Today’s technology depends on open source software to quickly innovate and release new functionality, exposing companies without Application Security (AppSec) to increased risk. AppSec is the practices and tools used to find, fix, and prevent software vulnerabilities that can cause breaches and legal action when software is used improperly. AppSec is particularly important given 98% of codebases use open source software and when developers find open source libraries and components to use, they’re not always checking to make sure it’s vulnerability free first.
AppSec helps companies reduce the likelihood and impact of cyber attacks, but traditional AppSec tools often require development and IT teams to spend time on repetitive, manual tasks. SOOS changes all that with application security that’s easy to use and customized to your business.
Continue reading to learn how customization and configuration in application security can save your team even more time and help you focus on what matters most to your business.
The Importance of Customization in Application Security
Application security is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Every business has unique risks, compliance requirements, and operational constraints that necessitate tailored security approaches. Businesses define acceptable risk differently, which matters because preventing 100% of software vulnerabilities is nearly impossible. Modern development teams manage numerous applications of varying ages, languages, and components. Since security hasn’t always been a priority, resolving all past issues while continuing to develop new software at an acceptable pace is unrealistic for most companies. Specific benefits of customizing and configuring application security to your business include:
1. Aligns Security with Business Priorities
Not all vulnerabilities present the same level of risk to every business. Customizing security settings ensures that the most critical threats to your organization are addressed first.
2. Reduces False Positives and Developer Fatigue
Configuring security tools to recognize relevant threats reduces noise from false positives, helping developers focus on genuine risks without unnecessary disruptions. For example, getting notified of a potential vulnerability in a package version that your software doesn’t use isn’t helpful and is a distraction from important work. Any application security tool you use should also be able to detect what software you’re using, so while some manual configuration is essential to set an acceptable level of risk and tailor business-specific prioritization, the tool should automatically detect and be able to tell which vulnerabilities are present based on the libraries and packages your software uses.
3. Enhances Compliance Management
Different industries face varying compliance requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2). Custom security configurations help businesses meet regulatory demands without excessive overhead.
4. Improves Incident Response Efficiency and Time to Remediation (TTR)
Customized alerting and response workflows ensure that the right teams receive notifications at the right time, reducing response times, and accelerating mitigation efforts.
Key Application Security Configurations to Tailor
Customization and configuration in application security allow organizations to fine-tune their defenses while continuing to develop new software, ensuring that security measures align with business objectives and operational efficiency. But what specific aspects of application security should be tailored to fit your business’s specific needs? Read on for the high level areas of application security to customize to save time and optimize development velocity while maintaining software security.
1. Risk Tolerance and Policy Management
The best application security tools allow you to define your risk tolerance levels for different applications and environments. When you can customize vulnerability severity thresholds based on business impact and set organization-wide security standards that developers can adhere to automatically, you take mental burden and manual work off of your team and ensure consistent software security practices. The ability to configure scanning tools to exclude known, accepted risks also ensures you can reduce noise and keep your team focused on the issues that have to be resolved.
2. Security Scanning Rules
Customizing the frequency of automated security scans is essential for balancing security and efficiency. Frequent scans, such as on every code commit, help catch vulnerabilities early in development, preventing issues from reaching production. This approach is ideal for fast-moving development teams that want to integrate security seamlessly into their CI/CD pipeline. On the other hand, scanning live applications daily ensures that newly discovered vulnerabilities in dependencies or infrastructure are identified and addressed promptly without overloading systems with unnecessary scans. Businesses need this flexibility to align security practices with their development speed, risk tolerance, and operational needs. Also essential is selecting lightweight scanning tools that return results quickly, to avoid pauses in development and ensure you can scale automated testing as you have more applications that need it, without slowing other automated tests down.
3. Alerting and Notifications
Another important area of customization for application security is tailoring alerts to prevent notification fatigue while ensuring critical alerts reach the right teams. Integrate security alerts with existing DevOps and InfoSec workflows (e.g. Slack and Jira) and use configurable rules to route issues to the right people or teams based on issue type and priority. SOOS integrates with Issue Managers so tickets can be auto-created and responsible parties can be notified automatically, saving the team from manual work and speeding time to remediation.
4. Compliance and Reporting
An often overlooked and yet still important area of application security is compliance and reporting, which also benefits from customization. Using an all-in-one application security platform like SOOS gives you the ability to configure automated compliance reports to align with regulatory audits. With SOOS, you can also set up dashboards for stakeholders that provide real-time visibility into security posture and are customized by role, so software engineering leaders and legal team members can get a comprehensive view of the data and reporting that matters most to them, without having to sift through the data and reporting that doesn’t. This feature is a standard part of the SOOS platform so no work is required to set it role-specific views, though customization options are available.
Conclusion
Customizing and configuring application security ensures that security measures align with business needs while minimizing unnecessary friction. By tailoring software security policies, acceptable risk, scanning rules, alerts, and dashboards and reporting, organizations can improve efficiency, reduce risk, and maintain compliance without slowing down development teams. Investing in flexible, configurable security solutions empowers businesses to stay agile while maintaining robust security defenses.
