What Is Web Security?
Web security is a broad set of technologies, solutions and practices that protect websites, applications, and users from cyber threats. These threats include malware, hacking, data breaches, phishing, and other malicious activities. When these attacks go unchecked, they can have serious consequences for organizations and their users—including financial losses, a tarnished reputation, and lost customers and business opportunities. Web security solutions protect businesses from these threats by combining hardware, software and cloud-based services to prevent them.
The Internet and the world of online applications have become highly interconnected, but these changes have also enlarged the attack surface for hackers. The reliance on web-based applications and the lack of clearly defined network perimeters have created more vulnerabilities for attackers to exploit. As a result, cyberattacks on web apps and infrastructure can easily reach into IT ecosystems to steal information, hijack accounts, and disrupt business in many ways. Web security solutions help combat this by combining the best elements of hardware, software and cloud-based services to deliver sophisticated protection from the most advanced threats.
A web security policy defines how the company handles its data, which applications it uses and where it stores those applications. This helps identify potential ways a hacker could gain access to systems or data, and determine what controls should be in place to minimize those risks.
An effective web security policy includes a combination of technical and organizational controls that are updated and managed as part of the company’s ongoing risk management processes. These controls should include:
Authentication and access control: Web security solutions verify user identities through multifactor authentication and role-based access control to ensure that only authorized users can access critical information. They also provide data encryption to protect sensitive information in transit and at rest from unauthorized interception.
Content filtering: Malicious phishing emails are a common source of data breaches. Web security solutions detect and block these attacks by analyzing the content of email messages before they’re delivered to the end user.
URL redirection: This type of attack uses shortened or otherwise obscured links that direct the user to an attacker-controlled website where their login credentials are stolen. Web security solutions prevent these attacks by blocking redirection and using rewriting technology to stop the flow of data between the legitimate website and the attacker-controlled site.
Performance: Web security solutions improve application performance by providing load balancing, traffic optimization, and content caching. They can also reduce hardware costs by eliminating the need for on-premises security appliances and simplifying management.
Compliance: By integrating with SIEM and EDR solutions, web security solutions can offer a unified perspective of malicious activity across the threat spectrum, helping to ensure that regulatory compliance requirements are met.
In addition to protecting the business from a wide range of threats, web security solutions also protect the brand by building trust with customers and employees, which can increase revenue and business opportunities. Organizations that succumb to a cyberattack suffer damage to their reputation, which can be difficult or impossible to recover from. A strong web security solution can prevent these damaging attacks, enabling companies to avoid costly fines, lawsuits, and other penalties.