Quick question: how are you feeling about your app security these days? Be honest. With all these cloud services, integrations, and updates, it seemed pointless, right? Now, add in the new generation of AI, like Large Language Models (LLMs), and you’re probably thinking, “What does this have to do with securing my apps?”
Let me tell you, it’s got everything to do with it.
Don’t take LLMs lightly. LLMs can identify vulnerabilities, flag potential threats, and give your security teams an easier life. In 2023 alone, companies spent an average of $4.45 million dealing with data breaches. That money could’ve been used for, I don’t know, literally anything else!
Alright, let’s get straight to it. Threat Modeling is a PAIN. It’s detailed, manual, and can suck up hours of your team’s time. Worse yet, most organizations don’t even do it consistently because of the high cost of time and effort. And when threat modeling gets skipped, there’s a huge chance that you’re deploying apps with critical vulnerabilities. Not a good look when a single breach could cost you millions.
But here’s the good news: LLMs can take a lot of this heavy lifting off your hands.
Your architecture diagrams are packed with information but manually sifting through them all? Brutal. LLMs can automatically analyze these diagrams and find potential vulnerabilities in real time. Instead of spending hours mapping out threat models, your team can get instant feedback on where the risks are.
What if you can know likely attack scenarios before they even happen? LLMs can predict potential attacks based on the vulnerabilities they detect by tapping into historical threat data. It doesn’t end there. They can also suggest actionable mitigations based on your specific setup.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. Actually, you don’t need to at all. LLMs can pull from vast datasets to offer baseline security measures right after identifying risks. Instead of starting from scratch, you get a solid foundation to build secure systems right from the get-go.
This one is a game-changer. LLMs can go deep into specific features of your application and generate tailored threat models. So whether it’s a new login feature or a cloud integration, you get precise and context-aware security insights. You wouldn’t get generic advice that doesn’t fit your use case, only sharp and actionable feedback that helps you secure every part of your app.
Manual processes are just so exhausting. Reviewing endless scan results, validating findings, and testing vulnerabilities? It’s slow, it’s prone to mistakes, and it’s a waste of your team’s time. If you’re still stuck in the manual loop, you’re burning resources and missing out on faster and smarter ways to keep your systems secure.
Here’s how LLMs can give your security efforts a major upgrade:
Static analysis tools usually flood you with false positives, leaving your team to dig through them. With LLMs, you can quickly parse these results and validate the findings. This clears out the junk so your team can focus on fixing the real issues instead of checking if those false positives are truly false.
There could be risky dependencies hiding in your code. LLMs can analyze software composition analysis (SCA) results and pinpoint problematic libraries. Even better, they can suggest safer alternatives that reduce your exposure to supply chain attacks.
Attackers love to target APIs, and testing them one by one just wouldn’t cut it anymore. To identify vulnerabilities faster and more accurately, you can set up LLMs to take over your dynamic application security testing (DAST). You get better coverage and less manual work.
You’re still creating test cases by hand? With LLMs whipping up tailored security test cases for you, you’re sure that you have full testing coverage without the hassle. It’s faster, it’s smarter, and it leaves no gaps in your security.
It’s easy to overlook risky third-party libraries, but LLMs can analyze your project dependencies and flag any that might be vulnerable. This reduces your attack surface early on so you can avoid major issues moving forward.
Security teams usually have to deal with results from multiple tools, so it becomes harder to get a clear picture. For a more unified view, LLMs can aggregate and normalize these results that you can use for faster decision-making and fewer blind spots in your security strategy.
Most incident response processes are slow, tedious, and chaotic. Every minute wasted means more damage, more downtime, and bigger financial hits. If your team is still reacting with a patchwork plan every time something goes wrong, you’re setting yourself up for a nightmare when the next breach hits.
Let’s change that. LLMs can give your incident response a serious upgrade. Here’s how:
Training your team with realistic scenarios is key, but creating those exercises on your own is a lot of work. LLMs can take over the creation of detailed and realistic incident response simulations to give your teams hands-on practice without the hours of prep work.
A solid plan is half the battle, but drafting a comprehensive incident response plan takes time and expertise. LLMs can help write these plans by providing detailed steps for handling different types of breaches.
The faster you detect an attack, the quicker you can shut it down. LLMs can help automate the development of detection rules by identifying new attack patterns and adjusting your defenses on the fly. You will never get caught off guard ever again.
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) playbooks are great, but only if you have the time to build them. With the help of LLMs, you can quickly draft and refine these playbooks to make sure that you have a streamlined and efficient response ready to go.
Securing cloud environments is just so… complicated. The very fast cloud adoption, combined with the complexity of multi-cloud setups, leaves too many security gaps. And those gaps are exactly what these attackers love exploiting. Here’s how LLMs can take your cloud security from reactive to proactive:
Keeping up with cloud misconfigurations manually takes up too much time. LLMs can perform comprehensive security assessments across your entire cloud infrastructure by spotting misconfigurations and recommending fixes before they become major issues. Less time hunting for problems, more time fixing them.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is great for speed, but it’s also full of hidden risks if not checked properly. LLMs can scan your IaC templates for security issues and automatically flag misconfigurations before deployment.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is essential but often needs endless manual compliance checks. These checks can be automated by LLMS to make sure that you’re both compliant and secure. They can even create custom security rules tailored to your specific cloud setup to give you an extra layer of protection.
If you’d let them, LLMs can make your life easier. But these LLMs need security, too. LLMs can be exploited through data poisoning, model tampering, or even accidentally spilling secrets in their responses. We’re not talking about some minor glitch here.
we45’s LLM security services are so much more than the basics. We’ll help you secure your AI systems without opening up new attack vectors. Book your FREE consultation to know more!
