Serverless Users Not Adopting Application Security Best Practices
June 28, 2018

More than a third of companies that use serverless functions are not employing any application security best practices and are not using any tools or standard security methodologies to secure them, according to the State of Serverless Security survey, conducted by PureSec.

35% of companies that responded to the survey told PureSec they had no security guidelines or tools for securing their serverless code, potentially exposing the functions to a variety of application-level attacks.

Those companies who do use tools or security best practices to help secure their serverless often used multiple solutions including static code analysis (77%) and manual penetration testing (72%) to detect vulnerabilities, but mostly don't employ any kind of runtime protection that could prevent attacks in real time.

The survey revealed a mixed picture when it comes to security posture for companies using cutting-edge serverless platforms like AWS Lambda, Microsoft Azure Functions and Google Cloud Functions. On the one hand, almost half of the responses to the survey (48%) said they want more security visibility into their serverless apps. Companies with only a few serverless functions were more likely to be satisfied with security visibility, while those with more functions were much less comfortable. At present, there is limited visibility into serverless functions across the board, which is a consequence of abstracting away the environment and the lack of real-time application-layer security monitoring solutions.

Despite this, though, companies are largely confident in the security of their serverless apps. 76% say they are confident or very confident in the "resilience of their serverless applications to cyber attacks". Security confidence was correlated with security testing; companies that test more were more likely to be confident in their security.

There was significant confusion over who in a company should "own" serverless application security, with answers roughly evenly choosing developers, DevSecOps, DevOps, AppSec and Security Engineers. In part, this could reflect different companies' broader internal security practices, but it does suggest a lack of clarity on who should be in charge of security of pure code when there's no clear infrastructure to secure or to deploy application security solutions on.

However, no respondents said that application security was the responsibility of the cloud provider, reflecting an awareness that serverless application security is ultimately the responsibility of the application owner rather than the cloud provider as part of the "shared responsibility model."

Companies are using serverless computing for varied purposes. Almost two-thirds (65%) of companies said they used serverless for cloud automation tasks that might previously have been handled by scripts, while 45% said they deployed serverless as the back-end for running web sites. Other popular uses included data processing (38%) and as providing back-end services for mobile applications (35%).

"Many software companies quickly switched to serverless computing and are using it in diverse and creative ways, from websites to chatbots to the Internet of Things," commented PureSec CEO and co-founder Shaked Zin. "Serverless is so versatile it's easy to quickly create and deploy functions without fully thinking about the security implications."

"The security paradigm is different for serverless applications," added PureSec CTO and co-founder Ory Segal. "Serverless functions exist in the cloud, outside of a company's "wall" of traditional security solutions. Cloud providers do an excellent job of securing the underlying infrastructure, but companies still have responsibility for the code itself."

About the Survey: The online survey conducted in April and May questioned 304 technology professionals to get an understanding of a fast-emerging market.

Share this

Industry News

March 18, 2024

Kubiya.ai announces the launch of its DevOps Digital Agents.

March 18, 2024

Aviatrix® introduced Aviatrix Distributed Cloud Firewall for Kubernetes, a distributed cloud networking and network security solution for containerized enterprise applications and workloads.

March 18, 2024

Stride announces the general availability of Stride Conductor, its new autonomous coding product that transforms the software development landscape.

March 14, 2024

CircleCI unveiled CircleCI releases, which enables developers to automate the release orchestration process directly from the CircleCI UI.

March 13, 2024

Fermyon™ Technologies announces Fermyon Platform for Kubernetes, a WebAssembly platform for Kubernetes.

March 13, 2024

Akuity announced a new offer targeted at Enterprises and businesses where security and compliance are key.

March 13, 2024

New Relic launched new capabilities for New Relic IAST (Interactive Application Security Testing), including proof-of-exploit reporting for application security testing.

March 12, 2024

OutSystems announced AI Agent Builder, a new solution in the OutSystems Developer Cloud platform that makes it easy for IT leaders to incorporate generative AI (GenAI) powered applications into their digital transformation strategy, as well as govern the use of AI to ensure standardization and security.

March 12, 2024

Mirantis announced significant updates to Lens Desktop that makes working with Kubernetes easier by simplifying operations, improving efficiency, and increasing productivity. Lens 2024 Early Access is now available to Lens users.

March 12, 2024

Codezero announced a $3.5 million seed-funding round led by Ballistic Ventures, the venture capital firm dedicated exclusively to funding entrepreneurs and innovations in cybersecurity.

March 11, 2024

Prismatic launched a code-native integration building experience.

March 07, 2024

Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. announced its Check Point Infinity Platform has been ranked as the #1 Zero Trust Platform in the latest Miercom Zero Trust Platform Assessment.

March 07, 2024

Tricentis announced the launch and availability of SAP Test Automation by Tricentis as an SAP Solution Extension.

March 07, 2024

Netlify announced the general availability of the AI-enabled deploy assist.

March 07, 2024

DataStax announced a new integration with Airbyte that simplifies the process of building production-ready GenAI applications with structured and unstructured data.