Three Key Areas of Web Security
The internet’s rapid growth and advancement has led to an ever-increasing reliance on it. The majority of people alive today have never lived without email, the Internet of Things (IoT), social media and more. Unfortunately, these advances also allow bad actors to target these systems more easily than ever before, threatening data and user trust. As such, it is essential for organizations to invest in web security.
Effective web protections can help you protect your customers, employees and company from cyberattacks and breaches. They can prevent attacks at the application layer by detecting and blocking malware, phishing, backdoors, sandboxing and other threats. This allows you to ensure that your users get the best possible experience while keeping your sensitive information safe and secure.
Achieving web security requires a proactive approach, regular security audits and a commitment to continuous improvement. By focusing on these three key areas, you can strengthen your security posture and reduce your risk of data loss and reputational damage.
Security misconfigurations
Frequently overlooked security settings and vulnerabilities in the design, development and deployment phases can lead to serious website attacks. Such vulnerabilities can affect the entire application stack, including network services, platforms, servers, databases and frameworks. Often, these issues stem from human error, such as insufficient configuration management or inadequate patching practices.
Password breaches
Attackers can use brute force software programs to attempt thousands of password combinations until they find the one that allows them to access your database and steal valuable information. To prevent such breaches, you should require strong passwords for logging in and encourage your staff to create unique passwords that are difficult for attackers to guess.
Malicious redirects
Attackers may place suspicious links, comments or pages on a website to distract visitors and direct them to malicious sites they didn’t intend to visit. These can download malware, intercept communications or even compromise an organization’s IT infrastructure.
Cross-site contamination
This occurs when an organization hosts multiple websites on the same server, creating a large attack surface. To reduce this threat, you should separate each site by hosting them on different servers and ensure that directory and file permissions are properly set.
Data breaches
A data breach can expose confidential information and result in financial, regulatory and brand damage. To combat this, you should implement monitors and intrusion detection to detect anomalies, enforce two-factor authentication and apply an automated backup solution. Additionally, you should make sure your staff isn’t installing malware on their personal devices that could compromise the business’s IT systems. This can be done by restricting their access to your internal IT resources and requiring them to use managed admin rights on work devices. Finally, you should employ a web application firewall that helps to block attacks at the application layer. This prevents hackers from exploiting unsecure APIs to gain unauthorized access to your data. It also blocks XSS attacks and SQL injections. As a bonus, it also provides performance improvements and improved usability for your users.