In today's ever-changing cybersecurity landscape, renowned tools like Fortify, which is recognized as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, play a crucial role in identifying a vast spectrum of vulnerabilities, both high and low. However, identifying source code vulnerabilities is only half the battle. Ultimately, organizations are still faced with the daunting task of prioritizing and fixing these vulnerabilities.

SAST (The Good and the Challenges)

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) is the foundational step in order to uncover vulnerabilities in today's software applications. As a leading SAST vendor, Fortify consistently detects a large number of vulnerabilities across all severity levels. However, there's a catch. While SAST tools like Fortify can detect an astounding number of vulnerabilities — sometimes listing 1,000 vulnerabilities at a time that pose notable risks to an application’s overall security can feel overwhelming and addressing all of them can be a significant task for organizations.

This challenge isn't isolated. As reported by The Stack, an alarming 26,448 software security flaws were identified in 2022, marking a 59% surge in critical vulnerabilities compared to the previous year. The ever-growing list of vulnerabilities has made prioritization a necessity and an overwhelming task.

The Repercussions of Unaddressed Issues

Postponing or overlooking vulnerabilities, especially ones that seem less critical, can have severe repercussions. Not every vulnerability will lead to a massive breach, but, when left unresolved, using vulnerability chaining, even minor issues can compound and potentially lead to considerable challenges in the future.

Coordination is crucial in vulnerability management. It's a dance that requires security teams to collaborate with IT, dev teams, business units, and the executive suite. As a result, maintaining this visibility is a tall order, especially for expansive organizations. It is essential to ensure that the mean time to remediation (MTTR) is kept short and that there's a thorough review of vulnerability statuses in order to maintain the effectiveness of a vulnerability management program.

Introduction to Mobb

Enter Mobb: an award-winning solution designed to automatically address the most common vulnerabilities, high and low. Mobb is about cleaning the backlog and offering a comprehensive solution to organizations. By seamlessly integrating with popular SAST tools, like Fortify, and offering developers seamless integration into their day-to-day operations with a GitHub Action and a CLI tool. Mobb ensures that vulnerabilities are not just automatically identified but are automatically resolved as well. 

Mobb's unique approach means that organizations can choose to prioritize, but they don't necessarily have to. Thanks to Mobb’s robust automation, they can address more vulnerabilities without the intense need for prioritization. This ensures that pesky vulnerabilities–whether high, medium, or low–don't linger in their organization's SDLC.

Mobb’s Approach to Clearing Security Backlogs

Mobb has developed an innovative solution to help organizations tackle the long list of vulnerabilities they have accumulated over the years. While this ever-growing security backlog may for the most part contain a large amount of low-severity issues, some higher-severity issues can at times be found on that list as well.

Rather than letting these vulnerabilities pile up, Mobb empowers developers to fix them in bulk. After reviewing a suggested fix by Mobb and trusting it, a developer may select to eliminate all reported instances of a certain issue type, by simply committing all suggested fixes in one step. This will commit all code fixes to the repo in one action saving development teams a great deal of work. 

If that’s not enough, Mobb’s "PowerUp" feature empowers organizations to automatically resolve hundreds of findings for a certain vulnerability type reported by their SAST tool with a single, strategically-placed code change. This proactive method of fixing code ensures that even lower-priority vulnerabilities are swiftly dealt with before they become problematic. With Mobb, organizations can ensure that the mass of low-severity issues are not only monitored but efficiently rectified.

Conclusion

While SAST tools like Fortify offer unparalleled insight into potential vulnerabilities, relying solely on them is not enough. In an age where, as per a 2022 ISACA report, almost two-thirds of security teams are understaffed with 63% facing unfilled positions, optimizing vulnerability management is not just essential. It's urgent. Mobb bridges the gap, ensuring that vulnerabilities are identified and adequately addressed to deliver a holistic security approach.

Want to see Mobb in action? Watch a demo now!