Technology

5 Application Security Metrics That Should Matter to Your Team

As businesses continue to embrace agile development strategies, a significant number of them are seeking innovative ways of boosting security. And as far as these application-security programs go, companies are always forced to address two issues. The first one is how to assess risks in ways that lead to proper action. The second is how to leverage various metrics in a manner that hinders the development of new challenges. Now, dwelling on the latter issue, below are five metrics that every business involved in software production should keep tabs on.

The Number of Applications Covered by Security

Software development teams should pay attention to the percentage of apps that are essential to their operations. Most emphasis should be put on their vital and at-risk apps and then to the rest of them. And just as for the recently-adopted technologies, companies should always seek to implement new solutions to their old software.

The Time Required to Address Security Vulnerabilities

The average time it takes to fix various issues is yet another useful metric each software development team should pay attention to. See, no matter what, a company can never safeguard itself against problems in its processes. Therefore, by understanding the length of time it takes to address any emergent challenges, a firm can understand the speed at which it can get back to normal operations.

Rate of Fault Creation

Companies need to pay attention to the frequency at which flaws/ defects occur. It is even more essential to check the fault-creation rate against the team’s average time to address issues. This way, companies can ensure sustainable operations regardless of any arising challenges in the system.

Development teams can take things further by assessing the rates of specific flaws. These can be severe, high, medium, or low-level flaws.

The Number of Automated Tests and Tooling

It is yet another essential metric to keep tabs on as a development team. As a company, evaluating the number of apps covered by security techs is vital. This way, team members can understand whether the resources directed towards security are helping or even being utilized. Apart from that, tech firms need to gauge the coverage as well as the tests that their codebases are subject to.

By adopting more automated processes, companies will manage to act quickly in the face of flaws and also minimize errors.

App Block Rate

Team members should always be on the lookout for cases when they block things. Knowing the number of apps, code libraries, and open-source attributes that have been barred is an excellent way of understanding risk in the development process.

That said, one of the best ways of acquiring an app that has easy-to-track metrics is to work with a reputable developer. Most of the time, they will tell you what you need to keep tabs on to ensure that your application is always at peak performance. Today, thanks to the success of Silicon Valley’s Uber, many entrepreneurs are getting drawn into taxi mobile app development. Among the things that will play a vital role in your success are your budget, app’s features, and the efficiency you provide to your target demographic.

Other Metrics to Worry About

The world is increasingly being data-driven. Therefore, there is always a need to keep tabs on the progress of implemented security measures. To pay attention to specific security metrics to avoid providing generalized solutions is of particular importance. Case in point, by assessing the number of newly identified flaws/ challenges, team members can understand any bugs that were missed during previous evaluations. Moreover, it can help bring to the fore the fact the team was not paying keen attention to security issues.

Another useful metric is  the number of teams that come to security proactively. It shows the level of engagement that developers have with security matters. It helps in understanding how conversant the team members are about security issues in the development process. But even with that said, tech firms still do not have an excellent idea regarding the level of risk in their software. And those that do are utilizing ineffective strategies, hence the need for proactivity when it comes to monitoring and fixing security-related challenges.

Final Words

These are some of the application-security metrics that should definitely matter to any software development team. As a company, it is essential always to have suitable measures for addressing various risks. This way, it can ensure security right from when the code is first written.

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