading security value from network-based perimeter walls. Organizations and their application security teams still find it hard to justify the obvious need for true operational change in application development and deployment (cloud adoption sits at 46%), even as software — now in the form of complex, high-velocity, and distributed cloud architectures — continues to rapidly become the only known way to effectively grow a modern business.

Still, the fact is software developers and cross-functional teams will not wait and have simply taken application security away from SecOps because a new paradigm of observability for security purposes has emerged as a core requirement for effective protection of modern applications in the cloud. Today's complex, distributed, and ephemeral challenges brought forward by next-generation cloud adoption are the new critical roadblocks that enterprises must solve to achieve rapid business grow: either adopt a technology stack that delivers observability for security or lack the ability to effectively secure your cloud applications.

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Why Application Flow Maps Are the Coolest Feature in Application Security

Application flow maps are the cool feature you can use to discover that needle in a haystack—how does my running app work and what does my app connect to?

How Can Enterprise Teams Understand Application Flows?

Developers will often architect systems that cater only to business requirements and skip identification of security threats and vulnerabilities until later on when it's much more costly. Enterprises can improve overall protection and understand app flows by gathering an accurate asset inventory with connection discovery—basically mapping out your running apps and data flow—and along the way help reduce developer remediation times, security response efforts, and avoid the many costs associated with breach events.

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State-Of-The-Art AppSec Goes Beyond Perimeter Into Application Runtimes

When it comes to protecting running applications, traditional defenses that sit on the perimeter lack effective visibility and context to keep pace with attacks. Simply guessing as to the validity of a threat is not enough. This blog spells out five key application security (AppSec) benefits that perimeter web application firewalls (WAFs) can never deliver.

Perimeter Defense Is Too Far Away—and Incurs Significant OpEx  

In recent years, network protection has moved closer and closer to the application, from network firewalls to intrusion detection, and from prevention systems to the WAF. The problem is that these protections are not actually close to the application but rather remain on the perimeter, separated from the assets and systems they are intended to protect. Indeed, the proximity of protection to an application, the stability of the protected application, and the security tools used strongly correlate to the required amount of operational effort, operation cost, and overall protection accuracy. More effort and cost are required with less protection potential the further away from the application you go.