What exactly are application security controls?
Applications provide access to valuable organizational data and system resources, making them a target for hackers and malicious actors. To secure your software, devices, users, network, and data, you need application security controls—technology-independent collections of policies, procedures, and standards.
While developers are key to embedding security into the code, application security controls are a shared responsibility across your entire organization.
But how can you design effective security controls for different projects?
OWASP and MITRE ATT&CK offer guidelines every organization can follow no matter how varied their software development requirements may be. OWASP suggests using threat modeling, beginning with analyzing risks in the environment, while MITRE ATT&CK helps identify high-risk attack techniques and adversary behaviors, which you can then use in your threat-modeling efforts.
Combining these with structured threat-modeling frameworks such as STRIDE or PASTA can yield a complete and systematic approach to assessing application threats.
Security engineers and architects can then design controls that address all relevant questions:
Who is responsible for the control?
What is being protected?
When is the control validated?
Where is it applied?
Why is it necessary?
How does the control function?
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Functions of application security controls
NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF 2.0), organizes security controls into five core functions:
Identify: Asset inventory, risk assessment, and governance.
Protect: IAM, encryption, network segmentation, and secure configurations
Detect: Continuous monitoring, anomaly detection, and security logging
Respond: Incident response planning and containment strategies
Recover: Backup strategies, business continuity, and disaster recovery
In each area, these controls are designed to mitigate risks, including vulnerabilities, exploits, and data breaches in three major ways:
Evaluate the current and desired cybersecurity posture, identify gaps, and track progress.
Organize and rank actions to manage risks in line with mission requirements and regulatory standards.
Establish a unified framework for discussing cybersecurity risks, capabilities, and needs both internally and externally.
Types of application security controls
Designing application security controls can be overwhelming, especially with the numerous controls at your disposal. You can start by reviewing their various classifications according to NIST IR 8286, which categorizes them into five groups based on how each control functions.
Preventive controls: Stop vulnerabilities from being exploited before an incident occurs
Detective controls: Identify and alert when a security breach or suspicious activity occurs
Corrective controls: Restore systems and reduce impact after an incident
Deterrent controls: Discourage attackers by making consequences visible
Compensating controls: Provide an alternative means to manage risk when primary controls fall short
Primary controls
As seen above, there are three main control groups: preventive, detective, and corrective.
Enforcing strong password policies, updating software regularly, and using encryption are all examples of preventive controls. These are key because they prevent vulnerabilities from the get-go.
Of course, threats do slip through, and when they do, detective controls will spot them and corrective controls will then handle them. And since an exploit might have already occurred, you want the time between detection and correction to be as short as possible to minimize damage.
Secondary controls
In addition to the three primary types of application security controls, deterrent and compensating controls take action throughout the application lifecycle.
Deterrent controls aim to discourage unauthorized or harmful behavior. For example, companies often use strict penalties like firing or taking legal action against employees who break security rules.
Compensating controls act as a backup when primary security measures aren't feasible. For example, if an application cannot enforce strict MFA due to legacy system constraints, a compensating measure could be to enforce strict network access controls or monitor login patterns with anomaly detection.
Note: Application security controls can also be categorized by asset type (e.g., software, devices, data, network), level of automation (e.g., manual, automated), and focus area (e.g., testing controls, log controls, access controls).
Even with any and all controls in place, you can only minimize risks, not eliminate them. If the residual risks fall outside acceptable limits, the risk owner (typically, a senior security engineer) will have to see what if any measures can bring it within an acceptable threshold.
Frameworks for application security controls
As applications evolve, so does their risk profile. And your application security controls have to stay one step ahead. Standard guidelines based on widely accepted and well-tested methods can help.
Here are three of the most well-known application security control frameworks:
NIST Cybersecurity Framework: This guide doesn’t tell you exactly what to do but rather helps you figure out the best cybersecurity practices that fit your specific needs.
CIS Critical Security Controls: This DevSecOps framework offers various controls to securing enterprise data and system assets, e.g., network configurations, email and web browsers; it focuses on asset inventory, application security, and incident management.
OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls: This cheat sheet is aimed at helping developers secure their applications by focusing on the most critical areas of application security.
CNAPP to the left: Automating application security controls
With so many frameworks available, your best bet is to layer security controls to effectively achieve security by design. However, this means developers often have to take on multiple roles beyond their primary duties; for example, integrating application security controls into areas like identity and access management (IAM), networking, physical infrastructure, and data management.
But how can you wear so many hats without hurting your productivity? Automation is the key to balancing these demands.
Choosing the right automation tool
Depending on the application's security control function, you can pick from a range of tools for automation:
Preventive controls: Open-source tools like OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) and OWASP ModSecurity are designed to check your web applications for vulnerabilities and monitor HTTP traffic to help prevent exploits.
Detective automation: This is likely the most hyped category, as there are hundreds of tools available for automated detection. Snort is best known for network intrusion detection, while Wiz, Wazuh, and Falco are more focused on cloud-native applications.
Corrective automation: Although there are many tools for detecting vulnerabilities, few support immediate remediation like Wiz Code and Rundeck.
Deterrent controls: Alerts and warning signs can be automated with tools like Portspoof, which confuses and discourages attackers by making it appear that every port on a system is open and active.
Compensating automation: There are no tools specifically designed for compensating controls, but administrative tools (e.g., iptables) can do the trick when primary network controls fail.
A unified solution with Wiz
Automation is great for managing a bunch of controls at once. But since different control functions lean on different automation tools, this can create security silos and unnecessary complications from having to orchestrate between them.
A unified solution like Wiz Code offers end-to-end solutions with preventive, detective, and corrective controls all on one platform. This strategy effectively moves security earlier in the application timeline, covering more ground from the start.
Want to deploy applications in the cloud? You're still covered. Wiz delivers on the full promise of a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) by integrating multiple security technologies—ASPM, CSPM, CIEM, CWPP, and runtime protection—to provide automated security from code to cloud.
Application security controls naturally overlap and often serve more than one purpose. This flexibility mirrors the evolving threat landscape, where attackers constantly look for new angles to exploit. No single DevSecOps framework or security control covers it all, so mixing and matching solutions often makes the most sense.
A good starting point is to map out where your biggest risks lie. Then, pick or adapt the controls that best suit your environment and workflows. You can do this by tailoring controls from frameworks such as NIST CSF, CIS Critical Controls, or OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls.
Watch out for “tool sprawl,” where too many specialized solutions create more complexity than they solve. To avoid this, organizations should:
Use unified platforms that consolidate multiple security controls.
Prioritize integration by choosing tools that fit into existing workflows.
Evaluate security ROI to ensure each tool provides clear value without excessive overhead.
Ultimately, security is a shared effort spanning developers, IT, and security teams. Having a shift-left mindset and catching vulnerabilities early gives you full visibility and safeguards your applications from evolving threats.
See firsthand how Wiz can help you achieve these goals. Get a personalized demo today.