Data privacy and protection are two imperative aspects for all businesses today as they could be prone to security breaches. Many small and medium organisations tend to ignore application security as they believe only large enterprises are targeted by hackers. However, statistics tell a different story, 43% of cybercrimes happen against small businesses.
There are several reasons behind a cyber-attack against these organisations’; from old, unpatched security vulnerabilities to malware or human errors which make take them a lucrative target for attackers. So, ignoring Cyber Security can bring you on the radar of hackers even if you are a startup.
If you closely look at the current cyber threat landscape you will be surprised to know that 90% of web applications are potential targets of the attackers. This indicates that businesses need to implement security best practices to protect their applications and assets from future threats.
There are several security standards and online communities such as OWASP and NIST who work hard to produce freely available articles, methodologies, tools and documentation that can help organisations strengthen their IT environment and safeguard from security breaches.
To support with facts, here are some chilling stats that will give an idea of how these cyber security threats impact an enterprise:
- If we talk about the current scenario, data breaches exposed 36 billion records in the first half of 2020.
- 86% of cyber security breaches are financially motivated and 10% are motivated by espionage.
- Looking at the categorisation, 45% of the breaches feature hacking, 17% include malware, and phishing is involved in 22%.
- One of the biggest reasons for such attacks is the accessibility of files to every employee on a large scale. About 17% of sensitive files of an organisation are accessible to all employees. You will be surprised to know that a financial services employee has access to 11 million files on an average.
- On an average, only 5% of the company folders are properly protected. And, more than 77% of the organisations don’t have an incident response plan.
- 68% of the business leaders all over the world think that cyber security risks are on the rise. It is important for organisations to adopt stringent measures against these threats and implement better practices to ensure security and safety of data.
As cybercrimes are showing no sign of slowing down any time soon, organisations must take precautions to avoid perilous situations. The million-dollar question is, what can organisations do to keep attackers away from compromising sensitive and confidential information?
The answer to this question is simple – Proactive Cyber Security Strategy to protect organisation’s assets such as web applications, information systems and servers.
In this blog, we will list and discuss the top 5 web application security threats, and then some of the best security practices to protect your web applications against evolving cyber threats.
TOP 5 SECURITY THREATS ASSOCIATED WITH WEB APPLICATIONS
1. INJECTION FLAWS
Injections flaws allow an attacker to insert malicious code in another system such as interpreter using an application. In simple terms, if your web application allows user input to be inserted into a backend database, shell command or calls to the operating system, then your application may be susceptible to injection flaws.
However, these types of flaws can be uncovered by examining the source code of the application or by conducting a thorough pentest of the application. The most common type of injection flaw is SQL Injection, which involves inserting malicious code in SQL queries via user supplied input and targeting backend database server.
In addition to SQL Injection, there are LDAP Injection, XML injection, XPATH Injection, OS Command Injection and HTML Injection. These threats can be prevented by properly sanitising user supplied inputs. For more information on prevention of injection flaws, refer to this article.
2. BROKEN AUTHENTICATION
Broken authentication is another common vulnerability which is caused by poorly implemented authentication and session management controls. If an attacker is successful in identifying and exploiting authentication related vulnerabilities, they can gain direct access to sensitive data and functionality.
The goal of the attackers to exploit authentication vulnerabilities is to impersonate a legitimate user of the application. Attackers employ wide variety of techniques such as credential stuffing, session hijacking, password brute force, Session ID URL rewriting etc. to leverage these weaknesses.
These attacks can be prevented by implementing strong session management controls, multi-factor authentication, restricting and monitoring failed login attempts. For more details on prevention, refer to this article.
3. SENSITIVE DATA EXPOSURE
Sensitive data exposure occurs when the web application does not sufficiently safeguard sensitive information such as session ids, passwords, financial information, client data etc. The most common flaw of organisations resulting in data exposure is not encrypting sensitive data.
There are a range of vulnerabilities which can be classified as sensitive data exposure, and most of them involve accidental exposure of sensitive information. This may be due to issues such as weak or no encryption, software loopholes, or someone mistakenly uploading data to incorrect database.
Some of the major attacks which result in the exposure of sensitive data are SQL Injection, broken authentication and access control, phishing attacks or network level attacks such as data transmitted using clear text protocols HTTP, FTP, and SMTP.
The primary measure to defend web applications against such issues is by thoroughly reviewing application source code and the IT environment, particularly on the usage of secure cryptographic algorithms.
4. XML EXTERNAL ENTITIES
XML External Entity injection (popularly known as XXE) is a web application vulnerability which allows an attacker to interfere with an application processing XML data. This attack can lead to various issues such as denial of service, data exposure, server-side request forgery etc.
5. BROKEN ACCESS CONTROL
These issues with XML can be prevented by implementing server-side input validation, patching, and upgrading all XML processors and by analysing the source code preferably using SAST tools.
Broken access control is one of the most common, and at the same time critical, security vulnerability. Access control mechanism determines if a user can carry out the action they are attempting to perform. Broken access control vulnerability occurs when the users can act outside of their intended permissions.
This often leads to unauthorised information disclosure, modification or destruction of data, and the performance of a business function that deviates from its intended use. This type of issue can be prevented by enforcing strong access control mechanism in trusted server-side code or server-less API, where attacker cannot modify or bypass the access control checks or metadata.
Check out original content source to read Measures to Protect web application
Here is the source link: Web Application Security Tips and Measures to Protect Them
How businesses should go about budgeting for cyber security measures in this day and age?Cyber security is the foremost concern of Chief Information Security Officers (CISO’s) and IT security professionals globally.
It is the first and last thought on their minds during their working day when they strive for securing the data and assets of their enterprise.Budgeting for cyber security must be done like budgeting for any other enterprise expense bucket.
Spend on information security measures and advancement has increased exponentially in the last several years to keep up with the ever-evolving cyber threats landscape.
Spend in Australia on cyber security was $5.6b in 2020, while globally it was estimated to reach $123b.Traditionally, information security has been considered as a “necessary evil” investment where organisations have put in the necessary foundational and basic measures, but not done much with the remaining budget.This outlook has changed dramatically to cope with and counter the variety of threats and risks enterprises face today from hackers and cybercriminals.The Covid-19 pandemic resulting in a global shift to working from home arrangements forced enterprises to rethink their information security strategy, move superfast and adopt enhanced security measures which they would not have budgeted for in their fiscal year 2020 budgets.As a result, the majority of all enterprises, small and big, needed to put a halt to other IT projects and divert the budgets and resources to enhance cyber security operations for the newly formed remote workforces and the enterprises.Read Full Post From Original Source: How to Plan Cybersecurity Budget Effectively?
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