Update Critical Dependencies

Priority: High
Estimated Effort: Medium (2 weeks)
Category: Security & Critical Updates
Description:
Update critical dependencies with known security vulnerabilities to their recommended versions to enhance application security and performance. This includes PostgreSQL driver, Jasypt, JBoss Logging, commons-collections4, and jackson-annotations.

Tasks:

Update PostgreSQL driver from 42.3.10 to 42.7.2 to address CVE-2023-39417 and CVE-2024-1597.
Replace Jasypt 1.9.3 with Spring Security's built-in encryption (TextEncryptor).
Update JBoss Logging from 3.3.1.Final to 3.5.3.Final.
Update commons-collections4 from 4.3 to 4.4.
Update jackson-annotations from 2.15.3 to 2.17.0.

Perform comprehensive testing after each update.

Acceptance Criteria:

All specified dependencies are updated to their recommended versions in the pom.xml.

Application passes all existing unit and integration tests post-update.

No new vulnerabilities are introduced (verified via dependency scanning tools).

Jasypt encryption is fully replaced with Spring Security's TextEncryptor, with no runtime errors.

PostgreSQL driver update resolves CVE-2023-39417 and CVE-2024-1597 vulnerabilities.

Dependencies:

Access to dependency scanning tools (e.g., OWASP Dependency-Check).
Testing environment for validating updates.