Security in Web Development: Best Practices for a Threat-Free Environment
Web development security is important to ensuring the safety of online systems & their users. As daily transactions and activities start moving online, the necessity of securing web apps has become important. Web app security mainly involves using tools, strategies, and best practices like authentication, secure communication, session management, and input validation to ensure a high level of safety. In this post, we will shed light on web application development security threats and the best practices to eliminate them. Let's get started.
Real-world examples of web app security vulnerabilities
Let's have a look at some of the major web security vulnerabilities and threats:
1. Vulnerabilities in frameworks and third-party libraries
Many web apps depend on third-party frameworks and libraries. They may lead to severe vulnerabilities in the web app if they need to be regularly updated.
2. Injection attacks
Injection attacks may involve injecting malicious commands or codes into the input field of an application like search boxes and login forms to gain unauthorized access.
3. Insecure authorization & authentication
Improperly implemented authorization and authentication mechanisms enable attackers or hackers to bypass security control & gain access to sensitive functionality & data.
4. XSS
XSS refers to a cross-site scripting attack that involves injecting malicious codes into a web application or website. It steals sensitive information and performs unauthorized activities on behalf of users. XSS can also be eliminated in this with the following ways:
Validate user input
Leverage output encoding methods
Utilize auto-sanitization libraries
Content security policy implementation
5. Insufficient monitoring & logging
Without proper monitoring and logging methods, it can be impossible to address the root cause of any vulnerabilities and other web security-related issues.
6. App security issues
With the increasing demands of mobile apps, ensuring their security has been extremely important. Mobile apps are highly vulnerable to several cyber attacks and breaches.
7. Cloud security issues
With the diverse applications of cloud computing, ensuring cloud-based app security has become essential. Cloud-based apps are also vulnerable to a range of attacks.
Best practices for web app security solutions
Let’s have a look at the best practices for protecting and securing information:
1. Shift left security implementation in SDLC
Nowadays, developers choose an agile methodology for custom software development. Therefore, they prefer to use DevOps, cloud, microservices, containers, etc. However, they have several distributed components in the IT ecosystem. Therefore, it's important to manage all kinds of security threats & vulnerabilities through shift left security. This refers to the practice of shifting the security checks. It has several advantages including quick problem detection, faster delivery & deployment, cost reduction, enhanced security framework, and so on. The top 5 shift security tools are:
SAST or Static Application Security Testing
DAST or Dynamic Application Security Testing
SCA or Software Composition Analysis
IAST or Interactive Application Security Testing
ASTaaS or Application Security Testing as a Service
2. Security configuration enhancement
A web server offers several options for better management. However, sometimes it creates some confusion and contributes to misconfigurations. Here are some unexpected things that lead to security vulnerabilities:
Having unwanted open ports
Unprotected directories and files
Utilizing outdated web security protocols
Undeleted guest, temporary, and default accounts
Using obsolete or old software libraries
To avoid these issues, you have to focus on well-structured server management. You must be careful while configuring the web server & take advanced security measures.
3. Incorporate logging & auditing
Logging & auditing are major web security vulnerabilities that you should identify. However, there is no exact data that shows how many audits or logs lead to security issues. Logging & auditing may involve:
Tracking unusual activity logs
Setting up an auto alert on abnormal sequences
Monitoring logins & other essential transactions
Apart from that, you need to rely on a reference point by which identification of security vulnerabilities & threats will be more easy.
4. Ensuring data encryption
Encryption refers to a confidential information encoding process that helps to protect information from unauthorized access. It allows you to encrypt data in transit between the web server and the browser. SSL/TLS plays a big role in encrypting communications with the HTTPS protocol.
Some of the best practices for data encryption include:
Sensitive data encryption with robust algorithms
Investing in security infrastructure development
Network firewalls implementation
Data stored in password-protected database server
5. Security testing with CI/CD
In this era, system administrators and developers rely on advanced development approaches like DevOps to ensure robust and fast product delivery. You should rely on CI/CD pipelines to implement DevOps into the SDLC or software development life cycle. If these pipelines aren't secured, there will be a risk of vulnerabilities and security threats in your web application. Therefore, it's important to implement security testing with CI/CD pipelines. It helps to address security threats effectively.
What are the types of security tests?
Security tests always play a big role in addressing weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the application architecture, configuration, and codes. Some of the important types of web app security tests include:
1. Penetration testing
Penetration testing refers to ethical hacking methods that perform real-world attacks on the web app to find vulnerabilities exploited by hackers or attackers. It actively involves trying to exploit vulnerabilities & gaining unauthorized access.
2. Vulnerability assessment
The vulnerability assessment test involves web app scanning to identify vulnerabilities like misconfigurations, broken authentication, software versions, etc.
3. Security configuration review
This test identifies the configuration settings of frameworks, databases, and servers of web applications to ensure that they are secured properly. It looks for weak security settings or misconfigurations exploited by hackers or attackers.
4. Security code review
In this testing method, the source code of an application is reviewed by security personnel manually to address security flaws like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, etc.
5. Input validation
This test finds how a web app manages user input. It can easily address several vulnerabilities like command injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), or malicious SQL code that mainly happens when user-supplied information isn't validated accurately.
6. Authorization & authentication testing
This test shed light on the web app’s authorization and authentication mechanism. It evaluates if user credentials are validated properly, access control is correctly enforced, and session management is properly secure.
7. Security headers
This testing method verifies if the web app utilizes accurate security headers like (CSP) Content Security Policy, (HSTS) HTTP Strict Transport Security, and (CORS) Cross-Origin Resource Sharing to eliminate security risks.
8. Logging & error handling test
This testing method shows how the web app manages security-related events or errors. It mainly ensures that an error message doesn't disclose sensitive data & that logs are monitored & protected in a proper way.
9. DoS testing
DoS or Denial of Service aims to address vulnerabilities that contribute to DoS attacks. In this attack, attackers overload the web app or its infrastructure.
10. API security testing
If any web app exposes APIs, this test is used to assess API security. It examines several vulnerabilities like insufficient authorization or authentication, huge data exposure, or API endpoints.
11. RASP testing
RASP refers to Runtime Application Self Application which is a web app security approach that leverages several techniques to track applications and enable threat detection to block attacks in real time.
All these testing methods must be regularly performed & integrated into the software development life cycle to ensure ongoing web security. It's recommended to engage reliable security testing service providers or security experts to effectively manage these tests.
Final words
Feature-rich websites or web apps are integral parts of today's businesses. By knowing the risk of security threats, experts should focus on implementing the best practices to protect web apps from such vulnerabilities. The above-mentioned techniques and testing methods help to enhance web app security levels and protect sensitive information.