Coffee and Juice

A US survey of has found that 88% of companies spend more money on coffee than on web application security. We (in the UK) seem to legislate more on fruit juice than either coffee or web application security.

Whilst it was encouraging to read the section on security in the ICO's new Data Sharing Code of Practice, we do seem to have rather more detailed legislation on things like fruit juice than information security. The Fruit Juices and Fruit Nectars (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2011, which were laid before Parliament in April and come into force on Monday, define the minimum Brix levels (sugar content) for fruit juices from concentrate. Wouldn't it be great to see some similar highly specific legislation on securing online applications (and labelling) like this across Europe?

But, back to the coffee... Cenzic have issued their Web Application Security Trends Report Q3-Q4, 2010 which provides an analysis of reported vulnerabilities and breaches attributable to web applications. Its results confirm other recent reports that cross site scripting and SQL injection continue to dominate, despite these issues having being know about for a long time, and there being readily available methods to solve them.

But Cenzic and Barracuda Networks also commissioned the Ponemon Institute to survey 600 IT and IT Security professionals in the United States. The report's findings showed that most companies are spending more on coffee than keeping their web sites secure.

I'm sure the findings for tea in the United Kingdom would be similar. After all, there is a British Standard about how to make tea (BS 6008:1980/ISO 3103:1980). I can't find the application security standard from BSI (...just yet).