The Strategies to Secure Web Applications

Every business needs a core part and in this digital age, web application security plays that role. The Internet provides a strong global connection, but it also exposes web applications to several types of threats and complexity which may risk the whole business.

If you are wondering about the importance of web applications and its use then the answer is; Web application is a great brand awareness medium, it enables enterprises to reach more target audiences, effectively spread across the globe, improve customer-engagement, earn higher revenue and business growth. It contains sensitive data from your customers and your organization. Therefore, be sure to read these strategies to secure web applications.

As per the report by Cybint, approximately 60% of companies have experienced some sort of cyber-attacks. Small businesses are the common targets for such attacks as they invest less in cyber security or nothing at all.

First, let’s understand what this process of web application security is all about.

What is Web Application Security?

Web application security is the process of securing web services, websites and web applications from cyber-attacks. Web application attacks have some common targets such as database administration tools, cross-site scripting, path traversal, content management systems, and SaaS applications.

Organizations face several consequences if they fail to secure their web application such as data theft, affect client relations, permanent ban of the application and even legal procedures. Web applications are on high risks of cyber-attacks because:

• The source code is complex and that increases the possibility of having vulnerabilities in the source code.
• Even a small source code manipulation can lead to higher rewards like collecting sensitive private data.
• These attacks can easily be automated to execute several attacks simultaneously.

What are common web application security vulnerabilities?

Web application security deals specifically with the security issues encompassing websites, web applications and web services such as APIs. To safeguard your web application from the attacks, first, you need to understand the types of security loopholes you can find on the web applications. Some of the common web application security are listed below:

1. SQL Injections

2. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

3. Broken Authentication & Session Management

4. Insecure Direct Object References

5. Security Misconfiguration

6. Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

You can learn about these types of web application security vulnerabilities through an ethical hacking course.

Web Application Security Strategies

• Take an organized approach to set up a security plan with the help of your cyber security team and outline your goals to achieve web application security.
• Web application security can be improved by implementing security checkpoints and the security methods during the software development lifecycle, especially at the code development stage.
• Security architecture should include various safety features such as threat modeling, risk analysis, static analysis, digital signature.
• Use a web application firewall to analyze HTTP and HTTPS web traffics to identify attacks block the connection with malicious activity.
• Perform manual testing or hire a penetration tester to identify and exploit security vulnerabilities and solve those issues.
• Incorporate third-party plugins to implement multiple layers of security layers.
• Monitor the web servers regularly to identify suspicious malicious behavior into the application such as policy violations and unauthorized access.
• Control the breach and minimize the damage by managing the authorized access and user privileges into the application.
• One way a hacker can gain access to your application is through manipulating cookies therefore it is important to use cookies securely with safety.
• Learn about the safety of web applications by pursuing a web application security course and attaining proper training.

Conclusion

Practice these types of actions to immediately and effectively improve the security of your application. However, as applications grow, they become more difficult to maintain in terms of security. Therefore, you can form an in-house cyber security team or hire an external agency to perform the penetration testing operations to maintain the security of your web applications. performing proper efforts for implementing web application security will ensure the safe use of the applications for every user.