The Application Security Program Quick Start Guide

Preface

This guide is intended to be a short, straightforward introductory guide to standing-up or improving an Application Security Program1. The intended goal of the AppSec program is to implement measures throughout the code’s life-cycle to prevent gaps in the application security policy or the underlying system through flaws in the design, development, deployment, upgrade, or maintenance of the application.

The application security program should effectively manage the security of its application systems, protecting information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction in order to provide integrity, confidentiality and availability.

A fundamental component of this improved application security management is the ability to demonstrate acceptable levels of risk based on defined KPIs, including but limited to:

1. The number of vulnerabilities present in an application
2. The time to fix vulnerabilities
3. The remediation rate of vulnerabilities
4. The time vulnerabilities remain open

The application security program deliverables include a holistic view of the state of security for each application, identifying the risks associated with the application and the countermeasures implemented to mitigate those risks, explaining how security is implemented, planning for system downtimes and emergencies, and providing a formal plan to improve the security in one or more of these areas.

Audience

The intended audience of this document is anyone from security engineers, developers, program managers, senior managers or a senior executive. This guide should be considered the start of a comprehensive approach, it is intended to give the basic questions and answers that should be asked by those who are in charge of the application security program in your organization, this includes those responsible for managing the risk of the entire organization.

Day 1

**Key Activities:

• Management
• Security
• IT Ops
• Engineering Groups (inc. QA)/Development

Day 2

**Key Activities:

• Asset Discovery
• Asset Risk Prioritization
• Communication Plan

Day 3

**Key Activities:

• Vulnerability Assessments
• Vulnerability delivery

Day 4

**Key Activities:

• Measured Metrics

Day 5

**Key activities:

• Compensating Controls
• Mitigating Controls
• Remediation Prioritization

Licensing

The OWASP Application Security Program Quick Start Guide is free to use. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for non-commercial use

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Credits

Project lead and authors

• Gabriel Gumbs
• Jeremiah Grossman
• Robert Hansen
• Jerry Hoff

Other contributors

Co-authors, contributors and reviewers:

• Matt Johansen

Further Information

Application Security Program Quick Start Guide

The OWASP Application Security Program Quick Start Guide is also available as

• Free downloadable PDF

For full information about the Application Security Program Quick Start Guide, including mailing list details, the forward plan, how to contribute, the project status, and alternative media, see the project page:

• The Application Security Program Quick Start Guide Project Page