Government agencies face a security challenge hiding in plain sight: outdated web forms that collect citizen data through systems built years — sometimes decades — ago. While agencies invest heavily in perimeter security and advanced threat detection, many continue using legacy forms lacking modern encryption, authentication capabilities and compliance features. These aging systems process Social Security numbers, financial records, health information and security clearance data through technology that falls short of current federal security standards.

The scale of this challenge is substantial. Government organizations allocate 80% of IT budgets to maintaining legacy systems, leaving modernization efforts chronically underfunded. Critical legacy systems cost hundreds of millions annually to maintain, with projected spending reaching billions by 2030. Meanwhile, government data breaches cost an average of $10 million per incident in the United States — the highest globally.

The encryption gap that persists

Despite the 2015 federal mandate establishing HTTPS as the baseline for all government websites, implementation gaps continue. The unencrypted HTTP protocol exposes data to interception, manipulation and impersonation attacks. Attackers positioned on the network can read Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial account numbers and login credentials transmitted in plain text.

Legacy government web forms that do implement encryption often use outdated protocols no longer meeting regulatory requirements. Older systems rely on deprecated hashing algorithms like SHA-1 and outdated TLS versions vulnerable to known exploits. Without proper security header enforcement, browsers don’t automatically use secure connections, allowing users to inadvertently access unencrypted form pages.

Application-layer vulnerabilities

Beyond transmission security, legacy web forms suffer from fundamental application vulnerabilities. Testing reveals that over 80% of government web applications remain prone to SQL injection attacks. Unlike private sector organizations that remediate 73% of identified vulnerabilities, government departments remediate only 27% — the lowest among all industry sectors.

SQL injection remains one of the most dangerous attacks against government web forms. Legacy forms constructing database queries using string concatenation rather than parameterized queries introduce serious vulnerabilities. This insecure practice allows attackers to inject malicious SQL code, potentially gaining unauthorized access to national identity information, license details and Social Security numbers. Attackers exploit these vulnerabilities to alter or delete identity records, manipulate data to forge official documents, and exfiltrate entire databases containing citizen information.

Cross-site scripting (XSS) affects 75% of government applications. XSS attacks enable attackers to manipulate users’ browsers directly, capture keystrokes to steal credentials, obtain session cookies to hijack authenticated sessions, and redirect users to malicious websites. Legacy forms also lack protection against CSRF attacks, which trick authenticated users into performing unwanted actions without their knowledge.

Compliance imperative

Federal agencies must comply with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), which requires implementation of National Institute of Standards and Technology SP 800-53 security controls including access control, configuration management, identification and authentication, and system and communications protection. Legacy web forms fail FISMA compliance when they cannot implement modern encryption for data in transit and at rest, lack multi-factor authentication capabilities, don’t maintain comprehensive audit logs, use unsupported software without security patches, and operate with known exploitable vulnerabilities.

Federal agencies using third-party web form platforms must ensure vendors have appropriate FedRAMP authorization. FedRAMP requires security controls compliance incorporating NIST SP 800-53 Revision 5 controls, impact level authorization based on data sensitivity, and continuous monitoring of encryption methods and security posture. Legacy government web forms implemented through non-FedRAMP-authorized platforms represent unauthorized use of non-compliant systems.

Real-world transmission failures

The gap between policy and practice is stark. Federal agencies commonly require contractors to submit forms containing Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, criminal histories and credit information via standard non-encrypted email as plain PDF attachments. When contractors offer encrypted alternatives, badge offices often respond with resistance to change established procedures.

Most federal agencies lack basic secure portals for PII submission, forcing reliance on email despite policies requiring encryption. Standard Form 86 for national security clearances and other government forms are distributed as fillable PDFs that can be completed offline, saved unencrypted, and transmitted through insecure channels — despite containing complete background investigation data for millions of federal employees and contractors.

Recent breaches highlight ongoing vulnerabilities. Federal departments have suffered breaches where hackers accessed networks through compromised credentials. Congressional offices have been targeted by suspected foreign actors. Private contractors providing employee screening services have confirmed massive data breaches affecting millions, with unauthorized access lasting months before detection.

What agencies must do now

Government agencies must immediately enforce HTTPS encryption for all web form pages using HTTP strict transport security, deploy server-side input validation to prevent SQL injection and XSS attacks, implement anti-CSRF tokens for each form session, add bot protection, enable comprehensive access logging, and conduct regular vulnerability scanning for Open Worldwide Application Security Project Top 10 vulnerabilities.

Long-term security requires replacing legacy forms with FedRAMP-authorized platforms that provide end-to-end encryption using AES-256 for data at rest and TLS 1.3 for data in transit, multi-factor authentication for both citizens and government staff, role-based access control with granular permissions, comprehensive audit trails capturing all data access events, and automated security updates addressing emerging vulnerabilities.

Secure data collection

The real question is not whether government agencies can afford to modernize outdated web forms, but whether they can afford the consequences of failing to do so. Every unencrypted submission, each SQL injection vulnerability, and each missing audit trail represents citizen data at risk and regulatory violations accumulating. Federal mandates established the security standards years ago. Implementation can no longer wait.

The technology to solve these problems exists today. Modern secure form platforms offer FedRAMP authorization, end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, comprehensive audit logging, and automated compliance monitoring. These platforms can replace legacy systems while improving user experience, reducing operational costs, and meeting evolving security requirements.

Success requires more than technology adoption — it demands organizational commitment. Agency leadership must prioritize web form security, allocate adequate budgets for modernization, and establish clear timelines for legacy system replacement. Security and IT teams need the resources and authority to implement proper controls.

Government web forms represent the primary interface between citizens and their government for countless critical services. When these forms are secure, they enable efficient, trustworthy digital government services. When they’re vulnerable, they undermine public confidence in government’s ability to protect sensitive information. The path forward is clear: Acknowledge the severity of legacy web form vulnerabilities, commit resources to address them systematically, and implement modern secure solutions. The cost of action is significant, but the cost of inaction — measured in breached data, compromised systems, regulatory penalties and lost public trust — is far higher.

Frank Balonis is chief information security officer and senior vice president of operations and support at Kiteworks.

The post The hidden vulnerability: Why legacy government web forms demand urgent attention first appeared on Federal News Network.

Traditional Pentesting Is a Static Solution To a Dynamic Problem 

Recently, Microsoft disclosed four zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Servers. A Research Director from Palo Alto Networks claimed that adversaries were scanning for vulnerabilities within 25 minutes of vulnerabilities being released. Synack customers discovered the critical Apache Log4j vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) within hours of its disclosure through a Synack CVE check offering. Scanning traffic for the vulnerability piqued just five days after the disclosure and has continued. There has never been a higher need for fast reporting and remediation timelines on high-priority vulnerabilities. 

In the 1970s, James P. Anderson invented point-in-time pentests as a public policy and technical innovation to secure communication systems and other networks from malicious hackers. But the threat landscape and the sophistication of digital threats have changed vastly since then, having a significant impact on pentesting. Other major factors include increased attacker sophistication and vulnerabilities, new DevSecOps workflows and collaboration/security software (Splunk, Jira, Slack, SOAR, etc.), and growing adoption of cloud services, infrastructure, and storage. With these macro changes, the traditional way of doing pentesting is too slow, disruptive, and ineffective. The good news is that Synack has heard these customer challenges and developed an on-demand pentest that’s continuous, performance-driven, and intelligent. 

Cloud Services & Providers Are Dynamic

Point-in-time pentesting cannot keep pace with agile cloud services, which are often spun up around specific projects. On average, large organizations add 3.5 new publicly accessible cloud services per day. Remote code vulnerabilities or external misconfigurations can occur at any time and leave organizations’ public and private assets vulnerable. 

New DevSecOps Workflows & Security Software Stack 

The average security team now uses about 45 cybersecurity-related tools on their network. Collaboration tools have replaced email. Typically, most security, ops, and development teams communicate using Splunk, Slack, Jira, or ServiceNow. Code releases are constant. It’s important to have a DevSecOps process that automates a lot of the work across these platforms, or risk spending time on administrative processes that distract from securing your organization. 

Increase In Sheer Number of Vulnerabilities & More Sophisticated Adversaries

Security researchers have found an increasing number of vulnerabilities in recent  years. In fact, the number of new vulnerabilities increased by 127% from 2017-2018 compared to single digit growth rates in previous years. An average of roughly 17,416 new vulnerabilities are added each year and point in time pentests can’t keep up. Attackers are more efficient than ever with some popular exploitable vulnerabilities pursued within a hours of when a patch is released (i.e. Microsoft Exchange CVE-2021-26855, Apache Log4j CVE-2021-44228)

What Pentesting Challenges Are Security Leaders Facing Today?

Speed 

Typically, in a traditional pentest model an organization seeks out an established consulting firm to do the work. As the complexity of assets has increased, pentesters specialize; they vary in attack types (reverse engineering, password cracking, etc.), and focus on certain asset types (IoT, mobile, web, IaaS). Hiring enough skilled personnel is a top challenge to implementing and maintaining a pentest program. As a result, pentesters with sought-after skill sets may need to be scheduled months in advance. Scheduling a new program, or launching a new test can take weeks or even months, especially if the team needs to work on site. 

Disruption

Too often, security teams do not receive sufficient support to effectively communicate results. Vendors send pentest reports in PDFs or Excel via email. A security team member needs to copy and paste information into ticketing tools like Jira or ServiceNow, or collaboration tools (i.e. Slack). Reports are written in a way that’s not accessible to other key teams like legal, operations, IT or development. If they have questions, security teams can’t easily communicate with researchers that surface the vulnerabilities. Finally, once a vulnerability is closed, it’s not possible to re-test the vulnerability in a standard pentest. Vulnerabilities can fall between the cracks and take months or years to remediate.

Effectiveness 

One of the most frustrating aspects of penetration testing is the inability to see meaningful progress over time. How can you create a benchmark for your defenses? What security metrics should you consider to take stock of your various assets besides the CVSS score or quantity of vulnerabilities? Traditional pentesting does not provide holistic risk scores at the asset or company level. 

In response to these challenges, Synack offers a continuous, intelligent, and performance-driven on-demand pentest to improve your organization’s security posture overtime.

Synack Provides a Better Way to Pentest

Harness the Best Talent Globally On-Demand

More than 1,500 vetted security researchers from across the globe are actively working with the Synack Red Team, hunting  for vulnerabilities around the clock. The SRT is second to none when it comes to skills and trust, thanks to rigorous vetting and assessment of researcher expertise in the application process. Synack Ops can launch new pentests in as little as 3–5 days and start on-demand security tasks such as asset discovery in seconds.

Test for Cloud Misconfigurations, New Vulnerabilities, and Dynamic Host Changes

Organizations need to be wary of new vulnerabilities like Log4J or SolarWinds Orion. It’s never been more important to continually test public and private cloud assets. Synack offers configuration reviews of Azure environments, CVE checks, and testing for dynamic internal and external hosts. Synack integrates with numerous cloud providers (AWS, Azure and GCP).  Additionally, our API pulls from major cloud providers daily to help detect any changes to external hosts when Synack is testing.

Measure Performance Overtime with Metrics on Remediation, Patch Efficacy, and Risk Scoring

With traditional pentesting, there are not a lot of great metrics for measuring your security status overtime. Number of vulnerabilities found can be a helpful benchmark, but often don’t include other critical stats such as vulnerability remediation timelines. Synack provides a security risk score that takes a holistic approach based on metrics like attacker cost, severity of findings, and remediation efficiency.

Scale Testing with a Technology Platform

Synack offers 43% more coverage of your assets than a traditional pentest with SmartScan, a scanner that you can use on your medium priority assets to surface vulnerabilities. These “suspected vulnerabilities” are triaged by the researchers in order to provide you with actionable results.

Compliance (PCI-DSS, FISMA, HIPAA) Ready Reports & Actionable Results

Traditional pentests are built for your organization’s compliance objectives, but lack the agility necessary for digital transformation. Synack provides easily readable and compliance-ready reports on a wide range of metrics (i.e. vulnerability severity, vulnerability status, steps to reproduce, recommended fixes, remediation status) for legal, policy and leadership teams as well as real-time metrics on exploitable vulnerabilities that are the top priority for security, ops and development teams. Synack also integrates with Jira, ServiceNow, Splunk, and offers an API to facilitate faster DevSecOps processes.

Attackers are more vigilant than ever. Security teams need to be one step ahead of their adversaries to help make sure they are keeping their organizations’ environments safe. The choice is clear. Synack provides 159% more ROI than a traditional pentest. 

Change your pentest provider today and schedule a demo with our team, or download a solutions overview of Synack 365—our continuous pentest offering.

The post How Synack Is Disrupting Pentesting To Find Vulnerabilities Faster appeared first on Synack.