In volume 11 of our annual State of Software Security (SOSS) report, we uncovered some valuable nuggets of information about how you, the innovative developers of our world, can craft more secure code. For example, did you know that scanning via API improves the time to remediate 50 percent of security flaws by about 17 days, or that C++ and PHP languages have an alarmingly high number of severe security flaws and need greater attention?

It’s been a stressful year, to say the least, for the government and education sector. Government organizations were challenged with pivoting their operations to a digital model while schools were forced to decide between hybrid or remote learning programs for their students. The rise of digital operations has made application security (AppSec) more important than ever.

In our first blog in this series, Nature vs. Nurture Tip 1: Using SAST With DAST, we discussed how this year’s State of Software Security (SOSS) report looked at how both “nature” and “nurture” contribute to the time it takes to close out a security flaw. We found that the “nature” of applications – like size or age – can have a negative effect on how long it takes to remediate a security flaw.

On November 19, Veracode published new, official Docker images for use in continuous integration pipelines. The images, which provide access to Pipeline Scan, Policy (or Sandbox) scans, and the ability to access Veracode APIs via the Java API Wrapper or via HTTPie with the Veracode API Signing tool, make it easy to include the current version of Veracode tools in your automation workflow.

We recently released volume 11 of our annual State of Software Security (SOSS) report, which analyzes the security activity and history of applications Veracode scanned during a one-year period. Giving us a view of the full lifecycle of applications, that data tells us which languages and vulnerabilities to keep an eye on, and how factors like scanning frequency can impact your remediation time.

In late October, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) co-authored an advisory report on the latest tactics used by cybercriminals to target the Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) sector. In the report, CISA, FBI, and HHS noted the discovery of, “…credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S.

When conducting research for this year’s State of Software Security report, we looked at how “nature” and “nurture” contribute to the time it takes to close out a security flaw. For the “nature” side, we looked at attributes that we cannot change, like application size or age. For “nurture,” we looked at application attributes we can change, like security scan frequency and cadence.

In 2017, we started a blog series talking about how to securely implement a crypto-system in java. How to Get Started Using Java Cryptography Securely touches upon the basics of Java crypto, followed by posts around various crypto primitives Cryptographically Secure Pseudo-Random Number Generator (CSPRNG), Encryption/Decryption, and Message Digests. We also released a Java Crypto Module for easier dockerization of injectable modules exposing Crypto services via an API.

Over the past year, the financial services industry has been challenged with pivoting its operations to a fully digital model, putting the security of its software center stage. Despite the unanticipated pivot, our recent State of Software Security v11 (SOSS) report found that the financial services industry has the smallest proportion of applications with security flaws compared to other sectors, along with the second-lowest prevalence of severe security flaws, and the best security flaw fix rate.

The PCI Security Standards Council (SSC) is a global organization that aims to protect payment transactions and consumer data by developing standards and services for payment software vendors that drive education, awareness, and implementation. Since payment software is constantly changing, the SSC is constantly evolving and adapting its standards to ensure that vulnerabilities and cyberattacks are minimized.