Application Security
Securing your applications is more than testing or pointing tools at them. We engage on a program level and can help at each stage of your team’s SDLC, training, secure design, static analysis, pipeline hardening, testing, and monitoring. Your applications are built to drive your organization forward, Sidekick is with you for every step of that process. Our goal is to ensure security and compliance are embedded into your applications from design to deployment—and beyond.
How To Engage
Project-Based
For organizations with specific application development projects, Sidekick Security offers targeted, one-time security support to address key risks and ensure secure deployment.
Our experts can help with critical security projects such as threat modeling, secure code reviews, and penetration testing to identify and fix vulnerabilities before your application goes live or as it goes through re-writes.
Project-Based
Ideal for: Organizations looking for targeted security support on a specific development project.
What you get: One-time security services such as threat modeling, secure code reviews, and penetration testing, with expert guidance on remediation.
Ongoing AppSec Program Development
For organizations looking to build or enhance an ongoing application security program, Sidekick Security offers continuous support across the entire SDLC.
Our team works with your developers, security professionals, and stakeholders to design, implement, and operate a scalable program that adapts to your business needs and security goals. We can provide senior embedded resources to support your product teams.
Ongoing AppSec Program Development
Ideal for: Organizations looking to build or scale a robust, long-term application security program.
What you get: Continuous support across the SDLC, including program design, developer training, tool integration, and ongoing risk assessments and monitoring.
Support at Every Stage of Your SDLC
Developer Training
Developer training is in many ways, the foundation of a secure SDLC. By equipping developers with the knowledge and tools to write secure code, organizations can prevent vulnerabilities from being introduced during development.
Training covers topics such as secure coding best practices, common vulnerabilities like those in the OWASP Top 10, and how to effectively use security tools.
With ongoing education, developers become empowered to make security-conscious decisions throughout the development process, reducing risks early in the SDLC.
Secure Design and Threat Modeling
With secure design and threat modeling, identify potential risks before development begins. Includes:
- Mapping out the application architecture
- Identifying critical assets and data flows
- Considering how attackers could engage
By integrating security into the design phase, organizations can proactively address risks and ensure that security controls are built into the system from the ground up and at the interaction point between components, which is often where issues arise.
Threat modeling helps prioritize resources and efforts to mitigate the most critical risks first.
Static Analysis and Code Review
Static code analysis involves scanning source code for vulnerabilities without executing the program. This automated process helps identify common security flaws like hardcoded secrets, injection vulnerabilities, insecure data handling, and the use of unsafe language constructs.
By embedding static analysis tools into the development process, developers receive immediate feedback on potential vulnerabilities, allowing them to address issues early and efficiently. This ensures that the codebase is secure before moving to the testing and deployment phases.
CI/CD Pipeline Design and Hardening
Designing and hardening Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines ensures that security is integrated into automated development workflows. By embedding security checks such as static analysis, vulnerability scanning, and compliance testing into each step of the pipeline, organizations can catch security issues early and reduce the risk of deploying vulnerable code.
Hardening the pipeline also involves implementing access controls, monitoring, and securing the infrastructure to ensure the infrastructure can’t be abused as a means of attacking the application or the organization.
Application Security Testing
Sidekick’s penetration testing offerings cover the range of mobile, web, API, native, and embedded software.
Our process starts with a deep understanding of the organization drivers, compliance mandates, and the application architecture itself. Penetration testing involves simulating real-world attacks leveraging a mix of automated scans and deep manual assessment on your application to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited or potential compliance issues that could present risk inside of an audit.
Our approach to security testing stretches beyond commodity transactions as our results help fix tactical vulnerabilities while helping inform and improve the broader strategic security program.
Runtime Security and Monitoring
Runtime security and monitoring focus on securing applications once they are deployed and actively running.
This includes real-time detection of suspicious activities, such as anomalous behavior, unauthorized access attempts, or potential exploits.
By continuously monitoring the application environment, organizations can quickly respond to threats as they arise, reducing the risk of successful attacks. Runtime security helps maintain the integrity and availability of applications even after they’ve been deployed, providing an essential layer of protection.
"Sidekick has been a true partner in helping us build out our security and privacy program here at the District. Their support has covered a wide spectrum for us, both technical and procedural. They've worked with us on performing risk assessments, developing security policy, deploying privacy initiatives, application penetration testing and managing new risks like generative AI. They’ve worked with us through the entire process and their ongoing support has been invaluable. Sidekick really has lived up to their name for us.”
– CISO, School District of Philadelphia
What You Get With Sidekick On Your Team
Partnership Over Point Solutions
A team that listens and works alongside you to deliver results that matter to your business, not the industry cookie cutters.
Tailored Solutions, Tangible Results
Risk-based, actionable recommendations prioritize your business’s unique needs, with measurable security improvements.
Results That Drive Your Mission
Proactive, mission-aligned security support that empowers your organization to innovate and grow with confidence.