Best Practices of Web Applications Security Testing

Posted by AALIYAH on March 2nd, 2017

When you have a web based business, or offer services via the web, you will need to use a trusted mechanism which keeps information and monetary transactions safe. Web applications are often targeted by hackers looking to steal the information for personal gain, which is why knowing the best practices of web applications security testing tools are so important.

The most common ways that hackers get the sensitive information are as follows:

Code injection

Cross site scripting

Broken authentication

Security misconfiguration

Insecure direct object references

Exposure of Sensitive data

Cross-site request forgery

Function level access control missing

Invalidated forwards and redirects

Components with known vulnerabilities

The reason hackers are able to find out the information is usually down to bad programming where the boundaries and credentials were not properly considered. It can also be down to administration issues, which include not updating components as necessary.

In order to deal with the big list of potential vulnerabilities, there are techniques to follow. It is especially important for companies that have their own applications to find the root of the problem. The first step to doing so is insuring you secure your coding practices. There is a lot of expert information available to help you to improve your security. Threat modelling is one way to find out where vulnerabilities exist.

Risk analysis also helps in finding out about risks before they become a problem so you can be as secure as possible. Static analysis is a way to find out about problems with a program before you execute it allowing you to prevent a problem rather than needing to fix it at a later date.

White box solutions include looking into the way the code is structured to allow you to find out how well the secure coding has been implemented. Using static analysis is a popular way to do this so that you don’t have to run an application to find whether or not it has flaws.

Fuzzing is another method which requires you to keep going at an application with various types of data, including formats, that the application is not designed for. This will help you find security flaws in your application. This will allow you to think in a similar way to a hacker and to work out where you need to increase security.

For those sites that have a log-in which is secure, you must first try password crackers. They can help you encourage users to use a password that is strong rather than one that a hacker crack easily. There could even be a set up where the site only allows a certain amount of password tries before additional information is necessary for the genuine user to gain access.

You have to think futuristically of how much technology and intelligence is going to change from a hacking point of view. With more websites now being hosted, it is understandable how so many people can be affected by one attack. A host that has thousands of users could find that a big proportion, if not all, of their customers are affected by flaws. This means that security professionals need to keep up to date with the latest methods of hacking in order to prevent attacks.