Navigating the Maze of Vulnerabilities with Strategic ASPM

aspm vulnerability Phoenix Security

What is the magic formula to overcome the vulnerability of an overlord?  With over 204,000 CVEs, more than half deemed high or critical, the real challenge lies in identifying vulnerabilities and prioritising them in sync with business and development needs. This is where ASPM (Application Security Posture Management) steps in as a guiding light.

You can find more on the vulnerability growth in the Vulnerability Visualizers that explain concepts used in this post like exploitation, CISA KEV

CISA KEV: https://phoenix.security/what-is-cisa-kev-main/ 

Exploit in the wild: https://phoenix.security/what-is-exploitability/ 

vulnerability, cve, growth, cvss per year, first, epss

Imagine the current scenario where you have vulnerabilities in software and operational runtime environments growing at a rate of 35% year on year, and with the current rate of growth, we are on track for 500K, half a million vulnerabilities by 2028 

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CVE Vulnerability Projection by 2030

The Current Challenge: A Balancing Act between ASPM and Operational Security

Imagine your Jira overflowing with every security finding marked urgent based solely on CVSS scores. This well-intentioned but impractical approach burdens product teams, who already struggle between integrating new features for business growth and tackling security vulnerabilities. Prioritization is a way to focus more on the vulnerabilities that matter, but is it sufficient?

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Application security and environment security overlords

Diverging Perspectives Business vs Development vs security

  • Business Perspective: Companies need to stay secure but without hampering growth and innovation. An endless list of fixes can be a roadblock to business agility.
  • Developer Perspective: Developers favour a concise, prioritized list of security issues. A manageable list of 10-15 key vulnerabilities allows for efficient workload management and contributes to a secure product.
  • Security Perspective: Security teams aim for visible progress. They advocate for initiatives like security champion programs to foster a security-first mindset within development teams.

The Overwhelming Reality of Operation

The task seems daunting, with the bulk of CVEs ranking high in severity. Yet, filtering these through exploitability and fixability lenses drastically reduces the number. This focus is vital for aligning with business objectives.

Demystify vulnerability overload: a Data-Driven approach with ASPM and Shifting Everywhere.

The solution lies in connecting three pivotal elements: business goals, security imperatives, and development capabilities. Embracing a data-driven ASPM approach allows organizations to prioritize vulnerabilities that pose the most significant risk. This method ensures that security efforts align with business and development objectives, transcending the mere checkbox approach.

aspm, application security, approach on vulnerability management

What is ASPM? A Beacon in Vulnerability Management

Application security posture management analyzes security signals across software development, deployment and operation to improve visibility, better manage vulnerabilities and enforce controls. Security leaders can use ASPM to improve application security efficacy and better manage risk.

Gartner on ASPM

ASPM emerges as a beacon in this scenario, offering a strategic, data-informed pathway. It transforms an overwhelming vulnerability list into a focused, actionable set of tasks. This alignment propels security measures and dovetails with business objectives, ensuring a secure yet agile business environment. For a deeper dive on the innovation insight, refer to the analysis of Gartner on ASPM

Conclusion

Effective vulnerability management in the age of endless vulnerabilities isn’t about a frenzied race to patch every issue. It’s about a strategic, informed approach that resonates with overarching business goals. ASPM paves the way for this synchronization, ensuring security measures are both impactful and business-oriented.

Let’s journey towards a more secure, business-aligned cybersecurity environment. Share your insights and experiences in the comments and join the conversation!

How Phoenix Security Can Help

attack graph phoenix security
ASPM

Phoenix Security helps organizations identify and trace which systems have vulnerabilities, understanding the relation between code and cloud. One of the significant challenges in securing applications is knowing where and how frameworks like Struts are used. ASPM tools can scan the application portfolio to identify instances of Struts, mapping out where it is deployed across the organization. This information is crucial for targeted security measures and efficient patch management. Phoenix Security’s robust Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) system is adept at not just managing, but preempting the exploitation of vulnerabilities through its automated identification system. This system prioritises critical vulnerabilities, ensuring that teams can address the most pressing threats first, optimising resource allocation and remediation efforts.

Get in control of your Application Security posture and Vulnerability management

The Role of Application Security Posture Management (ASPM):

ASPM plays a vital role in managing and securing applications like those built with Apache Struts, Log4j and other vulnerabilities. It involves continuous assessment, monitoring, and improvement of the security posture of applications. ASPM tools can:

  1. Identify and Track Struts Components: Locate where Struts is implemented within the application infrastructure.
  2. Vulnerability Management: Detect known vulnerabilities in Struts and prioritize them for remediation.
  3. Configuration Monitoring: Ensure Struts configurations adhere to best security practices.
  4. Compliance: Check if the usage of Struts aligns with relevant cybersecurity regulations and standards.

By leveraging Phoenix Security, you not only unravel the potential threats but also take a significant stride in vulnerability management, ensuring your application security remains current and focuses on the key vulnerabilities.

Francesco is an internationally renowned public speaker, with multiple interviews in high-profile publications (eg. Forbes), and an author of numerous books and articles, who utilises his platform to evangelize the importance of Cloud security and cutting-edge technologies on a global scale.

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From our Blog

Phoenix Security has integrated Semgrep to enhance code-to-cloud security coverage, bringing high-performance static analysis and Software Composition Analysis (SCA) into its Application Security Posture Management platform. This integration empowers DevSecOps teams with faster triage, contextual vulnerability management, and precise prioritization across cloud-native environments including AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Alfonso Eusebio
The team at Phoenix Security pleased to bring you another set of new application security (ASPM) features and improvements for vulnerability management across application and cloud security engines. This release builds on top of previous releases with key additions and progress across multiple areas of the platform. Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) Enhancements • New Weighted Asset Risk Formula – Refined risk aggregation for tailored vulnerability management. • Auto-Approval of Risk Exceptions – Accelerate mitigation by automating security approvals. • Enhanced Risk Explorer & Business Unit Insights – Monitor and analyze risk exposure by business units for better prioritization. Vulnerability & Asset Management • Link Findings to Existing Tickets – Seamless GitHub, ServiceNow, and Azure DevOps integration. • Multi-Finding Ticketing for ADO – Group multiple vulnerabilities in a single ticket for better workflow management. • Filter by Business Unit, CWE, Ownership, and Deployment Environment – Target vulnerabilities with precision using advanced filtering. Cyber Threat Intelligence & Security Enhancements • Cyber Threat Intelligence Premium – Access 128,000+ exploits for better exploitability and fixability metrics. • SBOM, Container SBOM & Open Source Artifact Analysis – Conduct deep security analysis with reachability insights. • Enhanced Lacework Container Management – Fetch and analyze running container details for better security reporting. • REST API Enhancements – Use asset tags for automated deployments and streamline security processes. Other Key Updates • CVE & CWE Columns Added – Compare vulnerabilities more effectively. • Custom Status Management for Findings – Personalize security workflows with custom status configurations. • Impact & Risk Explorer Side Panel – Gain heatmap-based insights into vulnerability distribution and team risk impact. 🚀 Stay ahead of vulnerabilities, optimize risk assessment, and enhance security efficiency with Phoenix Security’s latest features! 🚀
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We don’t need more tools. We need a new way of thinking. Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) promises the world, but most teams crumble under tool sprawl, silos, and endless ticket queues. That’s why I built IronClad™ — a brutally simple, brutally effective operating model that fuses ASPM with decentralized ownership and ruthless clarity. This isn’t theory. It’s how security teams can actually win: small empowered squads, zero ambiguity, and mission-first remediation. If you’re tired of drowning in dashboards and ready to rethink how your teams build, secure, and scale, this is the blueprint. 👉 Read how ASPM + IronClad™ flips the script on vulnerability management.
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The journey of securing an organization’s application landscape varies dramatically, depending on where a company stands in its maturity. Early-stage startups with small security teams face challenges not only with vulnerabilities but also with scaling their security processes in line with their growth. On the flip side, established enterprises struggle with managing complex environments, prioritizing remediation, and dealing with vast amounts of vulnerabilities while staying ahead of sophisticated threats. For startups, the focus is clear—establish visibility and ensure core security practices are in place. Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) tools provide a straightforward, automated approach to detecting vulnerabilities and enforcing policies. These solutions help reduce risk quickly without overburdening small security teams. Mature organizations, on the other hand, are tackling a different set of problems. With the sheer number of vulnerabilities and an increasingly complicated threat landscape, enterprises need to fine-tune their approach. The goal shifts toward intelligent remediation, leveraging real-time threat intelligence and advanced risk prioritization. ASPM tools at this stage do more than just detect vulnerabilities—they provide context, enable proactive decision-making, and streamline the entire remediation process. The emergence of AI-assisted code generation has further complicated security in both environments. These tools, while speeding up development, are often responsible for introducing new vulnerabilities into applications at a faster pace than traditional methods. The challenge is clear: AI-generated code can hide flaws that are difficult to catch in the rush of innovation. Both startups and enterprises need to adjust their security posture to account for these new risks. ASPM platforms, like Phoenix Security, provide automated scanning of code before it hits production, ensuring that flaws don’t make it past the first line of defense. Meanwhile, organizations are also grappling with the backlog crisis in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). A staggering number of CVEs remain unprocessed, leaving many businesses with limited data on which to base their patching decisions. While these delays leave companies vulnerable, Phoenix Security steps in by cross-referencing CVE data with known exploits and live threat intelligence, helping organizations stay ahead despite the lag in official vulnerability reporting. Whether just starting their security program or managing a complex infrastructure, organizations need a toolset that adapts with them. Phoenix Security enables businesses of any size to prioritize vulnerabilities based on actual risk, not just theoretical impact, helping security teams navigate the evolving threat landscape with speed and accuracy.
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