Organizations are increasingly agile today, producing and deploying software applications faster than ever before. But this requires all the elements in the software development life cycle (SDLC) to work together cohesively. Security practices in the SDLC become especially important, given that more than half of security flaws result from preventable coding mistakes. Ensuring that developers are on board with security practices is even more critical to improve the process efficiency.

Today’s software development life cycle includes a variety of quality and security testing techniques at every stage. Frequent testing throughout the DevOps pipeline is imperative considering the ever-increasing pace of development. One of the most common testing methods that companies use to ensure the products they are pushing out are secure and high-quality is black box testing.

In the world of cybersecurity preparedness, there are a variety of strategies organizations large and small can take to help protect their networks and data from cyber-attacks. One such strategy involves an organization testing its own environment for security vulnerabilities. But because security weaknesses come in different forms, it’s necessary to have a focused security team that comprehensively searches for vulnerabilities that go beyond simple risk assessments.

The application layer continues to be the most attacked and hardest to defend in the enterprise software stack. With the proliferation of tools aimed at preventing an attack, it’s no wonder the application security testing market is valued at US 4.48 billion. Forrester’s market taxonomy breaks up the application security testing tools market into two main categories: security scanning tools and runtime protection tools.