Application Security in the ISO 27001 2013 Environment - Second edition

Web application security as part of an ISO 27001-compliant information security management system

Web application vulnerabilities are a common point of intrusion for cyber criminals. As cyber security threats proliferate and attacks escalate, and as applications play an increasingly critical role in business, organisations urgently need to focus on web application security to protect their customers, their interests and their assets.

Although awareness of the need for web application security is increasing, security levels are nowhere near enough: according to the 2015 Trustwave Global Security Report, 98% of tested web applications were vulnerable to attack.

SMEs in particular should be very concerned about web application security: many use common, off-the-shelf applications and plugins – such as Internet Explorer, Java, Silverlight, and Adobe Reader and Flash Player – which often contain exploitable vulnerabilities.

Application Security in the ISO 27001:2013 Environment explains how organisations can implement and maintain effective security practices to protect their web applications – and the servers on which they reside – as part of a wider information security management system by following the guidance set out in the international standard for information security management, ISO 27001.

The book describes the methods used by criminal hackers to attack organisations via their web applications and provides a detailed explanation of how you can combat such attacks by employing the guidance and controls set out in ISO 27001.

Product overview

• Second edition, updated to reflect ISO 27001:2013 as well as best practices relating to cryptography, including the PCI SSC’s denigration of SSL in favour of TLS.
• Provides a full introduction to ISO 27001 and information security management systems, including implementation guidance.
• Describes risk assessment, management and treatment approaches.
• Examines common types of web app security attack, including injection attacks, cross-site scripting, and attacks on authentication and session management, explaining how each can compromise ISO 27001 control objectives and showing how to test for each attack type.
• Discusses the ISO 27001 controls relevant to application security.
• Lists useful web app security metrics and their relevance to ISO 27001 controls.
• Provides a four-step approach to threat profiling, and describes application security review and testing approaches.
• Sets out guidelines and the ISO 27001 controls relevant to them, covering:
  • input validation
  • authentication
  • authorisation
  • sensitive data handling and the use of TLS rather than SSL
  • session management
  • error handling and logging
• Describes the importance of security as part of the web app development process