What is Application Control?
Application control is a granular form of application regulation that allows businesses to dictate how applications function, process data, and output information. Application controls monitor applications and follow a series of predefined rules and regulations to ensure they function in a secure manner.
Importance of Application Control in Cybersecurity
Here are three reasons why application control matters:
#1. A Vital Part of Application Management
Application control is a vital part of application management, allowing IT administrators to determine how business applications function in the wider company ecosystem. By creating certain application control policies and regulations, administrators ensure that only authorized applications can access and execute on business networks.
#2. Regulatory Compliance
Controlling which applications can execute and what they can do within a business environment helps to mitigate risk. Application control is also an important part of cybersecurity regulatory compliance, demonstrating that a company adheres to the safe use of third-party applications.
#3. Monitoring Anomalies
Application control also helps to monitor business applications for anomalies, which can streamline incident response and contribute to an enhanced cybersecurity presence. Due to how vital application control is in cybersecurity, many companies now automate its core functions to streamline this.
Types and methods of Application Control
Application controls can ensure that applications that are running, function correctly. There are three types of control that can all work concurrently to prevent any errors in an application.
- Input Controls: Input controls place a series of mandatory limits on any fields that individuals can interact with. These controls make sure that users enter certain information or select from a pre-written variety. Additional input control rules can dictate the type of response a user can give, like ensuring an email address has an “@” symbol in it.
- Processing Application Controls: Processing application controls are internet modifiers that aim to ensure an application manages data effectively. A processing control could double-check that data is only processed once or validate that a transaction charge is not a negative number. These are blanket rules that help prevent any potential errors.
- Output Controls: Finally, output controls manage what an application sends to users. For example, businesses can use output controls to ensure that sensitive information is never sent to customers and that financial data remains private.
On a broader level, there are also 4 different methods of application controls that administrators can use to regulate which applications can operate in an ecosystem:
- Whitelisting: Some application controls use a whitelist to regulate which applications can run. Only applications listed on the whitelist will be able to run, with all others being rejected.
- Blacklisting: A blacklist functions as a direct contrast to a whitelist, with any unauthorized applications on the blacklist being prevented from running. Developers can add any applications that are known to contain malicious entities on their blacklist.
- Behavior-Based Detection: Behavior-based detection identifies uncommon or anomalous behavior within an application and then blocks the application from functioning.
- Sandboxing: Sandboxing is a wider form of application control that creates an isolated environment within which apps can run. This strategy ensures that even if an application did include malware, it would be isolated to that sandbox and unable to spread to other systems.
IT Application Controls (ITACs) vs. General Controls (ITGCs)
Here’s a quick comparison between these two:
- IT general controls are the wider policies that a business has in place to ensure that its entire network infrastructure exhibits a high degree of security and integrity. These are often called a company’s security framework, covering absolutely everything from a backup and recovery plan to the procedures that govern individual pieces of cybersecurity infrastructure.
- IT application controls are a more specific form of policy, pertaining directly to the management of specific applications within the wider ecosystem. ITACs are therefore a part of general control considerations but are much more specific. ITGCs manage the entire ecosystem while ITACs focus primarily on a smaller segment, anything related to applications and their management.
Here’s a table comparing these two in detail:
| Category | IT General Controls (ITGCs) | IT Application Controls (ITACs) |
| Definition | Broad policies ensure the overall security and integrity of IT infrastructure. | Specific controls governing the management and security of individual applications. |
| Scope | Covers the entire IT ecosystem, including networks, systems, and data centers. | Focuses on specific applications within the broader IT framework. |
| Objective | Ensures the security, availability, and reliability of IT systems. | Maintains the accuracy, integrity, and functionality of individual applications. |
| Examples | Backup and recovery plans, user access management, change management, IT governance policies. | Input validation, access restrictions for applications, automated workflow controls. |
| Relationship | Forms the overall security framework for IT operations. | A subset of ITGCs, focused on application-level security and functionality. |
| Implementation Level | Organization-wide policies affecting all IT operations. | Specific to software applications and their configuration. |
Automating Application Controls: Benefits and Challenges
Considering how central application management is to the security of business environments, automating this function can help to increase its efficiency.
There are several benefits to automating application controls:
- Removes Human Error: Automatic application control systems will eradicate the opportunity for human errors.
- Improves Threat Detection: Especially in this AI era of cybersecurity, automatic application controls can rapidly detect and respond to anomalous or potentially malicious applications and neutralize cyber threats.
- Streamlines Application Scalability: By moving to an automatic application control system, businesses can more readily scale their enterprise environments and add new applications to their tech stack.
However, while an automated application control system does offer a range of advantages, it equally presents challenges to companies that are looking to move to this automatic system:
- Escalated IT Costs: Implementing fully automated systems is an extremely costly endeavor, especially for businesses that haven’t already laid the foundation for automated IT systems.
- Increased Knowledge Requirements: Automated systems are more complex than human-first monitoring, leading to a steep increase in the average skill requirements of your IT officers.
- Amplified Novel Security Risks: Automated systems function smoothly due to their extensive knowledge of how previous threats operate and what they look like. If a new threat were to emerge, some automated systems may be unable to recognize it as malicious, leading to breaches.
While automated application control systems are valuable, they should still be maintained by teams of human agents to reduce the likelihood of breaches or oversights.
Maximize Security with Check Point
Applications are at the core of business operations, enabling everything from communication and customer relationship management to human resources, finances, and payment processing. However, to make use of these applications safely, you need to understand the potential security risks they pose and enforce policies to manage how they can be used.
With Check Point’s network security solution, Quantum, you get high-performance threat detection (99.9% block rate) combined with the ability to enforce and manage policies covering your entire tech stack. This includes policy management for applications regardless of where they are located.
Quantum’s all-in-one smart console oversees access control across environments to ensure applications only have access to the data required, and inputs/outputs are sanitized to prevent abuse and the accidental exposure of sensitive information.
Request a demo today and discover how Quantum can take your network security to the next level.
