7 Best Practices to Develop Secure Web Apps

 

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Developing Secure Web Apps: How Do You Do It?

A few fundamental practices can help your web app be more secure, like hashing and salting passwords and correctly implementing SSL certificates. But there are also other, lesser-known practices that will give your app an edge in the marketplace. Continue reading to learn about some recommended methods for creating a more secure web application.

What Are the Best Practices to Develop Secure Web Apps?

A few fundamental practices can help your web app be more secure, like hashing and salting passwords and correctly implementing SSL certificates. But other lesser-known practices will give your app an edge in the marketplace. Here are some recommendations for making a more secure web app:

Ensure HTTPS

The primary way to mitigate specific attacks is to use HTTPS for your app. Historically, many websites were not configured to use SSL encryption and were susceptible to various types of "man in the middle" attacks. An attacker intercepted communications between a client and server, altered messages, and retransmitted them. To prevent these attacks, web app, developers should strive to use secure HTTP connections to their servers by configuring their web servers to support SSL.

Warn Users When Their Passwords are Hashed

Passwords should be hashed before being stored on a server to avoid XSS attacks since hashing scrambles all or part of the password, making it unusable as a method of authentication. To guard against the possibility of attackers brute-forcing the original passwords from the hashes, it's best to slow down hashing by using a lengthy hash algorithm that requires more processing time.

Link Only to Authentic HTTPS Sites

At least one major security vulnerability was born from an innocent link on a Facebook user's wall. In 2010, a known hacker used a script to create a page that looked like Facebook, and it was hosted on one of the social network's servers. The page included links to the profiles of other Facebook users, and when those users clicked on them, the malicious links would redirect them to new pages created by the attacker.

Don't Overlook Session Management.

Because attackers often exploit stolen session cookies to access a victim's account, session management is an essential part of web app security. Session tokens should be unique, non-guessable strings, and they should be secured using SSL so that attackers can't hijack them on the open Internet.

Protect Against Cross-Site Request Forgery Attacks

CSRF attacks are the kind of attacks that a user can unwittingly launch themselves. In CSRF, a victim's browser is tricked into sending requests to another web server, which acts as if the request came from that user because it has already been authenticated. This sort of attack is often used to update a victim's account information on a social network or bank website by deceiving a victim into clicking on a link in an email or instant message.

Keep Session Cookies Short and Secure

Cookies are another type of id that web developers can use to ensure that a user is authenticated. However, if an attacker can hijack a cookie sent by the victim, they can create their session state and continue to access the account. To prevent this type of attack, you should set the session cookie's expiration time to one minute or less (developers can usually configure cookies to expire after a certain amount of inactivity) and use encrypting cookies if necessary.

Be GDPR Compliant

One area where web app developers don't get enough attention is the subject of data privacy. GDPR compliance means that companies face fines of up to 4% of their global yearly turnover if they have mishandled personal information such as emails, phone numbers, names and addresses. Therefore, the most critical GDPR practice is ensuring that any personal data is appropriately stored and protected with robust encryption methods so that unauthorized parties can't access it.

What is Cyber Insurance?

Cyber Insurance covers many cyber-related issues such as data breaches, computer virus attacks, denial of service (DOS) attacks, hardware failure and software malware. Cyber insurance is essential for businesses that want to protect their client's data and their own as well. Companies that deal with significant volumes of credit card information, social security numbers, and other sensitive data should consider cyber insurance coverage. A cost-effective solution to receive the cyber-attack protection you need is Cyber Insurance. It complements ordinary insurance that all firms should have to safeguard their technological investments and operations.

Conclusion

Web applications serve as the primary entry point for hackers to exploit and wreak havoc worldwide. These apps share a common weakness – their users. Web app developers are responsible for ensuring that their apps are not vulnerable, but the users themselves need to be educated about these threats and how to avoid them.