by Cody Dumont
August 21, 2023
From e-commerce to online banking, the world is interconnected with web applications. The internet provides a contactless method to conduct office meetings, engage with healthcare professionals, shop, attend classes, and more. Protecting data has never been more important. Failure to secure web applications can lead to serious financial and reputational consequences. According to statistics published in Tenable's Threat Landscape Report, web application vulnerabilities continue to repeatedly pose a significant threat to organizations.
Web application security refers to the practices employed to detect and mitigate threats and vulnerabilities that may compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of web applications. As the internet has evolved to become an integral part of how organizations conduct business, web applications have become increasing popular and essential to meet the requirements. This growing popularity of web applications and online transactions provides lucrative targets for cybercriminals. Data presented within this dashboard highlights the top most vulnerable web applications and assets at risk for exploitation.
This dashboard leverages data from Tenable Web App Scanning, a comprehensive and automated vulnerability scanning tool for modern web applications. Organizations can perform Dynamic Application Security Tests (DAST) on any application, anywhere, at any point in the application lifecycle. Of specific importance is the Tenable Web App Scanning ability to scan for vulnerabilities from the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 risks, and provide comprehensive and accurate vulnerability data.
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a non-profit foundation that provides community-driven consensus insight into web application security concerns. The OWASP Top 10 list highlights several different aspects of web-based security, such as Cross-Site Scripting attacks, security misconfigurations, and sensitive data exposure. The focus of the OWASP Top 10 is to reduce risk across the most vulnerable aspects of web applications across the internet. Following these guidelines enables organizations to reduce risk of organizational and customer data theft.
In addition, Common Vulnerability and Exposures (CVE), and other configuration tests provide insight into thousands of related vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. Vulnerability data presented in this dashboard leverages all the gathered web application vulnerability information to provide organizations with a method to break the vulnerability cycle. The data provided in the dashboard enables organizations to better communicate risk, prioritize patching efforts, and reduce the attack surface.
Security leaders need to SEE everything, PREDICT what matters most and ACT to address cyber risk and effectively align cybersecurity initiatives with business objectives. Tenable Security Center discovers and analyzes assets continuously to provide an accurate and unified view of an organization's security posture. The requirement for this dashboard is: Tenable Web App Scanning.Components
Top 100 Most Vulnerable Web Applications (Last 14 Days): The table displays a list of the vulnerabilities the application from most severe to least severe. This information enables analysts to prioritize remediation efforts by identifying the top vulnerabilities to remediate that will reduce the organization's overall attack surface.
Top 100 WAS Vulnerabilities by Plugins (Last 14 Days): This table provides a list of Web Application vulnerabilities that have been seen within the last 14 days as well as the total number of instances of each vulnerability. The Plugin Family is displayed as well as the Plugin ID and Severity of each vulnerability. This information enables analysts to prioritize remediation efforts by identifying the top vulnerabilities to remediate that will reduce the organization's overall attack surface.
Web App Vulnerabilities by State: This matrix provides a view into the vulnerability life cycle for web applications. Tracking web application vulnerabilities through each state provides management information on the progress of risk mitigation efforts.
Top 2021 OWASP Categories Discovered in the Last 14 Days: This matrix displays active Web Application vulnerabilities from Tenable Web App Security by OWASP category for 2021. Displayed is a row for assets and vulnerabilities for each OWASP category.