Web App Security Checklist: A Complete Guide

While developing web applications, a major point that the developers cannot neglect is the steps to keep it secured. Therefore, it's important to stay updated about all the methods crucial to safeguard your web application.

Cyberbullies can attack your web app in various ways. So, you need a comprehensive guide to secure our web application. In this article we have included a complete web app security checklist that every developer must be aware of. Continue reading.

Steps to take to keep your web application secured

Leading web app development companies in India always emphasize taking steps that ensure that all the safety risks are under your control. This helps web applications gain the confidence of their users.

So, take a look at the tips below and learn the ways that are certainly going to safeguard your business web app.

Handle security risks on the browser side:

You must protect your web app from the various security threats that you may enter from the user’s side. For example, threats from malicious links or sites, and also attacks on the end user’s local network.

What you should do:

Take a look at the following points to manage such risks:

• Using HTTPS instead of HTTP can safeguard your users from various network-related threats. You must encrypt all the connections between the user’s web browser and the web server. The application of HTTPS can protect your users from attackers who can intercept a single unencrypted HTTP request. Also, it will protect from the risk of forging a response from the server with malicious content in it. 
• Using HSTS will take care of your users from SSL stripping attacks. HSTS is important as it’s a header, useful for your server to enforce encrypted connections. However, when using HSTS, be careful, as it can force encrypted traffic to your website. Therefore, having plain text on your site can be dangerous. Instead, begin with a small ‘max-age’, and leave preloading as the last stage, as it is difficult to cancel once it begins.

There are a few other important steps you must be aware of. Let's take a look.

• You must configure your cookies with the ‘secure’ attribute to protect them from being leaked over an unencrypted connection.
• Stay away from XSS vulnerabilities by safely using JavaScript. 
• An effective content security policy is necessary to protect from XSS and xs leak vulnerabilities.
• Sending a content-disposition header can protect your users from XSS vulnerabilities when you are serving them with downloads.
• To deal with CSRF(Cross-site Request Forgery) vulnerabilities you need to enable your platform’s anti-CSRF mechanism.
• The correct usage of HTTP verbs is necessary to get rid of CSRF vulnerabilities.
• Session fixation attack is another point to keep in mind. So, create a fresh session ID on the login, which can help you get rid of such issues. Naming your cookies is also vital when you want to avoid session fixation attacks.

Managing security threats on the server side:

There are various types of security threats that you can intrude into the system from the server side of the web application. Therefore, you need to take proper precautions to deal with all such issues. Let’s now see how the leading experts prefer to deal with threats on the server side of a web application.

• To protect your business web app, you must validate all the inputs carefully and strictly. Sanitizing invalid input will not help and that’s why it should be avoided. Therefore, using restrictive data types and avoiding the usage of strings can certainly help. In case you find that you need to use String, you have to put a length limit to it. Also, you must restrict the character set to the minimum. Moreover, the application of JSON Schema, and XML schema is always a good idea.
• Displaying debugging information to the users can be risky, and that’s why you need a global exception handler. This will help display a generic error message to the browser. Thus, cyberbullies can hardly damage your system.
• You must use an identity provider like ‘auth0’ to authenticate the users instead of doing it yourself. You can also use ‘KeyCloak’ instead of a third-party IDP.
• To protect the web app it is crucial to prevent unauthorized access to data. Therefore, you have to use strict access control, which is certainly not an easy task. However, to tackle this problem, you must use a centralized permission evaluator that will aid to prevent unauthorized access. You must consider setting up a complete ACL system if you need more complex access control.
• While building database queries, you need to be careful to stay away from SQL injection vulnerabilities. Instead, use an ORM(Object Relational Mapper), which ensures the safety of your web app. 
• The WAF or Web Application Firewall product usage is important, as it can keep hackers from accessing your system. 
• HTTP desync attacks can be another concern for your system. It is also known as ‘Request smuggling’ through which hackers can steal HTTP requests.
• You must prevent subdomain takeovers by keeping a track of all your DNS records.

Use SDLC management process:

Using a secure software development lifecycle management process is another useful method. By using this, you can be sure that the open-source vulnerabilities are secured and supervised regularly.

Pen testing and security audits:

Generally, pen testing and security audit are manually performed by experts. This method is useful, as it helps detect unspecific and business logic errors tools fail to find. 

Leading web application development service providers suggest including this method in your checklist. It helps to understand the security strength of your system, and also to find better solutions to keep it protected. 

Patch management: 

Virtual patching is important for your web app’s security as it helps fix issues that were identified immediately. Effective patch management can help you complete this task easily.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article will help you prepare your web app security checklist without trouble. Therefore, understand each point that we have explained here before you start creating your checklist. Moreover, hiring expert web app service providers is always a smart idea to launch a bug-free web app.