Very few organizations remain untouched by the rapid pace of modern application development. However, this swift advancement also brings an increased vulnerability to threats. Today’s security approaches often fall short in providing adequate solutions for microservices architectures, whether operating on-premises or in cloud environments. At this critical juncture, Dynatrace Application Security elevates security to the highest level with its automated and AI-driven solutions, enabling organizations to achieve their desired security standards.
- What is Dynatrace Application Security?
Dynatrace Application Security is a solution designed to instantly identify security vulnerabilities in your applications and swiftly implement measures to address them. It offers real-time detection and automated security management, which are integral components of modern application development processes.
Real-Time Vulnerability Detection and Management with Snyk and Dynatrace Integration:
The Snyk and Dynatrace integration offers a powerful solution for elevating security in modern software development processes. As managing vulnerabilities becomes increasingly challenging at every stage of the DevSecOps process, it is often observed that applications undergo insufficient security scans. At this point, the new solution, which combines Snyk Container’s scanning capabilities with Dynatrace’s observability features, enables teams to detect vulnerabilities before moving to production by simplifying container scans and security status monitoring.
Dynatrace connects to the Snyk database every 5 minutes to check for newly discovered vulnerabilities and compares these with applications and other metrics in the Dynatrace environment. This enables real-time vulnerability detection, moving beyond traditional periodic scans. As a result, both development and production stages benefit from complete security visibility, allowing teams to detect, assess, and promptly address vulnerabilities. Additionally, the integration illuminates AppSec blind spots, creating a safer and more efficient work environment for both development and security teams.
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- The Application Security interface in Dynatrace consists of four main sections.
1- Application Security overview:
After installing the Dynatrace OneAgent on your application server, it automatically detects running processes, logically groups them, and injects code-level monitoring into all services running on those processes. This enables immediate detection of vulnerabilities within application components, APIs, and infrastructure elements, minimizing security breach risks. This process is fully automated, eliminating the need for manual intervention, allowing security teams to focus on more critical tasks and preventing time loss. Dynatrace provides recommendations for identified vulnerabilities and manages automatic remediation processes. By leveraging AI and machine learning technologies, Dynatrace analyzes and prioritizes potential security threats.
2- Third-party vulnerabilities:
Dynatrace offers a powerful solution for identifying and managing vulnerabilities stemming from third-party software components. Modern applications often rely on external libraries, services, and tools, which increases security risks. Since third-party software components are not directly controlled by developers, unresolved vulnerabilities within these components can quickly create significant system-wide risks.
In this interface, you can see the Davis Security Advisor sections, which list the total number of vulnerabilities in your environment based on the scoring levels determined by the Davis Security Score. The advisor also provides recommendations for addressing these vulnerabilities.
- Davis Security Advisor Nedir?
The purpose of Davis Security Advisor is to guide you in addressing vulnerabilities more effectively in your environment and to help prioritize which vulnerabilities should be resolved first. Davis Security Advisor simplifies the remediation process by grouping specific libraries that cause vulnerabilities. When calculating recommendations, it disregards certain versions of libraries. All displayed libraries contain known vulnerabilities and should be updated to the latest version. Recommendations are ranked based on the severity of third-party vulnerabilities, meaning a recommendation for a critical vulnerability takes precedence over one for a high-level vulnerability.
The severity of a vulnerability is calculated through the Davis Security Score (DSS), allowing you to focus on vulnerabilities that genuinely impact your environment rather than those with only theoretical impact.
- Dynatrace Davis Security Score Nedir?
Davis in Dynatrace uses the CVSS score from the Snyk database as a starting point and dynamically adjusts this score by considering contextual factors. The process begins with the base CVSS score and then modifies it based on the specific characteristics of the environment and threat landscape. Here’s a breakdown of how the Davis Security Score is calculated:
- CVSS Base Score:
- The CVSS base score measures the fundamental characteristics of the vulnerability and serves as the initial starting point.
- Context Added by Davis Regarding Exposure to the Internet:
- Davis adjusts the security score of a third-party vulnerability based on its exposure to the internet, using the “Modified Attack Vector (MAV)” metric.
- If the original “Attack Vector” value indicates that the vulnerability could be exploited via network access but, based on topology information, it is determined that the service is not actually exposed, the MAV value is lowered.
- In other cases, the MAV value remains equal to the original AV value.
- Context Added by Davis Regarding Reachable Data Assets:
- Davis adjusts the security score of a third-party vulnerability based on reachable data assets, using the “Modified Confidentiality (MC)” and “Modified Integrity (MI)” metrics.
- If the original confidentiality (C) and integrity (I) values indicate a potential for data leakage or manipulation but Davis’s assessment finds that no data assets are accessible by the affected service, the MC and MI values are lowered.
- In other cases, the MC and MI values remain equal to the original C and I values.
- Final Score:
- The final score is calculated based on the results of the above two evaluations.
- For instance, based on the assessment of internet exposure and accessible data assets, the score might be reduced by 23%, lowering the vulnerability’s severity from high to medium.
Through this process, Davis provides a more accurate, context-specific evaluation of security risks, aligning the security score more closely with actual risks. With the Davis Security Score, teams can better understand their security posture, prioritize vulnerabilities for remediation, and optimize their security strategies.
3- Code-Level Vulnerabilities:
Dynatrace’s Code-Level Vulnerabilities feature focuses on identifying and analyzing security vulnerabilities within your application code in detail. This feature helps reduce security risks by detecting and reporting potential vulnerabilities either during the application development stage or while the application is running. Dynatrace performs dynamic analysis at the code level to identify vulnerabilities both in third-party libraries used by your application and in your own software.
It also provides specific recommendations for resolving vulnerabilities, such as updating a library or modifying an insecure code structure.
Through this interface, you can view detailed information on the attack vector used to exploit the vulnerability, including source IP, entry point, vulnerability, and target details.
4- Attacks:
In Dynatrace, an attack refers to malicious activities that exploit vulnerabilities in software applications. These attacks aim to gain unauthorized access to applications or cause damage by leveraging specific security flaws. Examples of such attacks include the exploitation of vulnerabilities like SQL injection, command injection, or Log4Shell.
Dynatrace’s Application Security module can detect and block these types of attacks in real time. This is achieved based on insights at the code level where vulnerabilities are located and through process analysis. Moreover, this protection is provided automatically, without requiring additional configuration. As a result, attacks can be stopped as soon as they begin, preventing damage to the system.
Dynatrace’s real-time attack protection goes beyond known vulnerabilities, offering defense against new and unidentified attacks as well. This extends beyond traditional methods (such as Web Application Firewalls – WAF or Runtime Application Self-Protection – RASP solutions), as Dynatrace operates efficiently in dynamic, large-scale environments, making accurate detections without generating false positives.
In summary, in Dynatrace, an attack is a malicious attempt that leverages a vulnerability, and Dynatrace excels in detecting and blocking these attacks instantly.
Ultimately, Dynatrace Application Security helps organizations enhance their security levels in a rapidly evolving digital world, enabling a secure and sustainable application development process. It’s important to remember that security is not just a requirement but an integral part of modern business strategies. With Dynatrace, maximizing this strategy has become easier.
