Software and SaaS companies
The product is the thing customers assess, and its security is now part of the sale.
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Product and Application Security
Your product is your attack surface
For software companies the product is where risk concentrates. We assess SaaS products and business-critical in-house applications across the lifecycle: how they are designed, built, tested, and operated, and how attackers abuse them once they are live. The result is one prioritized view of product risk your engineering organization can act on directly.
Frameworks and standards in this practice
- OWASP
- CIS Controls
Who it is for
Three situations this practice answers
Organizations running business-critical applications
An in-house system the business depends on has never been examined from the outside.
Companies whose customers require testing evidence
A security review or a certification asks for a penetration test report and a threat model.
What it solves
The problems clients bring to this practice
- A customer security review asks for a penetration test report and a threat model that do not exist.
- Scanners run in the pipeline and nobody triages what they produce.
- Authorization is enforced in the interface rather than in the API behind it.
- Credential stuffing and account takeover are treated as fraud rather than as security.
- Availability commitments in customer contracts have never been tested against a denial of service attack.
- Security findings arrive as a list engineering cannot act on.
What you receive
Named deliverables, not a summary of findings
Every engagement in this practice produces artifacts somebody outside your organization can read and rely on.
- A product security assessment covering architecture, development practice, identity and authorization design, abuse and fraud risk, and resilience.
- Threat models with trust boundaries and data flows, and a repeatable modeling practice your teams can run themselves.
- A secure code review of authorization logic, authentication flows, cryptography, business logic, and untrusted input handling.
- A tuned testing program across static, dynamic, interactive, and composition analysis, with triage workflow and remediation service levels.
- An API inventory including undocumented endpoints, with authorization, rate limit, and data exposure findings.
- A cloud configuration assessment against the CIS Benchmarks covering identity, network, workloads, infrastructure as code, secrets, and logging.
- Penetration test reports scoped to your risk profile and to your certification evidence needs.
- An abuse case catalog mapped to preventive and detective controls.
How an engagement works
The sequence, and what each step produces
Described as a sequence rather than a schedule. Duration depends on scope, and is agreed in the statement of work.
01
Map
Establish the attack surface: architecture, trust boundaries, data flows, APIs, and cloud footprint.
02
Test
Examine the running system and the code behind it, including the abuse that uses the product as designed.
03
Prioritize
Rank findings by exploitability and consequence, in the form your engineering backlog accepts.
04
Embed
Move the checks into the pipeline and the practice into the team, so the next release is assessed as it is built.
Services
19 services in this practice
Each has its own page setting out what it covers, who it is for, and what you receive.
- Product Security AssessmentA comprehensive security assessment of your SaaS product or in-house application, from development practice and architecture to fraud and resilience.Product security
- Secure Development Lifecycle AssessmentMeasure development practice against OWASP SAMM and embed security into the engineering workflow rather than bolting it on at release.Product security
- Application Architecture Review and Threat ModelingStructured review of application architecture, trust boundaries, and data flows, with formal threat models and a repeatable practice for your teams.Product security
- Secure Code ReviewExpert review of source code where scanners fall short: authorization logic, authentication flows, cryptography, business logic, and untrusted input.Product security
- Application Security Testing ProgramDesign and tune SAST, DAST, IAST, and SCA in your pipeline, with triage workflows and remediation service levels engineering teams can sustain.Product security
- Software Supply Chain SecurityAssess dependency and build pipeline risk: open source components, SBOM, artifact signing and provenance, and CI/CD pipeline security.Product security
- Identity, Authentication, and Authorization ReviewReview MFA, sessions, SSO, tokens, account recovery, and object-level authorization, where the most exploited application weaknesses are found.Product security
- Abuse and Fraud Risk AssessmentAssess account takeover, bot abuse, card testing, refund, promotion, and trial abuse, with an abuse case catalog mapped to preventive and detective controls.Risk and maturity
- Credential Attack Defense ProgramStop credential stuffing and account takeover with layered defenses: breached password screening, adaptive login, bot mitigation, and recovery hardening.Product security
- Availability and Denial of Service ResilienceAssess resistance to volumetric and application-layer DDoS across edge, CDN, WAF, rate limiting, autoscaling, and your contractual recovery objectives.Product security
- Multi-Tenant Isolation and Application Data ProtectionVerify tenant separation, encryption and key management, data residency, logging hygiene, and retention as actually implemented in your application.Product security
- API Security AssessmentInventory and test your API surface, including undocumented endpoints, authorization enforcement, rate limits, data exposure, and partner integrations.Product security
- Cloud and Infrastructure Security AssessmentAssess AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud and supporting infrastructure against CIS Benchmarks: IAM, network, workloads, IaC, secrets, logging, and drift.Product security
- Penetration TestingNetwork, web, mobile, API, cloud, wireless, and social engineering penetration testing, scoped to your risk profile and certification evidence needs.Product security
- Vulnerability Assessment and Management ProgramAssess your vulnerability position and build a program with risk-based prioritization, remediation service levels, exception governance, and metrics.Risk and maturity
- Adversary Simulation and Red TeamObjective-based adversary simulation that tests detection and response rather than control inventory, with optional purple team collaboration.Product security
- Responsible Disclosure and Bug Bounty Program DesignEstablish a responsible disclosure or bug bounty program with policy, safe harbor, scope, triage workflow, reward criteria, and remediation handoff.Product security
- Developer Security Training and Security ChampionsSecure coding training built on the vulnerabilities in your own codebase, plus a security champions program that spreads capability across engineering.Product security
- Financial Crime and Transaction Risk AssessmentFor fintech and financial services: assess AML, KYC, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, and fraud detection as working technical controls.Risk and maturity
Questions
Frequently asked questions
What is credential stuffing?
Credential stuffing is an automated attack in which criminals test large volumes of usernames and passwords stolen in other breaches against your login page, exploiting password reuse to take over accounts. Effective defense layers breached password screening, multifactor and risk-based authentication, bot detection, rate limiting, and monitoring for account takeover.
How is a product security assessment different from a penetration test?
A penetration test examines the running application for exploitable weaknesses at a point in time. A product security assessment also examines how the product is designed and built, including architecture, threat models, development practice, identity and authorization design, abuse and fraud risk, and resilience, so the causes of vulnerabilities are addressed rather than only their symptoms.
Do you assess applications that are not SaaS?
Yes. We assess in-house and customer-facing applications of every kind, including web and mobile applications, APIs, and internal business systems, wherever the organization depends on them.
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