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Glossary Glossary

Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)




Application security posture management (ASPM) is a comprehensive approach to securing an organization’s applications throughout their life cycle.

Applications can be internal, such as custom-built and on-premise human resource (HR) and payroll software. They can also be public-facing, such as web applications, application programming interfaces (APIs), virtual private network (VPN) gateways, and Internet-facing firewalls. In the context of external attack surface management (EASM), we will tackle the external aspects of ASPM.

As part of an organization’s external attack surface, Internet-exposed applications face various risks. For instance, web applications are prone to the OWASP Top 10 security risks, which include security misconfiguration, broken access control, and injection.

Table of Contents

Application Security Posture Management: A Deep Dive

How Does Application Security Posture Management Work?

Like EASM, ASPM works continuously to discover, prioritize, and remediate vulnerabilities in an organization’s applications throughout their development process. Here’s a breakdown of the key stages involved.

  • Application discovery and inventory: Leverage automated discovery techniques and tools to find all technologies in an organization’s environment. It is a crucial step since many organizations have shadow IT or unsanctioned and unknown applications.
  • Application security testing: ASPM solutions can be integrated into various security scanners to perform vulnerability assessments on an organization’s applications. The goal is to identify security misconfigurations, issues, and vulnerabilities in the applications.
  • Dependency mapping and analysis: After finding security issues in applications, the next step is to determine what external-facing assets are affected and what other assets are related to them.
  • Vulnerability prioritization: Since not all vulnerabilities are equally severe, ranking them and focusing on the most critical issues first is more efficient.
  • Vulnerability management: At this step, application security teams determine how specific vulnerabilities should be addressed and which security team members should be responsible. EASM platforms can automate and track this process through integration into ticketing systems.
  • Application monitoring: With the rise of shadow IT, it is important to continuously scan for newly added applications and detect new vulnerabilities in existing ones.

Application Security Posture Management versus Cloud Security Posture Management versus External Attack Surface Management: What Are Their Key Differences?

ASPM focuses on application security, while cloud security posture management (CSPM) concentrates on the public-facing elements of an organization’s IT infrastructure hosted in the cloud.

Meanwhile, EASM generally encompasses all external-facing assets and technologies, which include web and cloud applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, content management systems (CMSs), and other software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.

Therefore, EASM solutions may have both ASPM and CSPM capabilities. That is crucial, primarily since 50% of malware downloads in 2023 originated from SaaS apps. A holistic approach would be to use both ASPM and EASM platforms for organizations with many applications or a complex IT environment.

What Are the Benefits of Implementing ASPM and EASM?

Here’s a breakdown of the key benefits of jointly implementing ASPM and EASM in securing an organization’s IT infrastructure.

  • Improved security posture: Proactively identifying and remediating vulnerabilities in internal and external applications throughout their life cycle and the overall external attack surface helps reduce the risk of data breaches and loss.
  • Increased development team efficiency: Automating tasks like asset and technology discovery and vulnerability scanning frees developers to focus on core development activities.
  • Enhanced prioritization and efficiency: EASM informs ASPM prioritization. By understanding the external attack surface, ASPM can help organizations better prioritize vulnerabilities in applications that are most exposed to attackers on the Internet. It helps security teams focus on fixing the most critical issues first.

Key Takeaways

  • ASPM is an approach that secures internal and external applications throughout their development life cycle.
  • ASPM works continuously to identify, prioritize, and remediate vulnerabilities in applications.
  • The key stages of ASPM include application discovery, security testing, dependency mapping, vulnerability assessment, management, and monitoring.
  • ASPM focuses on application security, CSPM concentrates on securing cloud infrastructure, and EASM includes all public-facing assets, such as those attached to external applications and cloud resources.
  • EASM solutions may offer both ASPM and CSPM functionalities.

Ready to discover all your public-facing assets and their vulnerabilities? Kick off your 30-day free trial with Attaxion today.

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