Announcing Snyk AppRisk: Elevate your AppSec game with ASPM

We are thrilled to unveil our latest addition to the Snyk platform — Snyk AppRisk! 

Snyk AppRisk provides AppSec teams with the comprehensive application security posture management (ASPM) workbench they need to govern and scale their security programs as well as minimize risk arising from applications. It is the industry’s first ASPM solution that facilitates smooth collaboration between developer and security teams to tackle cybersecurity challenges, while also giving executive stakeholders visibility into software supply chain risk posture and overall AppSec program performance. 

Today marks the announcement of our inaugural offering of this product — Snyk AppRisk Essentials! Delivering automated discovery of code-based application assets, Snyk coverage management, and risk-based prioritization, this solution represents a significant leap forward for Snyk users seeking to scale and strengthen their developer-focused AppSec program and ensure its effectiveness. 

ASPM: the next necessary step for scaling developer security 

In recent years, significant changes in application development, driven by agile methodologies, DevOps, cloud adoption, and increased use of AI, have empowered distributed development teams. Applications have become more complex, with numerous code-defined building blocks, leading to expanding security backlogs and a rise in disclosed vulnerabilities.

To address these challenges, Snyk has pioneered developer-first security tools, ensuring early and integrated security throughout the SDLC. Working with implementation consultants and partners, Snyk has scaled developer-first application security in major organizations globally. The industry is witnessing a growing demand for improved visibility, program control, and effective prioritization to ensure the success of AppSec programs.

ASPM represents the latest evolution in AppSec tools, advocating for a comprehensive, proactive, and risk-based approach. Snyk sees ASPM as a pivotal step forward in enhancing developer security, leveraging its experience with large enterprises and a developer-loved security platform. The key to a paradigm shift lies in ASPM solutions providing a shared understanding of applications, enabling developers and security to define guardrails, focus on high-impact issue resolution, and measure overall program effectiveness.

Achieving this perspective is only attainable if developers are willing and able to adopt the security tools handed to them by security and if these tools allow for an accurate depiction of applications and the corresponding business risks.

That's why we're excited to announce the availability today of Snyk AppRisk Essentials, showcasing our vision and methodology in the ASPM domain!

Unveiling the three pillars of Snyk AppRisk Essentials 

Snyk AppRisk Essentials compliments the breadth and depth of the Snyk developer security platform, delivering a holistic, developer-first ASPM workbench. By correlating data from across the Snyk platform, Snyk AppRisk Essentials constructs a comprehensive model of your applications, encompassing the various assets employed in their construction, the tools you are using to secure them, as well as any associated risks. This enables Snyk customers to:

• Automate application asset discovery: Continually discover application assets and classify them by business context, ensuring a security program is fully in sync with developers. 

• Manage security coverage: Define and manage appropriate security and compliance requirements while verifying applications have the correct controls in place.

• Prioritize based on risk: Blend business and application context with best-in-class security and fix analysis to quantify risk and create an evidence graph, ensuring developer remediation efforts are focused on the issues that matter most to the business.

Discover your software assets

Managing the security of known software in intricate application environments poses enough of a challenge, but a greater concern lies in the applications you are unaware of. Identifying these gaps is essential for effective risk management.

Snyk AppRisk Essentials provides you with enhanced visibility into your software footprint, enabling you to discover and manage the different code-based assets used in building your applications, such as code repositories and package manifest files. These assets are automatically cataloged in an Asset Inventory which provides you with details on which Snyk products are testing which assets — and more importantly — where they are missing, the technologies and teams involved in building each asset, and how important these assets are to the business. 

The Asset Inventory provides you with different views into your application assets and can be searched, sorted, and filtered in different ways, together ensuring you have the visibility you need to make informed decisions and fortify your defenses against unforeseen risk.

“One of the biggest gaps in our program is keeping up with developers and understanding who owns what application and where. The ability to discover application assets with Snyk AppRisk Essentials has helped us bridge this gap and gain a better understanding of our  software footprint."

Greg McCord, CISO at Lightcast

Manage and track security coverage

The Asset Inventory streamlines the evaluation of current Snyk security coverage, pinpointing the assets safeguarded by Snyk products and, crucially, those that are not. This serves as a fundamental initial step in improving program control. The second step involves the intricate task of ensuring the implementation of appropriate security controls, a challenge given the vast scale and complexity of contemporary application environments.

Snyk AppRisk Essentials enables you to leverage this visibility into application assets to manage coverage by Snyk’s controls — Snyk Open Source, Snyk Code, Snyk Container, and Snyk Infrastructure as Code — using policies. With the help of a robust policy engine and an extremely user-friendly policy builder, you can automatically classify your assets based on how critical they are to the business and specify the Snyk controls that need to be implemented for securing these assets.  

Additionally, Snyk AppRisk Essentials offers a centralized dashboard that provides a comprehensive overview of your application assets. This includes their type, source, coverage by Snyk tools, and recent activity, facilitating efficient tracking and reporting on the overall status of your program.

"In our heavily regulated industry, we are pleased to use Snyk AppRisk Essentials to help pinpoint potential risks within our software environment. Their solution offers us enhanced visibility and equips us with the tools to help meet our stringent compliance requirements."

Joe Pampel, Chief Security Architect at Vestwell

Prioritize based on risk

To make effective decisions on prioritizing among the numerous issues they face based on the risk posed to the business, AppSec teams require comprehensive context about the application to be able to accurately assess the likelihood of exploitation as well as the expected impact should the issue be exploited. 

Snyk AppRisk Essentials provides this context. It does this by aggregating and correlating data from across the Snyk platform to construct a 360° model of your application that includes the assets involved in producing it, together with the context of how the application is deployed in production. This modeling of the application enables you to better assess the risk a given security issue poses considering factors such as whether the issue was identified in a business-critical asset or if the introducing code is deployed or internet-facing. 

All this context is available on the Insights page within the Snyk UI. On this page, you are able to use a variety of filters to quickly hone in on the riskiest issues. 

For example, you might want to prioritize issues identified in class A assets that are applicable to your operating system and that are associated with a deployed and internet-facing: 

To help you and your development team understand more about these issues and how the application configuration is contributing to their increased level of risk, an interactive evidence graph describes the different assets making up your application and how they relate to the issue in question.

Instead of being overwhelmed by a multitude of vulnerabilities, you can now concentrate on addressing the most critical risks first. By aligning efforts with the highest business risks, resources can be allocated where they are most impactful.

Embrace the future of AppSec with Snyk AppRisk 

Snyk AppRisk is more than just a product — it’s a complete overhaul of the way you secure your applications with Snyk. By combining the power of application discovery, security coverage management, and risk-based prioritization, Snyk AppRisk provides better visibility, enhanced control, and more effective prioritization, helping you overcome the complexities involved in governing and scaling a modern, developer-focused AppSec program to reduce risk.

As we celebrate the launch of Snyk AppRisk Essentials, we're also excited to announce the upcoming release of our broad spectrum ASPM offering: Snyk AppRisk Pro. The Pro version of Snyk AppRisk is designed to help AppSec teams manage their entire AppSec program with Snyk, also accounting for tools beyond Snyk. Snyk AppRisk Pro will offer broader asset discovery, coverage management of third-party tools (as well as Snyk tools), centralized issue management, and automated risk management and remediation workflows. 

Stay tuned for more updates on Snyk AppRisk Pro soon!

Snyk AppRisk Essentials is currently available! Visit our Snyk AppRisk product page, view the technical documentation, or book a live demo to learn more.