What is Code Scanning?

All software and code contain bugs. While some of these bugs are inconsequential or only affect the functionality of an application, others potentially impact its security. Identification and remediation of these potentially exploitable security vulnerabilities is essential for application security.

Code scanning is a tool for identifying potential security issues within an application. A number of different code scanning methodologies are available to help identify vulnerabilities within an application before it reaches production – this reduces the risk posed by the security errors and the cost and difficulty of remediating them.

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What is Code Scanning?

Code Scanning Toolbox

Developers and security teams have a number of options when performing code scanning. Some of the major vulnerability detection methodologies include:

 

  • Static Analysis: Static application security testing (SAST) is performed on an application’s source code. It detects vulnerabilities within the application by building a model of its execution state and applying rules based upon the code patterns that create common vulnerabilities (such as the use of untrusted user input as an input to an SQL query).
  • Dynamic Analysis: Dynamic application security testing (DAST) uses a library of known attacks and a fuzzer to detect vulnerabilities in a running application. By subjecting the application to unusual or malicious inputs and observing its responses, DAST can identify vulnerabilities within the application.
  • Interactive Analysis: Interactive application security testing (IAST) uses instrumentation to gain visibility into an application’s inputs, outputs, and execution state. At runtime, this visibility enables it to identify anomalous behavior that indicates exploitation of known or novel vulnerabilities within the application.
  • Source Composition Analysis: Most applications rely upon a number of external libraries and dependencies. Source composition analysis (SCA) identifies an application’s dependencies and checks them for known vulnerabilities that could impact the application’s security.

 

It’s important to remember that different security testing methodologies have advantages (or weaknesses) when attempting to identify different classes of vulnerabilities. For this reason, applying several application security testing methodologies and tools throughout the software development process is recommended to minimize the number and impact of vulnerabilities that exist in production code.

Achieving Comprehensive Vulnerability Visibility

Any software can contain vulnerabilities, regardless of how it is implemented or its deployment location. Comprehensive vulnerability management requires the ability to perform code scanning in a wide range of deployment environments, including:

 

 

The effectiveness of code scanning is also dependent upon the information available to the code scanning tool. SAST and DAST tools largely scan for known types of vulnerabilities and attacks, meaning that running them with outdated or incomplete rulesets can result in false negative detections, which leaves the application vulnerable to exploitation. For this reason, code scanning tools should be integrated into an organization’s security infrastructure and be capable of taking advantage of threat intelligence feeds.

The Benefits of CloudGuard ServerlessCode Scanning

CloudGuard’s Serverless Code Scanning feature detects, alerts on and remediates security and compliance risks in a Serverless environment. Its code scanning functionality is powered by CodeQL – a powerful code analysis engine. Additionally, it incorporates multiple different code scanning methodologies to provide rapid and comprehensive vulnerability detection.

 

Code scanning is an essential component of an organization’s application security program and vital to regulatory compliance. CloudGuard Serverless Code Scanning provides a number of advantages, including:

 

  • Vulnerability Detection in Development: Remediating vulnerabilities in production is expensive and time-consuming due to the complexity of developing and distributing software patches. Additionally, vulnerabilities in production carry the risk of exploitation. Code scanning enables vulnerabilities to be detected and remediated prior to release into production, eliminating the cybersecurity risks that they pose.
  • Reduced False Positives and Errors: CloudGuard Serverless Code Scanning incorporates a range of application security testing solutions. This helps it to eliminate false positive detections, enabling developers and security teams to focus their efforts on remediating the true threats to application security.
  • Support Infrastructure Security: CloudGuard Serverless Code Scanning tests all of the code within an application, including potentially vulnerable dependencies. This helps to ensure the security of an organization’s applications and digital infrastructure.
  • Actionable Insights: By default, CloudGuard Code Scanning only runs the actionable security rules when performing its analysis. This reduces alert volume and eliminates noise, enabling developers to focus on the task at hand.
  • Elasticity: Built on the open SARIF standard, CloudGuard Serverless Code Scanning is extensible so you can include open source and commercial static application security testing (SAST) solutions within the same cloud native solution. It can also be integrated with third-party scanning engines to view results from other security tools in a single interface and to export multiple scan results through a single API.

 

To learn more about securing Kubernetes and containerized applications, download this guide. You’re also welcome to request a demo of Check Point Cloud Security solutions to see how it can help to minimize vulnerabilities and cybersecurity risk in your applications.

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