Addressing Potential Security Vulnerabilities in Low Code Platforms

There’s no denying the immense applications and solutions of Low-Code Development Platforms (LCDPs). But just like even the most evolved technologies out there, a low-code environment does come with its share of potential vulnerabilities. The good news is that careful planning and monitoring can reduce these risks greatly and leave your team with a development environment they can trust.

Understanding Potential Security Vulnerabilities in a Low-Code Environment

Visibility and Control: LCDPs are built to deliver solutions without the need to write or tweak the underlying codebase. This often results in limited visibility in terms of input and a general lack of control over the output. When teams are unable to understand the process of working in a low-code environment, identifying loopholes and patching security vulnerabilities pose a challenge.

Shadow IT: One of the main advantages of an LCDP is undoubtedly the ease of use it offers. The risk associated with this is the augmentation of Shadow IT. When a business develops applications and adds essential yet unmonitored solutions in an easier-to-work-with LCDP environment, the IT team no longer has eyes on the process. This leads to a failure in following security protocols, considering the lack of knowledge at par of IT personnel, thus leaving the app as well as the organization susceptible to vulnerabilities.

Integration: Apps or solutions developed in a low-code environment are often integrated with APIs and third-party applications. This means that if these third-party apps are exposed to vulnerabilities, or if the integration process does not follow security protocols, the data and solutions created by an LCDP will be exposed to these same vulnerabilities too.

Data, Storage, and Access Control: Essential security parameters when handling sensitive company data and company information include robust data encryption, secure storage components, and well-defined access control measures. In the case of low-code platforms, there are additional measures to adopt when ensuring these security protocols are in place and functioning optimally.

User Behavior: The uniqueness of a low-code environment is its ability to give users the power of control and development. When users do not pay the required amount of attention to security risks and make changes to these apps, they unknowingly expose the apps to security risks and introduce vulnerabilities ranging from lack of authentication control to unmonitored input validation.

Vendors: An LCDP is as good as its vendors, which means that even in the case of security risks, a low-code environment is heavily dependent on vendors to adhere to essential security protocols. If vendors fail to follow due process, this may open up the entire development infrastructure to security risks and result in vulnerabilities in applications.

Prevalent Security Concerns

Anything that can happen to a standard application developed in a traditional coding environment can happen to an app developed in a low-code environment too. There are, however, some security risks that are prominent enough to highlight here.

Vulnerabilities in Dependencies: Pre-built components or libraries are essential to the optimal functioning of a low-code environment. Even when the application’s coding process is highly secure, any pre-existing security loopholes in these dependencies can expose the environment and subsequent solutions to security risks.

Broken Access Control: Access control is a highly sensitive parameter in a security structure, and unauthorized access granted to individuals outside the optimal security blueprint can lead to the exposure of sensitive information and make the application vulnerable to unauthorized actions.

Injection of Malicious Code: In both handwritten and generated code, gaps in input validation enable malicious attackers to inject unauthorized code into a low-code environment. Examples of these risks include Cross-Site Scripting and SQL Injection.

Configuration Errors: The relative ease offered by LCDPs in terms of configuration can often lead to misconfigurations and expose applications to risks generated by parameters such as broad access, insufficient security standards, skipping changes in default settings, and open ports.

Parallel Minds’ List of Best Practices to Address and Mitigate Risks in a Low-Code Environment

At Parallel Minds, we understand and accept the extreme importance of mitigating security risks of every kind in a low-code environment. Here’s a quick list of best practices we always bet on to offer our clients secure and high-performance low-code solutions.

Governance and Guidelines: It is crucial for an organization to plan and put in place a governance framework that delivers clear guidelines and adopts evolving policies to address security risks and highlight potential gaps associated with a low-code environment. All IT teams and departments involved in generating low code must remain aware of these policies and be able to contribute to their effectiveness by forwarding suggestions that are reviewed, accepted, and included as policy changes.

Vendor Compliance: It is essential to evaluate and determine the security status of all low-code platform vendors you are onboarding through a rigid process that involves a peek into their security protocols, storage and encryption processes, response blueprints, and compliance certifications like the latest ISO and SOC 2.

Security Training: Your team’s security protocols and procedures are only as good as the training you give them. A thorough training module that takes your IT team as well as your citizen developers through a series of vulnerabilities like coding procedures, injection attacks, access control, and input validation gives every developer a lowdown of possible risks along with a brief on essential security practices to avoid them.

Access Control Blueprints: It is important to review every layer of security and access control before enabling individual access to various elements of your LCDP as well as developed apps. Roles that are properly defined, proper permissions to various components, and a robust authentication protocol are all crucial elements of an access control blueprint. Introduce steps like multi-factor authorization and zero-trust logins to further solidify your access control roadmap.

Data Handling Procedures: While proper encryption of data is essential whether it is at rest or going down the different layers of the development cycle, equally essential is the access you allow. Instead of providing blanket access and then weeding out non-essential personnel, it is always a better idea to do things the other way around and grant access only to those who require the data to deliver their objectives.

Vulnerability Monitoring: Irrespective of how watertight your security blueprint may seem, it is always recommended to scan the entire development environment for potential vulnerabilities. Regular monitoring helps you identify risks and introduce patches and updates to all internal and vendor-side processes. This also ensures the overall functionality of your current security protocol structure.

Testing and Modeling: While monitoring takes care of possible gaps, testing and modeling help you define the areas in which you can introduce more rigid security protocols to optimize performance and speed. Threat modeling, remapping of codes, and penetration testing are procedures that help enhance your security blueprint.

DevSecOps Model: Your DecSecOps model must integrate and strictly follow rigid security protocols from the early development stage and distribute responsibility to various departments and individuals instead of only holding the IT team responsible for security upkeep. Only when everyone in the organization is aware and invested can the security blueprint work well.

Regular Policy Reinforcements: While it is important to have rigid security policies in place across the development infrastructure of your organization, it is even more important to reinforce these policies from time to time and remind everyone involved of why they are important and things to do or not do to keep the policies in action.

At Parallel Minds, we are aware of both the potential and risks associated with a low-code development environment and by understanding and mitigating risks, we are able to explore in full the potential of LCDPs.