Around 51% of organizations are planning to increase their investments in improving security for web applications, as per recent research from IBM.
However, it is important to note that application security is not a one-time purchase or investment but an ongoing and long-term process. It's a combination of the right tools, used by people with the right skills while applying the right processes.
In short, web app security needs you to build a culture of software security best practices in your development team. Otherwise, you could be missing an opportunity to catch on with the rest of the leading software development companies.
While adhering to the security framework and best practices is helpful, adding security testing tools or working with a web app pentest services company is actually what the top decision-makers in your shoes are focusing on.
By leaving your web apps with weak security controls you are literally inviting attackers through your front door to conduct cyber-attacks and data theft.
As you know, data theft restoration usually costs millions of dollars, which is money that would otherwise have been spent on growth initiatives and building your team. The unquantifiable aspect of software or application security security neglect is the damage to your personal and corporate reputation in the long run.
After all, being associated with a company that values software security and makes the effort to include the right automated testing tools in their SDLC and CI/CD pipelines is noteworthy mention. Be it on your LinkedIn or in your next interview.
To protect applications from ever-evolving security risks, such as using components with known vulnerabilities, your developers must adopt a multifaceted approach to application security that combines manual security testing techniques and automation software testing tools and follow SaaS security best practices.
Let me tell you about the common web application security threats caused by vulnerabilities in web applications and what you can do to protect your applications.
Top 10 Common Web Application Security Risks
Injection Attacks
Injection attacks like remote code execution involve cybercriminals inserting malicious code or SQL queries into input fields, exploiting vulnerabilities in web applications that can lead to data breaches or unauthorized access.
They often target applications that handle user-generated content. The key to mitigating these software security risks is thorough input validation and the use of prepared statements or parameterized queries.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
XSS attacks occur when hackers embed malicious scripts into web app pages that unsuspecting users execute within their browsers.
This common web application security misconfiguration can lead to the theft of sensitive user data or session hijacking. You can prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) by ensuring proper input validation on the server side and escape output so that your application treats the content as data, not code.
XSS vulnerabilities in web applications are often introduced when using vulnerable and outdated components.
Broken Authentication
Weak authentication mechanisms can open the door to unauthorized access. Inadequate password policies, session management flaws, and improper credential storage can lead to broken access control that makes your application vulnerable.
To protect your application security> against this risk, you can employ strong authentication practices, implement multi-factor authentication, and regularly review session management mechanisms.
Cyber Chief is an excellent vulnerability testing tool that can perform authenticated and automated penetration tests for your applications. Apart from assisting your development team with comprehensive coverage for software security, it will provide you with a detailed analysis of security issues and possible solutions that can be implemented in the application.
It is a web app vulnerability testing tool that can conduct cloud security compliance tests for your cloud infrastructure. The cloud posture security compliance tests dashboard has an intuitive user interface that will let you know the test results as per industry requirements in a single glance.
Insecure Direct Object References
Attackers can exploit insecure direct object references by manipulating input parameters and gaining access to unauthorized data or files. Securing authorization mechanisms, access control lists and careful handling of user inputs for web servers can help you mitigate this web application security risk and minimize the chance of data integrity failures.
Security Misconfiguration
Improperly configured security settings can expose web application vulnerabilities. You must review and configure security settings properly. This includes permissions, encryption, and error handling for your applications. You also need to conduct regular audits of your application's configuration to prevent this security misconfiguration.
Sensitive Data Exposure
Not protecting sensitive data, such as credit card numbers and personal information, on your apps can lead to data theft. To prevent sensitive data exposure, you can employ encryption, strong access controls, and secure data storage at rest and in transit. Compliance with data protection regulations like GDPR and PCI DSS for your applications is also necessary.
XML External Entity (XXE) Attacks
External entity attacks usually happen when internal secrets attackers leverage vulnerable XML processors and can gain access to internal files, potentially revealing sensitive information. To protect your software against XXE attacks you need to disable external entity processing and employ proper validation of XML input.
Broken Access Control
When access controls are improperly implemented, unauthorized users can access restricted resources. To prevent identification and authentication failures, you need to implement fine-grained access control and conduct thorough testing to ensure that users only have access to what they should.
Security Through Obscurity
Relying on secrecy rather than robust security measures for web app API vulnerability threats detection is a very dangerous gamble.
Security through obscurity can lead to vulnerabilities being overlooked or underestimated. Always follow software security best practices, OWASP Top 10 guidelines and employ automated security testing tools that allow you to document security incidents.
Inadequate Logging and Monitoring
You lack visibility into security events and breaches without adequate logging and monitoring. You can prevent this by implementing comprehensive logging and monitoring solutions to detect and respond to security incidents promptly.
If you're building API-based applications, an important aspect of proper logging and monitoring comes from the use of an end-to-end API security tool that automatically discovers your API endpoint and helps you identify and remove shadow APIs.
Ideally, any automation tools should run straight from your CI/CD pipelines.
How to protect security in web applications?
There are a few ways in which you can protect security in web applications.
People are always looking for the single magic bullet that will totally change everything. There is no single magic bullet.
You can do this with manual web app security testing techniques, automated testing tools and a comprehensive security approach with an application security checklist.
Manual Web App Security Testing Techniques
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Code Reviews: One of the fundamental steps for web application vulnerability assessment is thorough code reviews. In this, experienced developers or security experts scrutinize the code for vulnerabilities, including common issues such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), use of components with known vulnerabilities, insecure authentication mechanisms and other OWASP Top 10 risks.
This manual review allows for the identification of security flaws and provides insights into potential web application vulnerabilities within the codebase.
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Manual Penetration Testing: Penetration testing, or ethical hacking, involves skilled professionals actively attempting to exploit vulnerabilities in your web server and application code.
By simulating real-world attack scenarios, penetration testing helps uncover security gaps and assess the application's identification and authentication failures to test security against external threats.
The analysis report can help you and your development team assess your current security strategy and provide you with remediation options for web application vulnerabilities. -
Security Assessments: Security assessments include a range of manual techniques, including vulnerability scanning, threat modeling, and risk assessments. Web app assessments evaluate your web application's security posture by identifying weaknesses, prioritizing risks, and suggesting mitigation strategies.
Automation Testing Tools:
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Web Application Scanners: Automated web application security tools can perform in-depth scans of your web application, simulating various attack vectors. They can identify vulnerabilities such as injection attacks for malicious code, XSS, and broken authentication mechanisms. These tools are highly efficient in quickly detecting known security issues.
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Static Application Security Testing (SAST): SAST tools analyse the application's source code for potential vulnerabilities. They can identify issues during the development phase, allowing developers to rectify problems early in the lifecycle.
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Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST): DAST tools assess a running web application for vulnerabilities. They simulate real-time attacks similar to hackers trying to inject malicious code, making them an invaluable part of your security testing arsenal.
Cyber Chief is an automated security testing tool that can help your software teams with application scanning and vulnerability management to help you prevent web application vulnerabilities.
It is a developer-first tool, which makes it easy to integrate and adapt to your development team. The quick setup and easy-to-navigate user interface make it easy for your software development team to get adapted to this tool.
This will be your development team's personal assistant for software and API security and cloud posture, eliminating the time and expense of consulting security experts with every new update.
You can schedule and scan applications to check for vulnerabilities in your applications. This helps your development teams to have a clear overview of the security issues so that they can start fixing the critical issues first thing. Cyber Chief will rank security issues, based on the severity of the vulnerabilities.
It will provide you and your development team with a detailed analysis report along with possible remediations in the form of code snippets. Your developers can use these code snippets in your application code as it is. A user-friendly interface makes Cyber Chief a developer-centric automated application security tool.
Comprehensive Security Approach:
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Regular Updates: Keep your web application and all its components, including third-party libraries and frameworks, up to date. Security patches are frequently released to address known vulnerabilities. You can also regularly assess your software security by using an application security checklist.
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Data Encryption: Encrypt sensitive data at rest and in transit using industry-standard encryption protocols and SSL certifications.
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Access Control: Implement strong access control and authorization mechanisms to restrict user access to sensitive areas of your application.
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User Education: Educate your users and staff about safe online practices and the risks associated with web applications. Awareness is a valuable component of a holistic security strategy.
Your web application security strategy needs to have a multifaceted approach that combines manual security testing techniques and automation testing tools. Regular assessments for common web application security risks, thorough code reviews, and automated tools for web applications security scanning can help identify and mitigate application security threats effectively.
You can protect your SaaS web application and the sensitive data it handles, by improving its security testing environment by moving your DevOps model to the DevSecOps model. All you have to do is start using a combination of manual testing techniques in combination with automated web applications security testing tools.
What are the 5 steps of vulnerability management?
Web applications that have security issues are prime targets for cyber threats. You need to protect your web application's APIs as they are the most vulnerable break-in points for attackers. Let me tell you about the five critical steps of vulnerability management for SaaS security.
Step 1: Identification of Vulnerability
The first crucial step in web application security issues is identifying potential weaknesses within your web application. Regular security assessments, code reviews, and pen tests should be standard protocols for any organization that wants to protect its applications from ever-evolving cyber threats.
automated penetration testing tool can prove to be more efficient. These web application security risk assessments offer a comprehensive view of your web app's security posture, pinpointing areas that require your attention.
Step 2: Security Assessment Management
Once vulnerabilities are identified, it's essential to assess their severity and potential impact on web applications. Not all security risks hold the same level of risk. Some security issues may pose a significant risk, while others may have a minor impact.
You need to prioritise web application security threats based on their level of severity and not as they are detected while testing the security of the website. This helps your development team to address the most critical vulnerabilities first, reducing the overall threat landscape.
Step 3: Remediate
Once the web app vulnerability issues are identified and assessed, it's time to take action. Developing a clear and well-thought-out plan to address and fix these vulnerabilities is the crux of this step. Remediation can involve code changes, configuration adjustments, or patching. It's imperative to document and track your progress to ensure that web application security issues are addressed.
Step 4: Verification
After implementing the remediation plan for web app risks, it's not enough to assume that your web application security is now impervious to threats. You need to verify that the security risks have truly been fixed. This involves retesting the application to check that the code changes are effective and have not introduced new security issues.
This will help you to confirm that your security posture has improved and doesn't affect the functionality of your website.
Step 5: Monitoring & Maintenance
Web application protection is not a one-time affair; it's an ongoing process. To ensure web application security, you must continuously monitor them for security issues and threats, while responding to any new emerging threats.
Regular updates and security patches are vital for maintaining a secure web application. Furthermore, proactive monitoring can help detect new vulnerabilities, allowing you to take action promptly.
These five critical steps of vulnerability management, from identification to ongoing monitoring and maintenance, provide a strategic roadmap for organizations that protects applications against potential attacks and maintains a resilient web application security posture.
Whether you're safeguarding your SaaS platform or want a safer online experience, implementing web application security protocols that include automated testing tools for security scanning for broken access control is crucial towards improving security for your applications.
Look at application security as the start of a journey that helps you build a culture of security in your dev teams.
Next Steps To Securing Web Applications
Knowing security vulnerabilities and best practices won't really save your web apps. You need to take action and add appropriate web application security mechanisms in your SDLC and CI/CD pipelines.
Integrating a security testing tool like Cyber Chief can help make your software safe and help you protect websites and mobile apps continuously.
