Web apps are constantly threatened by cybercriminals attacking them and stealing their critical data.Cybersecurity is estimated to grow 600% and cost businesses $10.5 trillion by 2025. That’s one of many statistics to worry about. As the impact of cybersecurity becomes more acute, a highly secure website solution is more important than ever.
What is web development security?
One of the biggest questions in cybersecurity today is, “What is web development security?” Simply put, web development security refers to various cybersecurity techniques that can be used to protect web applications from online threats. Web application security is necessary, as most hackers target specific web applications. Examples of web security are WAF (web development firewall), cookies, MFA (multi-factor authentication), and many more.
What is external website security?
What is the difference between external security and internal security? In other words, offsite web security refers to the various measures taken to protect a website from cyberattacks outside an organization’s internal systems. Examples include SQL and many other types of injection.
Why do I need external website security?
We live in the Internet age, and almost everything we do is online. Worldwide, a cyberattack occurs every 39 seconds, with 560,000 new malware threats appearing every day. Therefore, good external web security is required to protect web development and customer data. Companies often lose millions of dollars due to these attacks, so external web security best practices are necessary.
An Enterprise Security Plan and Why You Need It
No matter your industry, a quality enterprise security plan ensures that your business and web applications are safe.
But what is a corporate security plan? It’s a concrete plan created to improve a company’s cybersecurity. Developing a corporate security plan is one of the first things you should do to minimize a breach and reduce its potential impact completely. However, a corporate security plan is not just about prevention; it also offers great business benefits. One is to provide an action plan for a potentially harmful breach.
Web security threats
Security is paramount as most businesses use web apps in some way. However, web security risks come in many different forms. That’s why we’ve listed some of the most common threats to watch out for.
Credential stuffing
In credential stuffing, the perpetrator takes the credentials obtained from a data breach in one of your web apps and uses them to log into another. Some users may expect to use the same account name and password across various web apps and start mass logins that crash the site.
Brute force attack
A brute force attack is similar to credential stuffing. However, instead of using the passwords and usernames they find, cybercriminals try to guess different combinations of passwords and usernames to overload web applications.
SQL injection
SQL injection (also known as SQLI) is an attack in which a hacker uses your SQL code to manipulate a database’s backend and access personal information. The information they access can range from sensitive business data to emails from individual customers.
Additionally, the attack could allow access to administrator privileges on the web application database. Overall, SQL injection is dangerous when successful in web applications.
Cross-site scripting
Cross-site scripting (XSS) is an injection attack similar to the SQLI attack that places malicious scripts on trusted and secure websites to compromise users using those apps. Increase.
But how do they do it? The attacker takes control of your web app to run malicious scripts on the victim’s browser, granting the necessary access to the user’s data.
Cookie addiction
Millions of websites use cookies to store information in your web browser. In cookie poisoning, an attacker finds a particular girlfriend’s cookie used for web development and modifies it to steal data the user trusts the application keeps safe. With millions of users using cookies to store data and make their lives easier, this can be a big problem.
Man-in-the-middle attack (MITM).
In a MITM attack (a man-in-the-middle attack), a hacker intervenes between your web development and your users. Then, impersonating the user or your web developer steals personal information from the two parties.
Disclosure of Confidential Information
Sensitive data disclosure occurs when web development unknowingly discloses confidential information. This usually happens when the application doesn’t have enough cybersecurity protections for your web development.
Insecure deserialization
In this basic web security threat, a cyber attacker places malicious scripts in your web app and performs denial of service (DoS) attacks, SQL injections, and many other threats to compromise the web app and its You can harm your customers. Regarding cybersecurity in web application development, it was recently ranked as the eighth largest web application threat.
Best practices for secure web development
As shown above, there are many potential threats to web app security. Good application server security best practices are required to overcome and prevent these problems. There are many methods available for secure web development. However, some are better than others.
Check out these important tips for improving web development security best practices:
Conduct a security threat assessment
Each web development has different business benefits. Therefore, cyber threats affect each business differently. Threats should be analyzed regarding threat impact and probability of occurrence before developing a real product. The analysis results suggest appropriate security controls should be prioritized and implemented before deployment.
Please note that no application is 100% secure. So you have to take some risks when it comes to cybersecurity. Adopting web development security best practices can greatly reduce the potential for threats to your system.
Harden configuration
A secure web application requires an infrastructure to run, and some software components require configuration in order to function. Vendors of infrastructure and software components document all web security settings and best practices. Cloud providers publish reference architectures on their websites that cover security-oriented architectural designs.
There are also independent white papers and guides on security configuration for software services. The best known is the CIS benchmark. By following these guidelines, you can avoid many problems caused by security misconfigurations.
Document software changes
Developing software that adds value to an enterprise is a process. Source code is often changed, including parts related to important functionality. Security measures may protect most features of the software.
However, it depends on the functionality. Each change should always be analyzed for its impact on the security of your data. We model different cyber threats that can affect each function and make appropriate changes according to the risk analysis.
All of these actions must be recorded and approved by the risk owner. The risk owner is usually the same as the company’s product owner. This document type is a great tool for tracking regulatory requirements, especially when external verification is required.
Implement input data validation
The most common web security issue with web applications is injection. A malicious user could create and share special data through the channel used to interact with the application (User Data Input). These users can execute code on the server-side or client browsers and compromise security.
Modern secure web frameworks used in web application software development implement input validation to prevent these web development threats and attacks.
However, this protection mechanism may be disabled or changed by developers. If you want your application to resist injection attacks, write custom code with input data validation in mind.
Use encryption for sensitive information
Properly implemented encryption is an essential protection mechanism for sensitive information. This is mandatory for all data sent over public networks. TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption is a common standard for encryption in transit. However, it is important to configure this TLS properly.
Only use certificates and copy your suites signed by industry-trusted third parties. Only powerful, dedicated key derivation functions should be used to store passwords in your application. The purpose of using a special solution is to make offline password cracking as difficult as possible without significantly impacting application performance.
For data at rest, we recommend using encryption. Correct implementation of such an approach and proper encryption key management can minimize the impact of some data breaches, such as theft or exfiltration of entire databases.
Data encryption is also useful when an external service provider needs temporary access to your production environment. There are also strict requirements for the encryption required when storing credit card data in IT systems.
The downside of encryption is a performance issue, especially for searches that require each record to be decrypted before creating the compartment. Therefore, it is always advisable to perform a risk analysis rather than simply taking an “encrypt everything” approach.
Update web app dependencies regularly
All components used in web apps can contain security vulnerabilities. It’s important to regularly review your web applications and create a web development vulnerability list to monitor for security issues. A good rule of thumb is to apply web security fixes as soon as you test them unless they fix poses a greater threat to your organization than the vulnerability itself.
In such cases, compensating controls can be applied, for example, in the form of another layer of security (network isolation, web development firewall, etc.). It is important to properly assess the risks and costs before making any changes.
Implement logging
Once the application is launched, it can become the target of various malicious attackers who attempt to bypass security controls. For this reason, visualization of such studies is mandatory.
All security-related events must be logged to track all actions of malicious actors. These logs must be kept securely for some time to enable forensic analysis. The recorded time must be the same for all components to ensure accuracy. Therefore, all system clocks should be synchronized with a reliable external time source. Logs should be protected from unauthorized access, especially to protect them from modification.
Prepare a backup and recovery plan
Downtime should be considered when building an application, especially if it is a core business tool. High availability (HA) cloud solutions cannot protect against every situation, such as data corruption. In such cases, a backup can help. It would help if you planned how often you would perform these backups and what technology you would use. Backup restores should be tested regularly to ensure the data is usable. Please note that providing data to users is also a GDPR requirement.
Train employees
No matter how secure an application is, people, especially employees, will use it. They must be trained to handle data securely and create strong, unguessable passwords. Awareness training on common security standards helps employees spot phishing attempts and respond immediately to your web application security threats.
Manage permissions
Giving full access to everything in your IT system is a good idea. Application users should have the minimum privileges necessary to perform their day-to-day business activities (principle of least privilege). High emergency privileges should be granted temporarily and revoked as soon as they are no longer needed.
The account should be blocked if the person is inactive for some time, such as on vacation. If they leave the company, deactivate their account. It is important to ensure web development is protected from malicious agents acting as employees and having access to all data.
Implement web app security best practices for user authentication
We’ve already discussed secure passwords for IT systems, but sometimes more than strong passwords are needed. It’s worth considering implementing multi-factor authentication.
You, a user or system administrator, provide the application with an additional factor that proves ownership of something (hardware token, mobile device) or its identity (fingerprint, vein pattern, facial pattern). Monitor for anomalies
An alert system should be put in place for running IT systems to identify potential breaches and notify those responsible for maintaining the application. If an alert is triggered, you should investigate the incident and, if necessary, modify your security controls to protect against newly discovered threats. Many businesses often overlook this requirement, which can result in hefty fines under the GDPR.
Use security audits and penetration testing
Cybersecurity threats are constantly evolving, and vulnerabilities in software components are constantly being discovered. Therefore, companies should always measure the security of their data processing. Security Audit is the perfect tool for this. These audits confirm that all processes related to data processing security are properly configured and functioning.
Penetration testing is a great solution for measuring application security. Its purpose is to simulate an attack on a system by cascading vulnerabilities to uncover web development security issues that threaten your business. Regular measurement of data processing security is a GDPR requirement, so both security audits and penetration tests should be conducted.
Apply vulnerabilities management
The right steps should always be taken to uncover web security issues during the security measurement. It does this by analyzing the risks posed by web development security risks and planning corrective actions based on the findings. These actions are typically related to system patches and upgrades, web development firewall rule adjustments, outdated technology, service provider changes, etc.
Do you have a plan for potential data breaches?
Despite all these efforts, breaches can still occur. There is no such thing as 100% security. It’s better to be prepared in case that happens. Prepare your cybersecurity crisis response team and create a common web development security checklist with up-to-date asset listings, business functions, owners, and recovery procedures.
Prepare internal and external communications and designate a representative to work with law enforcement and regulatory agencies.
Improve security in web development as soon as possible
Various web app cyber-attacks can occur, so be prepared and deploy a web app security strategy of high quality to combat these threats that significantly impact your business and its web apps are needed.
However, considering these important security measures for your web application will ensure protection against most cyber-attacks that damage it and its customers.
Conclusion
Any web development requires a security system that protects against threats, hackers, and unprotected malware that can destroy your data. Many security companies and services are available for web applications.
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