As another year comes to a close, application security remains more important than ever; it is a must have. With virtually every business using applications to grow their businesses, the vulnerabilities and risks associated with these business-enabling applications continue to grow exponentially.

2018 has been a record year for security breaches – but that’s not news. Inevitably, each year has more security incidents than the previous year, and the pattern is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Since it’s Thanksgiving, WhiteHat wondered, what are hackers giving thanks for? The simplest answers are Google, gigabit internet speeds, and an endless supply of caffeine. But the number one thing that hackers are overwhelmingly grateful for is DATA, especially passwords stored in plain or cleartext.

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday quickly approaching, the deals have already begun. 2018 is expected to be yet another year for record-setting sales figures, continuing the growth of the holiday from its induction.

With the proliferation of the mobile workforce in recent years, policies such as “bring your own device” (BYOD) have exploded in popularity - leading to the next stage of the cycle: “bring your own apps” (BYOA).

Since 2013, WhiteHat Security has provided customers the ability to include a dynamically generated trust mark on their companies’ websites, indicating that WhiteHat manages their sites’ security.

In a representative democracy like the United States, voting is a fundamental right, privilege and civic duty. The infrastructure of our electoral process is critical to governing in the U.S., and election security should be of the utmost importance. But is it easy to hack an election?

The news that private equity business Thoma Bravo is to acquire our rivals over at Veracode underlines that the application security space is quickly becoming one of the hottest sectors in the entire security industry.

As discussed last week, many states are failing to take appropriate responsibility - not only to ensure that our voting machines work, but that they’re secure. Is there hope that we can still encourage a change before November? As with anything else, change is often difficult and time consuming.

Election Day 2018 is fast approaching, and when Americans head to the polls, will their votes be secured? That’s the burning question on the minds of many security experts. As important as these midterms maybe, the security and integrity of our American voting systems should also be at the forefront of the conversation.