Organizations have always faced an array of challenges when it comes to application security. Applications are a top attack vector for data breaches — something that is borne out by the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report for some years now — and are one of the top two breach reasons. Starting with the traditional attacks against web applications, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and command injection, these attacks have spread to APIs and mobile apps as well.
Over the past few years, the threats to applications have multiplied, and newer, more dangerous attack vectors have emerged. The fastest-growing attack vectors are now API vulnerabilities, automated bot attacks, and client-side attacks. In fact, respondents surveyed for Barracuda’s report The state of application security in 2021 pointed to bot attacks, web application vulnerabilities, software supply chain attacks, and flawed API security as the top four reasons for a successful security breach at their organization.