In today’s fast-paced business environment, cybersecurity threats are becoming more complex and difficult to prevent. Large enterprises that use Java are particularly vulnerable to attacks that exploit the language’s security vulnerabilities. In this blog post, we’ll explore the challenges faced by large enterprises, and how Waratek’s Java security platform can help your enterprise save time and resources while providing industry-leading java security.
The Problem
Enterprises are uniquely vulnerable to cyber threats due to their size and complexity. Protecting a giant bureaucratic machine with a complex chain of decision-making is more difficult because some security decisions can be made within the security team, while others require board-level decisions. Additionally, the online footprint of an enterprise is vast and complex, which offers far more opportunities for attackers to exploit and gain footholds. The larger attack surface also means that security resources must be more carefully allocated.
Meanwhile, enterprises make juicy targets for attackers because they have more valuable assets and more money to pay ransom demands. These challenges make it critical for enterprises to adopt a robust security platform that can provide multiple layers of security to protect against cyber threats.
This risk is only amplified by java-based applications. Java is one of the most widely used programming languages in the world — particularly among enterprises, who use Java nearly 40% of the time. But the complexity of Java applications and the risk associated with their vulnerabilities make it critical for enterprises to implement Java-specific security measures. For more information on why, read “Why Java Programs Require Java-Specific Security.”
As enterprises increasingly rely on Java applications to process data and interact with users, the need for effective security measures to protect these applications becomes more pressing. Traditional security solutions may not be effective in detecting vulnerabilities that exploit the complex business logic within Java applications, making them vulnerable to attacks that bypass security controls, perform unauthorized actions, and exploit input validation and parsing logic.
How Does Our Java Security Platform Work?
This shift towards exploiting business logic vulnerabilities highlights the need for Java-specific security solutions that fully understand the complex and dynamic nature of these applications. Waratek’s purpose-built Java Security Platform offers a comprehensive solution that combines the domain expertise of a Java software engineer and the knowledge of a security engineer to protect against these vulnerabilities.
One of the key features of Waratek’s Java Security Platform is its precise rules, which can be instantly deployed without the need for restarts or redeployments. These rules are tailored to the unique business logic of each application, enabling organizations to protect their specific vulnerabilities. In addition, Waratek’s platform eliminates false positives, ensuring that responses to alerts are always appropriate.
Waratek’s Java Security Platform can be rolled out at scale in minutes, with no tuning or regex required. When an attempt is made to execute vulnerable code in an application or API, Waratek’s platform performs a checksum check and removes the vulnerability from the call stack, replacing the functions in question within the JVM’s memory. This healthy version of code is returned in real-time, ensuring that every request is protected, not just one out of a thousand.
Time and Resource Savings
Implementing Waratek’s Java security platform can provide your enterprise with a variety of time and resource savings. The platform’s virtual patching capabilities can help reduce downtime caused by security incidents, minimizing the time your IT team spends on remediation. The real-time threat detection and RASP features can help prevent security incidents from occurring in the first place, freeing up your IT team to focus on other important tasks.
With Waratek’s Java security platform, your enterprise can reduce the complexity of managing security by building security protocols into the development stage. Your security team won’t spend all their time playing whack-a-mole with new vulnerabilities and false positives. And they won’t have to shut down vulnerable applications to figure out how to secure them without breaking their functionality.
How We Are Helping Folks Today
One particular University approached Waratek to help them cut down on their workload and optimize their java security program. The institution was facing a significant challenge: trying to maintain hundreds of internal web applications that required quarterly patching of security vulnerabilities. A traditional upgrade or patching program was not feasible for them — due to the significant financial costs and staff time required to patch so many applications at least four times per year.
By integrating Waratek’s virtual patching solution into the university’s application hosting platform, the team was able to apply virtual patches that are the code equivalent of an Oracle Critical Virtual Patch (CPU). This solution instantly remediated large swaths of vulnerabilities on their attack surface while avoiding the financial and operational barriers typical to patching Java-based applications. Meanwhile, the institution has realized other benefits from Waratek’s virtualization approach to application security. This includes a 100% reduction in false positives during two years of live production in unconditional blocking mode. Their security staffers can now focus on improving applications and infrastructure to better serve customers and shareholders.
“Waratek’s Security-as-Code platform not only found the cryptominer we had, but securely removed it within 48 hours, stopping us from having to rebuild our solution from scratch.”
—Sébastien Roche, CISO of Alcatel-Lucent
Learn More About Our Java Security Platform
Java is a popular and widely used programming language with numerous advantages, but can be particularly challenging to secure. This effect is only enhanced by the massive and complex attack surfaces of large enterprises. By building immutable rules into the application code base, teams responsible for securing java systems can instantly remediate numerous java vulnerabilities without the risk of affecting the code’s existing functionality. This has the added benefit of eliminating false positives and giving the team back valuable hours that they would otherwise spend chasing vulnerabilities in various applications and either patching them or rebuilding them from the ground up.
