Web and mobile applications are prime targets for cybercriminals looking to steal data or hijack user sessions for fraud and identity theft. The recent explosion in sophisticated application-layer attacks highlights the need for modern defenses designed specifically to protect apps wherever they run.
Runtime application self-protection (RASP) has emerged as a next-generation application security technology that embeds defenses within app infrastructure to achieve context-aware protection. According to Gartner, RASP adoption is accelerating, with over 50% of organizations now utilizing or planning to implement RASP capabilities over traditional web application firewalls (WAFs) to secure critical applications.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover the growing need for RASP solutions and how they differ from firewalls. We’ll overview 8 leading commercial and open source RASP tools perfect for securing apps and APIs built on Java, .NET, JavaScript, Python, PHP and more. Finally, we’ll look at RASP deployment best practices to maximize coverage across your app portfolio.
The Growing Threat Landscape Facing Modern Applications
Web and mobile apps have become prime targets for hackers looking to illegally access application data or functionality. The 2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report found a 232% year-over-year increase in ransomware attacks globally, many aimed directly at vulnerable applications and their backend resources.
Ransomware and other cyberattacks continue to grow at an alarming rate. (Source: SonicWall 2022 Cyber Threat Report)
The most common web application vulnerabilities actively targeted include:
- Injection attacks – Unsanitized inputs allow attackers to inject malicious code and commands into apps to exploit databases and back-end systems. SQL injection remains the top application vulnerability.
- Broken authentication – Weaknesses here allow account takeovers, session hijacking, and privilege escalations inside apps.
- Sensitive data exposure – Apps often unintentionally leak passwords, financial data, or intellectual property that attackers can leverage for fraud or extortion.
- Cross-site scripting (XSS) – Injecting scripts into apps to deface content or steal user sessions remains highly pervasive across modern web apps and persistent threats.
These and other OWASP Top 10 risks open doors for cybercriminals to directly compromise application resources – from cloud storage buckets to application databases full of sensitive records.
With traditional network security controls like firewalls lacking application smarts and context, a new generation of protections is necessary to address these risks. Next we’ll cover how runtime application self-protection (RASP) solutions provide an application-centric line of defense.
Understanding Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP)
Runtime application self-protection, or RASP for short, refers to a technology category centered around embedding security defenses inside application environments – enabling apps themselves to detect and block attacks in real-time.
RASP tools integrate directly within app runtimes like Java, .NET, Python, Ruby, PHP and more
By instrumenting security agents directly into places like Java application servers, .NET runtimes, and JavaScript engines, RASP gains several advantages over traditional network-centric defenses:
- Increased context – By analyzing attacker payloads already processed by apps, RASP sees what the app sees for enhanced clarity. This context ensures greatly reduced false positives compared to network tools guessing attacker intent.
- Early interception – With tight runtime integration, RASP blocks threats earlier in the attack chain before they reach sensitive app resources like backend databases.
- Platform portability – Embedded closely into runtime fabrics, RASP defenses remain in place consistently across on-prem, cloud, container, serverless, and hybrid deployments.
Collectively, these capabilities allow apps equipped with RASP tooling to automatically detect and halt attacks targeting vulnerabilities like injection, data exfiltration, account takeovers, malicious scripts, and more. RASP serves as the last line of defense ensuring apps maintain runtime integrity and quickly mitigate risks as they emerge.
Next let’s look at how leading RASP platforms achieve this protection and where they fit compared to legacy web application firewalls.
Web Application Firewalls vs. RASP: Key Differences
Web application firewalls (WAFs) have traditionally provided protection against web app threats using a mix of virtual patching, rule-based detection and blacklisting approaches. Positioned on networks in front of apps, WAFs analyze traffic patterns looking for signatures of known attacks and suspicious inputs.
While useful in their day, traditional WAFs suffer several drawbacks:
- Limited context – Blind to how apps handle and transform data internally, legacy WAFs suffer lots of false positives requiring excessive tuning.
- Susceptible to business logic flaws – WAFs can’t fully protect custom app logic outside published vulnerabilities.
- Fixed protection – Updating rigid WAF policies to address newfound threats creates management overhead.
Modern RASP platforms overcome these challenges through their unique architectural properties:
| Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) | Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) |
|---|---|
| Limited app context – prone to false positives | Deep app context – high accuracy detections |
| Protect against known attacks and inputs | Also blocks zero days and logic flaws |
| Fixed external protection | Portable inner protection across environments |
| Rule and signature based | Use behavioral models and anomaly detection |
| High operations overhead | Low-friction and self-adaptive |
RASP solutions don’t fully replace WAF protections. Rather, the two technologies nicely complement each other – with WAFs continuing to filter obvious bad traffic while RASP handles what gets through using deep app intimacy.
Below we’ll overview 8 leading RASP platforms embracing this next-generation design philosophy for robust, accurate and portable runtime protection across web, mobile, serverless and API workloads.
8 Leading Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) Solutions
Let’s look at 8 runtime application self-protection (RASP) solutions available to help secure critical business applications across languages like Java, JavaScript, C#, Python, PHP, Ruby and more. We’ll cover both commercial and free open source RASP tools perfect for modern heterogeneous environments.
1. Contrast Security RASP
Contrast Security focuses exclusively on RASP space across web applications, APIs, microservices, and custom code. With over 20 vulnerability types detected, Contrast protects against SQLi, XSS, path traversals, data leaks, encryption issues, auth problems, and business logic flaws.
Key capabilities:
- Broad language support – Java, JavaScript, Ruby, .NET, Python, PHP
- Protects APIs and business logic flows
- Serverless protection options
- Integrates with WAFs, CDNs, SOARs and CI/CD pipelines
- Market leading commercial RASP tool
Contrast Security brings one of the most mature and widely adopted commercial RASP solutions to the market with comprehensive capabilities perfect for diverse enterprise application portfolios.
2. Signal Sciences Next-Gen RASP
Signal Sciences meets the growing need for application security solutions purpose-built for cloud-native development stacks. Lightweight agents embed without code changes to provide runtime intelligence and accuracy transcending traditional WAFs.
Features include:
- Integrates without changes across major languages and frameworks
- Correlates detections with user, app and attack context
- Unified visibility and reporting structure
- Easy policy customization around blocking, logging, alerts, etc
- Market pioneer driving next-gen RASP innovation
Flexible deployment options include agentless modes analyzing event streams along with native agents speaking application languages for optimum integration.
Signal Sciences strikes an innovative balance between ease of use, leanness, and advanced security – accelerating RASP adoption for modern application stacks across startup and enterprise customers alike.
3. Fortify Application Defender
Fortify provides a unified suite securing applications from development through production via static (SAST), dynamic (DAST), and runtime (RASP) testing integrated with attack surface management.
Their RASP component called Fortify Application Defender delivers runtime visibility, monitoring, and context-aware protection for Java and .NET applications against injection attacks, data leaks, session flaws, cryptography issues and more.
Capabilities:
- Combined DAST, SAST and RASP testing
- Protection against data exfiltration
- Integrated attack surface discovery
- Alerts tied to line-of-code details
- On-premise, private/public cloud deployment
As a long-time application security leader, Fortify brings deep expertise gained from 17+ years experience helping enterprises secure mission critical software portfolios at runtime.
4. Immunio
Immunio provides RASP protection for Java, PHP, JavaScript/Node.js and Python web applications and APIs running Kubernetes, VMs, or bare metal. Covering injection, scripting, authentication, access control and other risks, they focus entirely on run time security.
Highlights include:
- Broad language and deployment support
- Emphasis on business logic protections
- CI/CD integration with DevOps flows
- Agent and agentless deployment options
- Cloud scale and automation capabilities
Tight integration with CI/CD pipeline tooling ensures security keeps pace, with capabilities to auto-discover risks pre-production using Immunio’s static and dynamic scanners.
5. Hdiv Security
Hdiv is an application-centric RASP solution providing runtime protection, IAST integration to catch pre-production flaws, and business logic monitoring capabilities.
Benefits center around:
- Broad vulnerability coverage beyond injections
- Automatically builds whitelist security policies
- Blocks logic abuse attempts in production
- Seamlessly embeds within SDLC toolchains
- Supports Java, .NET, PHP, JS, Python and more
Easy to deploy, Hdiv strives to enable apps to smoothly self-protect without operational friction. Context-aware capabilities also facilitate compliance against regulations like PCI DSS.
6. OpenRASP
OpenRASP is an open source RASP project from Baidu providing runtime application protection capabilities for Java and PHP based web applications.
It leverages advanced hooking and instrumentation to analyze and block threats against common vulnerabilities like command injections, XSS, SQLi while aiming to produce very few false positives. Attacks cantrigger configured responses including logging, blocking, or alerting actions.
Benefits include:
- Open source Java & PHP protection
- Hooks sensitive functions for analysis
- Blocks OWASP Top 10 threats
- Integrates with security infrastructure
- Easy deployment under 5 minutes
For organizations looking for an open source supported RASP option vs commercial solutions, OpenRASP provides a feature-rich alternative combining transparency with advanced application security.
7. StackHawk
StackHawk offers a developer-centric RASP solution focused on Embeddable Application Security Testing (EAST) by instrumenting Hawkscan sensors into app environments to validate inputs and business logic at runtime.
Unique capabilities center around:
- Emphasis on fixing vs just blocking threats
- Native static application security testing (SAST)
- GraphQL and REST API protection
- Integrates into CI/CD pipelines and IDEs
- Low effort onboarding with 15 minute SDK installation
Their inline testing approach shifts security left while enabling rapid investigations powered by integrated sensors providing context and reproducible test cases to accelerate remediations.
8. Jscrambler
Where other tools focus on vulnerabilities, Jscrambler is a code-centric RASP platform applying advanced transforms and instrumentation techniques to JavaScript applications for anti-tampering, integrity checks, and run time monitoring against malicious scripts and unauthorized modifications.
Capabilities include:
- Real-time anomaly detection
- Advanced JavaScript obfuscation
- Source code integrity checks
- IP allowlisting and bot detection
- CI/CD integration with repos like GitHub
Fine-tuned for protecting JavaScript apps, Jscrambler combines defenses embedded into client and server-side JS code alongside continuous monitoring and alerting for production visibility.
With RASP adoption accelerating, modern options now exist to embed security across languages, frameworks, and deployment architectures. Next we’ll cover best practices for maximizing coverage and protection.
Runtime Application Security Best Practices
Like any security tool, improperly implementing RASP leads to blind spots attackers will exploit. Here we’ll overview best practices for instrumentation, configuration and usage to optimize protection.
Maximize language and framework coverage – Prioritize security for higher risk applications first, then incrementally expand covered targets across other languages and frameworks as resources permit until reaching full portfolio coverage.
Combine WAF and RASP – Maintain existing WAF protections for baseline filtering while positioning RASP as an inner layer to handle evasive threats using app context and intelligence.
Integrate with existing toolchains – Tightly couple RASP deployment and security policy management into CI/CD pipeline automation and existing SOC workflows for synchronization.
Apply multiple instrumentation points – For comprehensive coverage, inject RASP agents at multiple levels like application servers, frameworks, reverse proxies, and within custom code modules.
Configure active blocking policies – Unless logging-only is temporarily needed for baselining, enforce real-time blocking policies via RASP to stop detected attacks immediately pre-exploitation.
Tune detections pragmatically – Review all RASP alerts, freezes and blocks early on to fine-tune policies balancing security vs false positives for your apps and use cases.
Remediate flagged application risks – Beyond blocking runtime attacks, prioritize fixing the root application vulnerabilities and flaws contributing to exploitation attempts.
Maintain currency – Regularly update RASP agents as new releases add detections, improve performance, and enhance stability in rapidly evolving application environments.
The Future of Application Security is Self Protecting
With breaches growing in frequency, velocity and impact, applications require stronger self-defenses able to adapt in real-time based on identity, data and behavioral signals indicative of compromise. Bolting on legacy WAFs as an outer bandage has proven woefully inadequate in the face of modern application-layer threats.
By instrumenting runtime intelligence directly within the application layer, RASP enables apps to effectively detect attacks themselves and self-mitigate risks in a surgical, localized manner without waiting for human intervention. Machine speed and consistency transcends human limitations.
As cyber risks continue expanding exponentially, manually keeping pace with the volume and variety of threats and exploitable vulnerabilities in application portfolios has become impossible. Instead, applications must self-learn, self-monitor, and self-protect with minimal human involvement through applied technologies like RASP.
Through advanced instrumentation, the application layer can reclaim control from attackers to keep data and business logic safely encapsulated. RASP adoption will only continue increasing as more organizations realize the power of embedded security to create self-defending and self-healing apps able to operate safely despite surrounding threats.
Are your applications ready to protect themselves? Reach out for a demo from commercial vendors or install an open source RASP agent to experience the technology firsthand. Stay safe out there!
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