Application security awareness is hot today, with multiple new industry initiatives aimed at promoting and helping companies write more secure code.Forrester Consulting (commissioned by Veracode ) surveyed application developers and security/risk professionals in 200 organizations in the U.S. and U.K. Result showed that secure software development programs are rare - only 34 percent of them have a development program that integrates security. Also, 62 percent of organizations in the last 12 months suffered data breaches as a result of bugs being exploited in their major applications. Around 45 percent said application security is a big piece of their overall security strategy, but that they will likely scale back those initiatives in their next budget cycle. Close to 20 percent say their funding for application security will remain intact. Meanwhile, 57 percent don't have application security training programs, and only 13 percent said they know the security quality of all of their mission-critical applications. But they are vetting the security of software they purchase, as 60 percent say they use (or are about to use) third-party security assessments. According to report, the key inhibitors to deploying an application security risk management program are people and processes (each of which got around 80 percent of the votes). Organizations Veracode and Forrester Consulting will discuss the complete findings in the survey in a Webinar on May 7. More information can be found at darkREADING web site.
