Web Application Security Explained: Five Best Practices & Risks

Web Application Security is a common concern for most businesses in recent times. Along with the advancements in technology and security measures, threats are also evolving with time. So, there is a perpetual battle going on between threat actors and security professionals. Web applications are popular because they deliver similar functionality as desktop or native applications with better convenience of browser accessibility. This popularity makes them a prime target for malicious activities like hacks and breaches. Further in the blog, we will get to know about five best practices and major security risks for web applications. Let’s start with the security risks…

Top 5 Security Risks for Web Applications

The following are the top security risks for web applications:

1.   Broken Access Control: Access control is all about regulating permissions to restrict users to access more information than they need. If there are any loopholes left in the access control, threat actors can utilize them to access sensitive information, modify data, delete data, or even perform restricted business functions.
2.   Security Misconfiguration: If the security functions are not implemented properly, there are gaps left in the security posture of the web applications. By exploiting a security misconfiguration, cybercriminals can gain control through network services, web servers, databases, custom code, installed machines, and so on.
3.   Cross-site scripting (XSS): Hackers use cross-site scripting to send malicious codes to unsuspecting end users. Users are unable to verify or validate these scripts and eventually, the sensitive information stored in the browser is exposed.
4.   Insecure direct object references: It is a genuine Web Application Security concern where the web application has an identifier for direct access to an internal implementation. And there is no additional step for authentication of that access.
5.   Cross-site request forgery: It is a kind of vulnerability that might allow social engineering tricks to succeed against your web applications. This might lead to user account takeovers, fund transfers, and even entire web application takeovers in some cases.

5 Best Practices for Web Application Security

The following are the five best practices to protect your web applications:

1.   Shift-Left Approach for Security: Implement security protocols right from the beginning of the development of the application. You can incorporate security considerations into code design and architecture and apply threat modeling to create a secure application.
2.   User Authentication Management: Unauthorized access is a common threat to web applications. Using strict measures for user authentication can help you eliminate this threat. One way to fortify authentication management is to use multi-factor authentication.
3.   Data Encryption: Security experts around the world suggest businesses encrypt all the sensitive data stored on their web applications. This makes sure the damage is minimum in the event of a hack or breach.
4.   Logging and Auditing: Monitoring web traffic on the application, auditing every noteworthy transaction, and creating automatic alerts for any unusual activity might help you to detect an attack before it spreads chaos.
5.   Web Application Firewalls (WAF): It is a protective layer between clients and web servers working as a proxy for traffic between them. Deploying a firewall can instantly eliminate the risk of common attacks such as injection.