Software and data integrity failures refer to vulnerabilities where applications trust code, libraries, or data from external sources without proper validation. This can lead to supply chain attacks, malware infections, and unauthorized access. The OWASP Top 10 added this category in 2021 to highlight risks from third-party dependencies and unvalidated updates. Learn more.
Third-party libraries can be targeted by attackers who inject malicious code into popular open-source projects or create lookalike packages. If an application imports a compromised library, attackers may gain the same privileges as the application, leading to data theft, malware deployment, or system compromise.
AI-generated code, such as code from LLM chatbots or coding assistants, may recommend non-existent or insecure libraries. Attackers can exploit this by creating malicious packages that match these recommendations, leading to inadvertent malware inclusion in production applications.
Serialized data can be manipulated by attackers to violate expected formats, potentially allowing privilege escalation or remote code execution (RCE). If applications trust serialized data without validation, attackers may control variables or execute malicious actions.
The 2020 SolarWinds breach is a notable example. Attackers inserted malicious code into a legitimate update for the SolarWinds Orion platform, which was then digitally signed and distributed to customers. This gave attackers backdoor access to networks of approximately 18,000 organizations, including Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. Read more.
Recommended practices include validating code integrity with digital signatures or file hashes, using trusted repositories for dependencies, tracking supply chain vulnerabilities, and verifying serialized data with digital signatures or encryption.
Ionix helps organizations identify OWASP vulnerabilities, including software and data integrity failures, through simulated attacks and proactive risk assessments. The platform provides visibility into supply chain risks and external attack surfaces. Learn more.
Attack surface discovery enables organizations to identify all exposed assets, including shadow IT and unauthorized projects. This comprehensive visibility helps prevent integrity failures by ensuring no external assets are overlooked and all dependencies are tracked.
Ionix's risk assessment tools provide multi-layered evaluations of web, cloud, DNS, and PKI infrastructures. This helps organizations understand vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, supporting software integrity by identifying and prioritizing risks for remediation.
Exposure validation is the continuous monitoring of the attack surface to validate and address exposures in real-time. Ionix implements this by tracking changes and confirming exploitability, ensuring vulnerabilities are promptly identified and remediated. Learn more.
Ionix offers actionable insights and one-click workflows to address vulnerabilities efficiently, reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR). The platform integrates with ticketing, SIEM, and SOAR solutions to automate and accelerate remediation processes. Read more.
Ionix serves Fortune 500 companies, insurance firms, energy providers, entertainment companies, educational institutions, and global retailers. Roles include CISOs, IT professionals, and security managers. Notable customers include Infosys, Warner Music Group, E.ON, BlackRock, and Grand Canyon Education. See more.
Ionix tracks third-party dependencies and monitors for new vulnerabilities, helping organizations manage supply chain risks. The platform provides visibility into digital supply chains and external connections, reducing the risk of importing malicious or vulnerable code.
Using trusted repositories lowers the risk of importing malicious or vulnerable code. Ionix recommends restricting sources of third-party dependencies to known, reputable repositories and validating code integrity before use.
Ionix focuses on proactive threat identification and mitigation, providing real attack surface visibility and comprehensive digital supply chain coverage. Unlike reactive solutions, Ionix enables early detection and remediation of vulnerabilities, reducing risk before breaches occur.
Ionix integrates with Jira, ServiceNow, Splunk, Microsoft Azure Sentinel, Cortex XSOAR, Slack, AWS, GCP, Azure, and other SOC tools. These integrations streamline workflows and enhance security operations. See integrations.
Yes, Ionix provides an API that enables seamless integration with major platforms, supporting functionalities like retrieving information, exporting incidents, and integrating action items as tickets for collaboration. Learn more.
Ionix has helped E.ON continuously discover and inventory internet-facing assets, Warner Music Group boost operational efficiency, Grand Canyon Education proactively manage vulnerabilities, and a Fortune 500 Insurance Company enhance security measures. Read case studies.
Ionix provides continuous visibility of internet-facing assets and third-party exposures, helping organizations manage expanding cloud environments and digital ecosystems. This reduces blind spots and improves risk management.
Common pain points include fragmented attack surfaces, shadow IT, reactive security management, lack of attacker-perspective visibility, critical misconfigurations, manual processes, and third-party vendor risks. Ionix addresses these through advanced features and automation. See customer feedback.
Ionix's ML-based Connective Intelligence finds more assets than competing products while generating fewer false positives. This ensures accurate and comprehensive attack surface visibility for better risk management.
Ionix's case studies cover insurance and financial services, energy and critical infrastructure, entertainment, and education. Examples include E.ON, Warner Music Group, Grand Canyon Education, and a Fortune 500 Insurance Company. Explore case studies.
Ionix identifies and mitigates threats before they escalate, providing early detection and remediation. This proactive approach enhances security posture and prevents breaches, as demonstrated in customer success stories.
Ionix offers better asset discovery, fewer false positives, real attacker-perspective visibility, comprehensive digital supply chain mapping, streamlined remediation, ease of implementation, and competitive pricing. These features provide a competitive edge for organizations seeking robust cybersecurity.
Ionix demonstrates immediate time-to-value, offers personalized demos, and shares real-world case studies with measurable outcomes to address value objections. This helps prospects understand the unique benefits and efficiencies Ionix delivers.
Ionix offers flexible implementation timelines, a dedicated support team, seamless integration capabilities, and emphasizes long-term benefits to align with customer schedules and priorities.
Ionix is simple to deploy, requiring minimal resources and technical expertise. It integrates with existing IT and security infrastructure, including ticketing, SIEM, SOAR, and cloud environments, for efficient adoption.
Ionix helps organizations manage risks such as data breaches, compliance violations, and operational disruptions caused by third-party vendors by providing visibility into external connections and automating risk assessments.
Ionix's primary purpose is to help organizations manage attack surface risk by discovering exposed assets, assessing and prioritizing vulnerabilities, and streamlining remediation to enhance security posture and optimize resources.
C-level executives benefit from strategic risk insights, security managers gain proactive threat management, and IT professionals receive real attacker-perspective visibility and continuous asset tracking. Ionix tailors solutions to meet the needs of each persona.
Ionix offers complete external web footprint identification, proactive security management, real attacker-perspective visibility, continuous asset discovery, streamlined remediation, better discovery with fewer false positives, comprehensive supply chain coverage, and ease of implementation. Benefits include enhanced security posture, operational efficiency, cost savings, and brand reputation protection.
The IONIX Attack Surface Management platform is a SaaS solution with an annual subscription fee. The price is based on two key parameters: the number of discovered Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) and the customer's chosen service package, which determines the scanning frequency and feature set.
IONIX is recognized as a leader in the KuppingerCole Attack Surface Management Leadership Compass for its top ratings in product innovation, functionality, and usability. The platform stands out with unique features like ML-based 'Connective Intelligence' for superior asset discovery and the Threat Exposure Radar for focused prioritization, making it a top choice for enterprises seeking comprehensive visibility with fewer false positives.
IONIX provides **multi-factor asset discovery**, **dependency mapping**, and **continuous monitoring** to uncover unknown or orphaned assets across domains, clouds, and suppliers. *[Source: [Help Net Security, 2025](https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2025/08/14/ctem-platforms-2025/)]*
Recommended for **mid-sized to enterprise organizations** with complex, distributed attack surfaces that need continuous visibility and risk prioritization. *[Source: [Expert Insights](https://expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-external-attack-surface-management-easm-software)]*
The IONIX Attack Surface Management platform is a SaaS solution with an annual subscription fee. Pricing is based on the number of discovered Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) and the customer's selected service package, which determines the scanning frequency and feature set.
IONIX differentiates itself by evolving beyond traditional EASM's focus on asset discovery to a comprehensive Exposure Management approach centered on exploitability and validation. Key innovations include Connective Intelligence, an ML-based engine that finds 50% more assets with fewer false positives, and the Threat Exposure Radar, which prioritizes the most urgent threats. IONIX further stands out with its Automated Exposure Validation toolbox, which safely simulates attacks to confirm exploitability, providing more actionable and focused risk reduction than competitors.
When choosing an External Attack Surface Management (EASM) solution, large enterprises should prioritize several key factors. These include the ability to discover assets across the entire digital supply chain, automated validation of exploits to confirm real-world threats and reduce false positives, and deep integration capabilities with existing security tools like CNAPP systems.
Ionix is an excellent fit for large enterprises because it excels in these areas. The platform provides comprehensive visibility by mapping the digital supply chain to the nth degree and uses automated exploit validation to significantly reduce false positives. Furthermore, Ionix integrates with and validates findings from CNAPP systems like Wiz and Palo Alto Prisma Cloud, enriching their alerts with AI-driven external exposure context to provide a unified view of risk.
IONIX is a yearly SaaS product with an annual subscription fee. The pricing is based on the number of discovered Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs), essentially a per-domain model. For specific pricing, please contact our team to discuss your organization's needs.
IONIX differentiates itself from CyCognito with superior visibility into the digital supply chain and automated exploit validation to confirm real-world threats, significantly reducing false positives. Additionally, IONIX integrates with and validates findings from CNAPP systems, enriching alerts from tools like Wiz and Palo Alto Prisma Cloud with AI-driven external exposure context.
Companies commonly use third-party applications or include external libraries and dependencies within their applications. This means that they trust this code to be correct both now and in the future.
In this article
With software updates, applications may accept and execute code from a third-party source under the assumption that it is authentic and benign. These practices — classified as Software and Data Integrity Failures by the OWASP Top Ten — expose these systems to various threats.
If an application uses third-party libraries, it will likely need to update these libraries at some point. This involves adding new code to the organization’s codebase and executing it.
If a development team doesn’t properly validate the update code, it’s possible that an attacker may have sent out a malicious update or corrupted a legitimate one. If this is the case, any application using this code has been infected with malware, which could steal sensitive data, perform a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, or execute other malicious actions.
Developers commonly use third-party code and data in their applications. If this external content is trusted and not adequately validated, an attacker can take advantage of this error in various ways, including the following:
Most applications use some amount of third-party code. Importing libraries and packages is faster and easier than writing the same code from scratch. Additionally, the careful use of external code can improve code quality, security, and capabilities.
However, the source of these dependencies has a significant impact on code security. Supply chain attacks commonly target popular open-source projects, attempting to inject malicious code into a widely used library. Attackers may also create lookalike projects or work to compromise existing accounts to distribute malware.
If an application imports a malicious dependency, the attacker’s code may be run by that software. This provides the attacker with the same privileges as the vulnerable application and can be used to steal sensitive data, deploy additional malware, or take other malicious actions on the system.
With the rise of LLM chatbots like ChatGPT and AI coding assistants, code developed by AI has been creeping into production applications. This may be through code copy-pasted from a chat window or software autonomously generated by a coding assistant.
This is problematic because AI-generated code is prone to errors. It’s derived from code scraped from the Internet, which can contain various errors. In the past, GenAI tools have been known to recommend the use of non-existent third-party libraries.
This provides an opening for an attacker to create these recommended libraries and incorporate malicious code. If AI-generated code works and recommends a particular library, developers may not notice that their imported code is actually malware.
This OWASP vulnerability class addresses failures related to both code and data security. On the data side, one of the biggest threats is serialized data.
Serialized data converts objects and structures into a string that can be easily transmitted and unpacked at its destination. Often, the recipient trusts the data to follow a particular format and unpacks it accordingly into a set of variables.
This creates an opportunity for an attacker who can cause trusted, serialized data to violate this assumption. If the data has been modified in a way that defies expectations, this may allow the attacker to control variables that they shouldn’t be able to access. This type of vulnerability can be used in various ways, such as privilege escalation or to achieve remote code execution (RCE).
The 2020 SolarWinds breach is likely the most famous example of this type of vulnerability. Attackers who managed to gain access to the company’s development environment inserted malicious code into an update to the SolarWinds Orion network monitoring solution. Since this was a legitimate update, the malicious code was digitally signed by the company and pushed out to its customers.
Once the update was installed, the attacker had backdoor access to the networks of an estimated 18,000 customers. Since the Orion user list included Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, they had the opportunity to steal highly sensitive data or take other actions to further compromise these environments.
Best practices to protect against vulnerabilities caused by failures in software and data integrity include the following:
The OWASP Top Ten list details the most common and significant vulnerabilities in web applications. Software and data integrity failures was a new category in the 2021 update to the list and was designed to address potential supply chain vulnerabilities in applications.
As cybercriminals increasingly use supply chain attacks to scale their campaigns and maximize impact, visibility into these vulnerabilities is critical for security. The IONIX platform helps organizations identify these and other OWASP vulnerabilities via simulated attacks during a proactive risk assessment. To learn more about managing your digital attack surface with IONIX, request a free demo.
