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Managing application risk
Follow this workflow to manage application security risks in your organization.
Step 3: Determining risks and prioritizing vulnerabilities
Learn how to determine risks and prioritize vulnerabilities identified in an application.
Determining risk
Now that management and security analysts have a comprehensive view of the applications across the enterprise, it's time to get a complete picture of the application security risk. Use formulas to create rules for automated application asset classification. The automated calculation of an application security risk rating is based on the application's description and discovered vulnerabilities.
Determining issue severity
Security analysts can use CVSS scores to determine issue severity and prioritize vulnerability fixes for their organization.
Changing the severity of an issue by modifying its CVSS score
Changing issue severity is done on an issue by issue basis so that you analyze each vulnerability as it relates to your business risk. During issue triage, you can change the severity of an issue by manually overriding the precalculated CVSS score with the severity value so that you can prioritize its severity relative to other issues. Modifying the severity helps you convey an issue's criticality to development and management so that the more critical vulnerabilities are fixed first.

Managing application risk
Follow this workflow to manage application security risks in your organization.
- Step 1: Creating an application inventory
  Learn how to create an application inventory.
- Step 2: Testing applications for vulnerabilities
  Learn how to test vulnerabilities identified in an application.
- Step 3: Determining risks and prioritizing vulnerabilities
  Learn how to determine risks and prioritize vulnerabilities identified in an application.
  - Determining risk
    Now that management and security analysts have a comprehensive view of the applications across the enterprise, it's time to get a complete picture of the application security risk. Use formulas to create rules for automated application asset classification. The automated calculation of an application security risk rating is based on the application's description and discovered vulnerabilities.
    - Formula components
      Product administrators can use any of the following components in your attribute formulas.
    - Examples of Functions
      These functions are used in the attribute formulas.
    - Built-in Formulas
      Use built-in formulas as a starting point to create or customize your own formulas.
    - Customizing the risk rating formula
      The risk rating formula is the most important attribute that you use to describe your applications. Use this example to customize the built-in risk rating. In this example, the business impact is calculated automatically, based on different application attributes.
    - Creating attributes with formulas
      Create and edit attributes that contain formulas to calculate the risk ratings for applications or to display issue information in application summaries. Delete formula attributes that are no longer relevant.
    - Modifying formulas
      You can modify AppScan Enterprise's built-in formulas to customize them for your business needs. For example, the Open Issues formula includes new, open, and reopened issues in its calculations. That might not fit with your requirements, so you can modify it to only include open and reopened issues.
    - Determining issue severity
      Security analysts can use CVSS scores to determine issue severity and prioritize vulnerability fixes for their organization.
      - CVSS scores
        The CVSS score reflects the overall security impact of a vulnerability, and is a composite score that reflects the metrics in three distinct categories: Base, Temporal, and Environmental.
      - How issue severity is determined
        AppScan® Enterprise determines issue severity by using a Severity formula or by using a 'Severity Value' issue attribute.
      - Changing the severity of an issue by modifying its CVSS score
        Changing issue severity is done on an issue by issue basis so that you analyze each vulnerability as it relates to your business risk. During issue triage, you can change the severity of an issue by manually overriding the precalculated CVSS score with the severity value so that you can prioritize its severity relative to other issues. Modifying the severity helps you convey an issue's criticality to development and management so that the more critical vulnerabilities are fixed first.
  - Prioritizing Vulnerabilities
    Learn how to prioritize vulnerabilities identified in an application.
- Step 4: Remediating risks
  Learn how to remediate risks identified in an application.
- Step 5: Measuring progress and demonstrating compliance
  Learn how to measure progress and demonstrate compliance.

Changing the severity of an issue by modifying its CVSS score

Changing issue severity is done on an issue by issue basis so that you analyze each vulnerability as it relates to your business risk. During issue triage, you can change the severity of an issue by manually overriding the precalculated CVSS score with the severity value so that you can prioritize its severity relative to other issues. Modifying the severity helps you convey an issue's criticality to development and management so that the more critical vulnerabilities are fixed first.

About this task

This example demonstrates how to override the severity of an issue.

: Working with CVSS in AppScan Enterprise: the Security Champion's perspective

Procedure

In an application, click the Issue ID of the issue.
Click Edit Attributes in the About this Issue dialog.
If the Base metrics (Access Vector, Access Complexity, Authentication, Confidentiality Impact, Integrity Impact, Availability Impact) display as unknown (blank), select a value for each of them.
In this screen capture, the CVSS Base metrics are unknown, there is no CVSS score, and the issue severity is High.
Change the Severity Value to Use CVSS.
Note: If you only change the Severity Value but you don't change the Base metrics, the issue is categorized in the issue list as Undetermined, which means that the severity formula cannot accurately calculate the severity because information that it uses in its calculation is missing.

In this screen capture, we enabled the display of the Severity Value column so that we can see that the severity is manually overridden.

Results

Here's how we triaged the highlighted issues in this next screen capture:

Issue #5: We modified the CVSS Base metrics but did not change the Severity Value from its original High categorization. The calculated CVSS score is now 5.3 and the High severity categorization remains unchanged.
Issue #7: We modified the CVSS Base metrics and changed the Severity Value to Use CVSS. The calculated CVSS score is 6.4, and now the severity categorization is Medium.
Issue #3: We did not modify the CVSS Base metrics, but changed the Severity Value to Use CVSS. Because the Base metrics are unknown, there is not enough information to calculate the CVSS score, and so the severity categorization is Undetermined.

Samples of issue severity triaging