What is Web Application Security?

Web application security is defined as a field of information security that aims to safeguard websites, web applications, and web-based services, focusing primarily on online threats. This article discusses the ins and outs of web application security with actionable tips to help on the way forward.

What is Web Application Security?

Web application security is the practice of protecting websites, applications, and APIs from attacks. It is a broad discipline, but its ultimate aims are keeping web applications functioning smoothly and protecting businesses from cyber vandalism, data theft, unethical competition, and other negative consequences.

The global nature of the Internet exposes web applications and APIs to attacks from many locations and various levels of scale and complexity. As such, web application security encompasses a variety of strategies and covers many parts of the software supply chain.

Why is Web Application Security necessary for businesses?

While businesses are leveraging the revolutionary developments in technology and communication and the internet penetration rates, cyber criminals too are doing the same. They are finding new and innovative ways to orchestrate breaches and cyber-attacks that will help them get access to data, which is the new oil.

The global nature of the internet exposes websites and web applications to a greater risk of cyber-attacks that vary in nature, scale, magnitude, complexity, etc., and can be orchestrated from anywhere around the globe. It interferes with the smooth functioning of the business by causing downtimes, server crashes, exposing business and customer data, etc. So, security or the lack of it becomes a hindrance and the biggest risk for businesses.

Data breaches and cyber-attacks are costly affairs. They not only involve the obvious financial losses and monetary costs of escalation, litigation, post-attack response, etc. but also cause loss of customers, trust, reputation, and goodwill. These latter losses are often irreparable and costliest for businesses, as the biggest 21st-century data breaches have taught us.

While big players like Facebook have the might and the resources to recuperate faster from such attacks and threats, it may not be the case for small and medium businesses that may have to shut down completely.

So, web application security is indispensable to organizations of all sizes and kinds.

How does it work?

Different approaches to web application security address different vulnerabilities. Web application firewalls (WAFs), among the more comprehensive, defend against many types of attacks by monitoring and filtering traffic between the web application and any user. Configured with policies that help determine what traffic is safe and what isn’t, a WAF can block malicious traffic, preventing it from reaching the web application and preventing the app from releasing any unauthorized data.

Other web application security methods focus on user authentication and access management, app vulnerability scanners, cookie management, traffic visibility, and IP denylists, for instance.

The most common Web Application Security risks

• Credential stuffing: This attack involves using a list of stolen credentials (usernames and passwords) to attempt to gain unauthorized access to various online accounts.
• Injection: This attack involves injecting malicious code into a web application. The attacker can do this through SQL injection or other injection attacks.
• Session hijacking: This attack involves taking over an active user session to gain unauthorized access to a web-based application. Techniques included are IP spoofing, side jacking, man-in-the-middle, and session fixation.
• Cross-site scripting (XSS): This attack involves injecting malicious code into a web page that gets executed by the browser of the person visiting the page.
• Cross-site request forgery (CSRF): This attack involves tricking a user into submitting a malicious request to a web application.
• Sensitive data disclosure: This is also known as data leakage or data exfiltration and can happen through a variety of channels, including email, cloud storage, social media, or through a data breach.
• Broken authentication and session management: This attack exploits vulnerabilities in how a web application manages authentication and session information.
• Security misconfiguration: This attack exploits configuration vulnerabilities in a web application.
• Brute force: This attack involves attempting to guess a password or other authentication credentials by systematically trying every possible combination of characters. Usually, this is done with automation software until the correct combination is uncovered.

Types of Web Application Security solution

Organizations can manage their web app and API security risks by deploying various solutions, including the following:

• Web Application Firewalls (WAFs): WAFs sit in front of a web app and block traffic attempting to exploit vulnerabilities in these applications.
• Web App and API Protection (WAAP): WAAP provides much the same protection as a WAF solution but extends it to protect APIs as well as web apps.
• DDoS Mitigation: DDoS mitigation solutions are designed to identify and filter out malicious traffic attempting to overwhelm a web app or API.
• API Gateways: API gateways manage access to APIs, reducing the risk of API abuse and the use of undocumented shadow APIs by attackers.
• Bot Management: Bot management solutions identify and block malicious, automated traffic to web apps and APIs, reducing the load on them and protecting against automated attacks.

Web Application Security Checklist

You can improve your web application’s security by following this quick checklist:

• Information gathering: Be aware of all third-party scripts and libraries used in your web application and ensure they are kept up-to-date.
• Authorization: Implement strong authorization controls to ensure only authorized users access specific resources and functionality.
• Cryptography: Use encryption methods to protect sensitive data during transmission and follow best practices to safely store and manage cryptographic keys.
• Denial of service: enhance an application’s resilience against denial of service threats.

Conclusion

Web application security is essential to ensure web applications’ safety and sensitive data and must be a priority throughout the organization. By staying informed and proactive, teams can protect their web applications and data from potential attackers and prevent several consequences to their infrastructure, culture, and, ultimately, customer trust. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and it’s always better to take preventative measures than to clean up the aftermath of a security breach.