Must-follow best practices for web application security

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Web application security best practices
Web application security best practices

 

The digital revolution has brought along tons of benefits. But at the same time, the challenges of safeguarding one’s personal and financial data are also increasing every day. In recent times, web applications have become an important part of any business. And they tend to carry sensitive information about both the customers and the company. Ensuring to follow web application security best practices at the time of application development is a must. This way we can keep applications free of risks and vulnerabilities in the long run. A professional web development company will always aim at incorporating these best practices at the time of initial design and the coding phases. Experts from iTrobes have shared their insights on the best practices for web application security in this article.

Topmost web application security best practices

Deploy a Secure Software Development Life Cycle (SSDLC)

The SSDLC refers to the software development life cycle from the security point of view. This process helps in ensuring that software products are built in a secure environment. Softwares need to be developed and maintained by employees who are security-trained. Secure SDLC is a holistic approach that spans the entire software development process. It’s applied all throughout the development activities, till the time the product is completely mature & deployed on the market.

Use the right security tools

DevSecOps

DevSecOps also known as the shift-left approach, aims to detect security holes from the very beginning. It prevents as well as resolves security issues as fast as they appear. It helps the web application development team to spot and resolve security problems at all stages.

SAST & DAST

SAST or Static Application Security Testing is a scanning practice based around the source code. DAST or Dynamic Application Security Testing uses remote testing of the deployed code to find voids. Both of these methodologies are used for testing proprietary code during the development phase and play a vital role in closing security holes.

Penetration Testing

This is an advanced security testing technique and uses a combination of scanning tools & exploitation techniques in order to find vulnerabilities. With this method, you can try to create some demo issues like steal data, try and gain access, compromise users or cause disruption. This will prepare you well for the real-life threats of the world as it unearths multiple potential risks in the application and makes it a strong one.

Limit user access to your data

Restricting access to your data is a simple yet effective web application security best practice. You should find out who needs to access each of the specific resources and create access rules. At all times, you must make sure that access privileges remain up-to-date. This can be done by reviewing accesses every now and then and removing active credentials as soon as access to any data is no longer needed.

Conduct mock security exercises

One of the most effective ways to check if the sensitive data is safe is to conduct multiple mock attacks on the application. This is also somewhat similar to penetration testing except those tests are just spot-checks. The best way to fully evaluate how sufficient your security measures are is to conduct continuous security drills.

One such method is the red vs blue team exercise. Here the red team is an external team that continually tries to attack and breach your security. While the blue team is an in-house team responsible for fighting against it. Over the course, the red team understands how to keep the developers be prepared at all times. An experienced software consulting company can assist you to assemble a red team that performs these mock security attacks. They perform attacks like phishing, DDoS attacks, social engineering, and much more to make the application prepared to deal with the real ones.

Automated security tools

Automation is critical because tackling countless security issues by using a manual approach is nearly not possible. The basic and simple tasks can be automated so that teams have the time to focus on more challenging missions. Automated security tools also benefit web development companies to take care of the otherwise unmanageable testing procedures. This is also why most of the security tools nowadays are devised keeping automation and integration in mind.

Encryption

Encryption of data at transit and rest is one of the key best practices to maintaining web application security. Basic encryption of data usually incorporates the use of SSL with a current certificate. Saving sensitive user data such as IDs or passwords in plain text can be dangerous as it can open room for MITM (man-in-the-middle) attacks and expose the data. Therefore, strong encryption algorithms should be used always during web application development.

Update & patch regularly

Timely installation of software updates and patches is a very effective way to maintain application security. One shouldn’t waste time trying to solve problems that can easily be fixed through updates and patches. However, each new update should be planned well in advance as it needs designing of the proper architecture. Also, one should keep API compatibility issues in mind and tackle them at the time of upgrading to newer versions.

Conclusion

From day one of an application’s lifecycle, security practices should be focussed and not when something goes wrong and needs fixing. By following these web application security best practices during the initial stages itself, one can make sure that the application is safe from any attacks and the user data remains secure. A good web design company that has years of experience in developing successful and safe web applications is mostly up to date with the happenings in the cyber world.

Professionals at iTrobes can guide your web application development process on every little detail and implement the best practices that fight any potential attacks while creating a sense of trust among all the users of the application. Whether you’re looking for software consulting services for an already built application or need a team to build a strong secure web app from the scratch, we might be the right pick for you.

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