Report: The state of application security in 2021

Applications have become an increasingly attractive target for cybercriminals, and the rapid shift to remote work in the past year has only intensified this.

To capture perspectives on data breaches, top application security vulnerabilities, and the most important product capabilities needed to defend against multi-vector application attacks, Barracuda commissioned independent market research firm Vanson Bourne to survey application security decision makers. The results of that research were published today in the new report, The state of application security in 2021.

The survey includes responses from 750 application security decision makers responsible for their organization’s application development and security. They came from organizations in companies with 500 or more employees in the U.S., EMEA, and APAC.

New insights on application security

Overall, the findings indicate that more needs to be done to protect against application security threats, particularly newer threats like bot attacks, API attacks, and supply chain attacks.

On average, respondent organizations were successfully breached twice in the past 12 months as a direct result of an application vulnerability.

• 72% of respondents say their organization suffered at least one breach from an application vulnerability.


• 32% say their organization suffered two breaches due to an applications vulnerability.


• 14% were breached three times for due to application vulnerabilities.

The range of application security-related challenges facing organizations extends beyond difficulties securing multiple attack vectors.

• Respondents identified their top application security challenges as bad bots (43%), software supply chain attacks (39%), vulnerability detection (38%), and securing APIs (37%).

Bot-based attacks are the most likely contributor to successful security breaches resulting from application vulnerabilities in the past 12 months.

• 44% of respondents say bot attacks contributed to a successful security breach that exploited a vulnerability in the organization’s applications in the last 12 months.

Get your copy of The state of application security in 2021 today and see all the latest insightful details about bad bots, broken APIs, software supply chain attacks, and more.

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