Securing Enterprise Web Applications at the Source: An Application Security Perspective Author: Eugene Lebanidze
[email protected] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Purpose: This paper considers a variety of application level threats facing enterprise web applications and how those can be mitigated in order to promote security. Evidence shows that perhaps as many as sixty percent of attacks on enterprise web applications are facilitated by exploitable vulnerabilities present in the source code. In this paper we take the approach of examining the various threats specific to the application layer along with their corresponding compensating controls. Threats specific to each of the tiers of the n- tiered enterprise web application are discussed with focus on threat modeling. Compensating controls are addressed at the architecture, design, implementation and deployment levels. The discussion focuses around the core security services, namely confidentiality, integrity, authentication, authorization, availability, non-repudiation and accountability. The paper examines how these core security services are supported in the J2EE and .NET frameworks. Recommendations and standards from various organizations are considered in this paper (e.g. OWASP, NIST, etc.) We also recognize that development and deployment of a secure enterprise web-based application is dependent upon the organization’s enterprise security architecture (ESA) framework. Therefore, we map some elements of our discussion for security architecture and technology issues to the five rings of the enterprise security architecture model, particularly in the context of the Zachman Framework enterprise architecture (EA). While most of the web application security threats and mitigations discussed fall in rings four and five, we tie the local risk to the enterprise risk in ring one of the ESA.