Bad bots, broken APIs and supply chain attacks biggest challenge facing organisations

Organisations are struggling with bad bots, broken APIs, and supply chain attacks.

That's the findings of a new report from Barracuda, a provider of cloud-enabled security solutions.

Commissioned by Barracuda, the state of application security in 2021 research surveyed 750 application security decision makers responsible for their organisations application development and security to get their perspectives on data breaches, top application security vulnerabilities, and the most important product capabilities needed to defend against multi-vector application attacks.

Overall, the findings indicate that more needs to be done to protect against application security threats, particularly newer threats like bot attacks, API attacks, and supply chain attacks.

Highlights from the report include:

On average, respondent organisations were successfully breached twice in the past 12 months as a direct result of an application vulnerability. 
o    72% of respondents say their organisation suffered at least one breach from an application vulnerability.

o    32% say their organisation suffered two breaches due to an applications vulnerability.

o    14% were breached three times for due to application vulnerabilities.

The range of application security-related challenges facing organisations extends beyond difficulties securing multiple attack vectors.

Respondents identified their top application security challenges as bad bots (43%), software supply chain attacks (39%), vulnerability detection (38%), and securing APIs (37%).

The report found bot-based attacks are the most likely contributor to successful security breaches resulting from application vulnerabilities in the past 12 months, while 44% of respondents say bot attacks contributed to a successful security breach that exploited a vulnerability in the organisations applications in the last 12 months.
 
"Applications have been steadily rising as one of the top attack vectors in recent years, and the rapid shift to remote work in 2020 only intensified this," says Tim Jefferson, SVP, Engineering for Data, Networks and Application Security, Barracuda.

"Organisations are struggling to keep up with the pace of these attacks, particularly newer threats like bot attacks, API attacks, and supply chain attacks, and they need help filling these gaps effectively," he says.

The survey, conducted by independent market researcher Vanson Bourne, includes responses from 750 application security decision makers responsible for their organisations application development and security. They came from organisations in companies with 500 or more employees in the U.S., EMEA, and APAC.