Web Application Security — Everything You Should Know

Introduction

Web applications have spread to almost all industries in the past few years, making business operations easier. After banking and finance to e-commerce, consequently, all industries actively seek web application development services for their said benefits.

Of course. Find services that are also concerned about web application security. Having a feature-rich web app would be vain if it’s unsecured. Therefore, we have some important details about making secure apps and websites and our approach to creating secure web apps.

What is Web Application Security Testing

Web app security testing is a process to assess web applications for various security flaws, loopholes, and vulnerabilities. It is essential to prevent cyber attacks, data breaches, and malware. Threats are ever existing. But careful security testing highlights all hidden vulnerable points that may be on the verge of exploitation by hackers.

Importance of Web App Security Testing

Digital transformation has offered innumerable benefits to different industries. However, like the second face of the coin, there are some troubles too. Cyber threats and hackers are a few problems that you should be protecting your business applications from.

While web app development solutions continuously raise security standards, hackers come up with new, sophisticated techniques to break through them. Therefore, it’s crucial to conduct regular security testing to stay above the vulnerabilities that can be used against your app.

Cyber attacks are scarier than they seem. Mentioned below are some benefits of paying attention to web app development security.

1. Identify Vulnerabilities and Flaws in Web Apps

One of the most important benefits of security testing is that it unveils all vulnerabilities and flaws that can cause trouble. For every web application development company, security testing is a crucial step of the development life cycle. As a result, developers are mindful of how security tests can make applications more reliable and follow the same at different stages.

2. Comply with Security Regulations

As a result of increasing cyber-attacks and data breaches, several security standards and laws were set for specific industries and their web applications. In order to protect the users’ interests, web app security testing is made mandatory for almost all industries. It’s especially applicable to sensitive sectors like e-commerce, banking, and finance.

3. Analyze and Improve Current Security

Web security check helps in detecting any loopholes in your system and ensure adherence to current security measures. Even the firewall that is meant to protect your web app can have vulnerabilities. Regular security checks help in detecting these problems and rectifying the weaknesses before they take a toll on your business.

4. Detect Any Abnormal Activities and Security

Regular security audits help in detecting any hacker behavior or security breaches going on with the application. In fact, according to IBM, it takes an average of 196 days for a company to recognize a security breach within their system.

5. Formulate a Security Plan

Using the details of a security audit, companies can prepare an effective security plan and prioritize responses against a hack or breach. It will also help in planning out incident responses according to your app or business. Moreover, you will anyway require guidance from experts.

Steps to Perform Manual Web App Security Testing

Although you may not be able to make it without professional help, a little information never hurts. Here are the steps that we follow as a web application development company to manually test web apps.

1) Asset Discovery

It involves identifying the security areas of your application and other complementary assets that would be included in the testing.

2) Look for Outdated Versions

Verify if your application and other assets are up-to-date.

3) Check for Various Permissions

Check whether your application follows secure rules for various user roles and permissions.

4) Check for Security Protocols

It involves a check on various security protocols, including firewall, SSL, malware scanner, etc. After all, everything should be in place.

5) Penetration Test to Analyze Code Rigidity

Next is to analyze your application’s code against common attacks like code injection, CVE, SQLi, etc. However, this step requires more experience.

6) Database Security Check

Test your application’s database security against various malicious SQL queries and fix the same.

7) Run Configuration Tests

Determine security by checking the configuration structure of your application as well as the network.

8) Check Network Assets

It involves testing your routers, servers, desktops, printers, and switches against various known and specially designed CVEs and attacks.

9) Business Logic

Check your application and identify any vulnerabilities with regard to its design and implementation.

10) Client-side Logic

Check whether the JavaScript loading on browser web pages is done correctly, as per the rules.

11) Input Validation

For web applications that accept user data, it is critical to check that input validation stays in place.

12) Authentication and Session Management

Keep a check on authentication rules and make sure that there are no vulnerabilities in session management.

13) Configurations

Check your web application for any missing or misplaced configurations.

14) Check for Authorization

Check if your web application has given or allowed any unauthorized access.

Secure Web Application Development at Narola Infotech

There will always be a few vulnerabilities with your undertakings. But it should not keep you from grabbing the lucrative opportunities that come through well-designed web apps. You just need to choose a web app development company wisely.

Source: https://www.narolainfotech.com/blogs/web-application-security-planning-everything/