Web applications are an incredibly important part of a successful company. This is especially the case for businesses that rely on their web applications to sell products.
Therefore, organizations must ensure that their web applications remain secure. Hackers are always finding new ways to infiltrate networks and steal sensitive data that can leave businesses in a bad spot.
The attack surface for web applications is huge and provides cybercriminals with many ways to hack into a company’s system. This can be challenging to combat, but you can greatly reduce the risks and ensure that your web applications continue running smoothly if done correctly.
This post covers 6 ways to improve your web application security. By the end, you’ll have a better idea about what steps to take to keep your applications safeguarded.
Updating Software
Outdated software gives hackers an easy opportunity to exploit weaknesses in your system. They’re constantly looking for vulnerabilities to carry out attacks, and software that hasn’t been updated is an easy target.
So, be sure to update your software regularly and always check to see if it’s up to date. It makes things trickier for cybercriminals to gain access to your system.
Updating your software usually comes with new security features and repairs to vulnerabilities which is why it’s important to stay up to date with them. Many companies opt to use automatic updates, which can be a hassle-free way to ensure that your software is updated regularly.
The longer you leave your software outdated, the more opportunity for hackers to gain more access and steal sensitive data.
Choosing the Right Web Host
Choosing the right website host is critical for keeping your applications secure. Therefore, you must be sure to research web hosts thoroughly before you make a final decision. This is because some hosts provide better security features compared to others.
Some key features to look out for include whether the host provides a file backup system, measures to update the website’s security features, and whether SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) is available.
These are features that can reassure you that the host of your web applications will be secure. Companies that use web hosts with vulnerabilities already present are putting themselves in a bad position, to begin with, so be sure to research web hosts in detail.
Backups
Keeping backups of your website is a good idea as it can prevent too much downtime if your host goes down. If you experience a security problem that affects the whole website, you can rely on your backups to ensure that customers can still access your site whilst you work on recovery.
It’s important to store web application backups on servers separate from your website to keep them protected. Ideally, backups should be stored on a hard drive to keep it protected from cyber attacks.
Some organizations also choose to store backups in the cloud. This can make it more convenient to access important information and store your company’s data more easily.
Having an automated system in place that backs up your website allows you to schedule regular backups. As a result, your web application backups will remain up to date.
Passwords
Password policies are a key part of web application security. Many companies have policies in place to ensure that passwords are strong enough to withstand attacks.
One of the common mistakes that organizations make is using the same passwords across databases, websites, programs, and user accounts to easily remember them. However, this reduces the overall strength of your applications.
Hackers can use software to detect how vulnerable web applications are, and targeting weak passwords is a common way to gain entry into a company’s system. Therefore, you should always use complex passwords that are unique and contain a combination of special characters, letters, and numbers.
Avoiding the use of anything personal in your passwords is crucial. Companies often use password managing software that enables you to securely keep your complex passwords safe as they’re difficult to remember.
In addition to this, 2FA (two-factor authentication) should be implemented where possible. It provides databases, programs, and user accounts with an added layer to make it harder for cybercriminals to hack into your web applications.
Open Source Vulnerability Scanners
Open source vulnerability scanner is a tool that you can use to find vulnerabilities in open source elements. This is an important tool to consider using if your web applications use elements that come from open source environments.
These tools help you discover whether open-source elements require patching so that teams can work to fix them and improve the strength of the overall application.
In addition, open-source vulnerability scanners can compare the open-source elements with public databases and provide you with a risk assessment. Once this risk assessment has been given, you can then fix any issues to ensure that any open source elements within your web applications are strong.
Scanning open source elements also provide you with information on the licenses involved. This helps organizations ensure that the open-source components they’re using are in line with the regulations before inserting them into their application.
Organizations that aren’t aware of whether licenses are in compliance or not put themselves at risk of coming under legal issues. Open source vulnerability scanners can notify you of any issues so that you can resolve them before continuing with development.
Security Testing
Security testing should be a key part of your company’s procedures for creating and running web applications. Many organizations perform security scans and tests every month to keep up to date with any flaws that they may have in their system.
In addition to this, it’s best to perform security scans after any updates or changes are made to your web applications. This can provide you with peace of mind knowing that any adjustments made haven’t weakened the application.
Conclusion
Hackers are always finding ways of exploiting weaknesses which makes it important for organizations to stay on top of their security features. Companies that hold sensitive data and user information should most definitely pay close attention to their security.
If cyber criminals manage to steal information, it can ruin reputations with customers and cause irreparable damage.
After reading through our post on ways to improve your web application security, we hope that you’re feeling more assured about which steps to take to keep your applications protected.