Application Security Architecture Cheat Sheet

Introduction

This cheat sheet offers tips for the initial design and review of an application's security architecture.

Business Requirements

Business Model

• What is the application's primary business purpose?
• How will the application make money?
• What are the planned business milestones for developing or improving the application?
• How is the application marketed?
• What key benefits does application offer its users?
• What business continuity provisions have been defined for the application?
• What geographic areas does the application service?

Data Essentials

• What data does the application receive, produce, and process?
• How can the data be classified into categories according to its sensitivity?
• How might an attacker benefit from capturing or modifying the data?
• What data backup and retention requirements have been defined for the application?

End‐Users

• Who are the application's end‐users?
• How do the end‐users interact with the application?
• What security expectations do the end‐users have?

Partners

• Which third parties supply data to the application?
• Which third parties receive data from the applications?
• Which third parties process the application's data?
• What mechanisms are used to share data with third‐parties besides the application itself?
• What security requirements do the partners impose?

Administrators

• Who has administrative capabilities in the application?
• What administrative capabilities does the application offer?

Regulations

• In what industries does the application operate?
• What security‐related regulations apply?
• What auditing and compliance regulations apply?

Infrastructure Requirements

Network

• What details regarding routing, switching, firewalling, and load‐balancing have been defined?
• What network design supports the application?
• What core network devices support the application?
• What network performance requirements exist?
• What private and public network links support the application?

Systems

• What operating systems support the application?
• What hardware requirements have been defined?
• What details regarding required OS components and lock‐down needs have been defined?

Infrastructure Monitoring

• What network and system performance monitoring requirements have been defined?
• What mechanisms exist to detect malicious code or compromised application components?
• What network and system security monitoring requirements have been defined?

Virtualization and Externalization

• What aspects of the application lend themselves to virtualization?
• What virtualization requirements have been defined for the application?
• What aspects of the product may or may not be hosted via the cloud computing model?

Application Requirements

Environment

• What frameworks and programming languages have been used to create the application?
• What process, code, or infrastructure dependencies have been defined for the application?
• What databases and application servers support the application?

Data Processing

• What data entry paths does the application support?
• What data output paths does the application support?
• How does data flow across the application's internal components?
• What data input validation requirements have been defined?
• What data does the application store and how?
• What data is or may need to be encrypted and what key management requirements have been defined?
• What capabilities exist to detect the leakage of sensitive data?
• What encryption requirements have been defined for data in transit over WAN and LAN links?

Access

• What user privilege levels does the application support?
• What user identification and authentication requirements have been defined?
• What user authorization requirements have been defined?
• What session management requirements have been defined?
• What access requirements have been defined for URI and Service calls?
• What user access restrictions have been defined?
• How are user identities maintained throughout transaction calls?

Application Monitoring

• What application auditing requirements have been defined?
• What application performance monitoring requirements have been defined?
• What application security monitoring requirements have been defined?
• What application error handling and logging requirements have been defined?
• How are audit and debug logs accessed, stored, and secured?

Application Design

• What application design review practices have been defined and executed?
• How is intermediate or in-process data stored in the application components' memory and in cache?
• How many logical tiers group the application's components?
• What staging, testing, and Quality Assurance requirements have been defined?

Security Program Requirements

Operations

• What is the process for identifying and addressing vulnerabilities in the application?
• What is the process for identifying and addressing vulnerabilities in network and system components?
• What access to system and network administrators have to the application's sensitive data?
• What security incident requirements have been defined?
• How do administrators access production infrastructure to manage it?
• What physical controls restrict access to the application's components and data?
• What is the process for granting access to the environment hosting the application?

Change Management

• How are changes to the code controlled?
• How are changes to the infrastructure controlled?
• How is code deployed to production?
• What mechanisms exist to detect violations of change management practices?

Software Development

• What data is available to developers for testing?
• How do developers assist with troubleshooting and debugging the application?
• What requirements have been defined for controlling access to the applications source code?
• What secure coding processes have been established?

Corporate

• What corporate security program requirements have been defined?
• What security training do developers and administrators undergo?
• Which personnel oversees security processes and requirements related to the application?
• What employee initiation and termination procedures have been defined?
• What application requirements impose the need to enforce the principle of separation of duties?
• What controls exist to protect a compromised in the corporate environment from affecting production?
• What security governance requirements have been defined?

Authors and Primary Editors

Lenny Zeltser - First Draft 2012

Tony Turner - 2015 Format Change and Revisions

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