Layered Defense Against Web Security Attacks
Modern digital businesses must prioritize web security to protect their websites, online systems and users’ digital accounts from unauthorized access and attacks. These attacks may damage brand reputation, degrade user experience and, in the worst cases, lead to customer churn and loss of revenue. Web security involves implementing various tools, techniques and technologies that work in concert to provide a layered defense against these threats and vulnerabilities.
Preventative measures are typically referred to as protective technologies and layers of defense, as they help prevent the most common attacks from occurring in the first place by addressing a variety of threat vectors, such as exploitation of web applications and the use of weak passwords, sloppy application design or server configuration flaws. These include, but are not limited to, ensuring the latest patches are installed on all web servers and other software components, enforcing strong password policies, implementing least privilege principles, and enabling SSL for all data transfers (including from and to the browser).
The most common type of attack is known as cross-site scripting (XSS), which exposes critical data by exploiting vulnerable markup code on a webpage. This can include markup such as
Other common attacks on websites involve directory traversal and file inclusion. Directory traversal allows the hacker to pass file system navigation characters into the data passed to a web server, which may then lead to an XSS attack. File inclusion is when an attacker is able to reference an external script in a web application using a vulnerability, which may then cause the site to upload malware to the victim’s computer.
A more advanced strategy is to employ the use of unique CAPTCHA challenges – complex, image-based challenges that are virtually impossible for automated solvers and scripts to crack, making them an effective tool against sophisticated attacks. This approach reduces good user throughput while also providing targeted friction to risky traffic, reducing the amount of time and resources required for hackers to attack.
Lastly, it is important to only install plugins, extensions and themes from legitimate sources that have been thoroughly tested for security vulnerabilities by the authors. This ensures that the extension has been developed by a proven author with a track record of producing secure, stable extensions, rather than an unknown or first-time developer that may be attempting to infect a website with malware.
Finally, it is advisable to implement an incident response plan that includes a unified team of web security professionals and cybersecurity experts to identify the source of the problem, analyze the impact and determine next steps to mitigate the issue. Depending on the nature of the problem, this may also involve a forensics investigation to determine the extent of the breach and how it occurred.