Application security initiatives are a very critical aspect of software development ensuring that all the applications will be protected from challenges, cyber threats, and data breaches. However, many organizations and developers are making common application security mistakes that will expose the application to security risks and will lead to data leakage, financial loss, regulatory fines, and reputational damage. So, the following are some of the most common app security mistakes that you need to take care of and overcome to build safe and secure applications.
- Proper input validation: There are many applications that fail to properly validate the user input and allow the malicious actors to inject harmful coding elements throughout the process. To avoid this particular system, it is important for organizations to pay attention to whitelisting instead of blacklisting the inputs in addition to the usage of the regular expression. Employment of the parameterized queries in the whole process is very much important so that everything will be taken care of and further the display of the data into the web application applications will be very carefully done.
- Weakness in authentication and authorization: There are many applications that usually use weak passwords, improper session management, and a broken authentication mechanism which makes them very vulnerable to attacks and unauthorized accessibility. To make sure that things are very well taken care of, enforcing strong policies is important in addition to the implementation of multifactor authentication. This will provide people with the best element of support in the role-related accessibility control and further will implement the least privilege access principles without any problem in the whole process.
- Taking care of the insecure data storage and transmission: Many applications are using sensitive user data and converting it into plain text and will be failing to encrypt the data in transit which makes it easy for the attackers to steal the information. So, using AES-256 encryption for storing sensitive data is very important for people so that transport layer security will be very well implemented and overall encryption will be taken care of. This will be storing only the minimum required data in the whole process so that unnecessary personal information will be easily eliminated and storage of the things will be very carefully and proficiently done.
- Lacking the proper logging and monitoring: Failure of any kind to log the security-related events or monitor application behavior makes it very difficult for attackers to detect security breaches and insider threats. So, implementing centralized logging in the whole process is important for people so that API accessibility will be very well sorted out and everybody will be able to set up for suspicious activities. This will be helpful in making sure that there will be no chance of any kind of problem with sensitive user data and that things are very well taken care of without any problem.
- Improper management: Many applications come with long live sessions without proper expiry which makes them very vulnerable to session hijacking and fixation attacks. So, implementing the short session expiration times and refresh tokens is important for people so that secure cookies will be taken care of an automatic session logout will be done after the inactivity. This will be helpful in preventing the session fixation attacks very easily and will be able to deal with the regenerating of the tokens upon login without any problem.
- Using outdated and vulnerable dependencies: Developers are usually dealing with third-party libraries and frameworks without regularly updating them which will leave the application valuable to the exploit. So, using dependency management tools like audit is important for people so that scanning of the vulnerability will be very well done and further people will be able to deal with the regular update as well as matching of the third-party dependency. This will be helpful in making sure that the removal of the unused libraries will be very well done to reduce the overall attacking surface in the whole process.
- Insufficient security testing: There are many teams that are totally focusing on functionality testing and are usually neglecting security testing which leaves the applications exposed to the common abilities. So, conducting regular security assessments is very important for people in this case so that penetration testing will be done and further going for using the static application security testing and the dynamic application security testing tools is important so that threat modeling will be very well carried out without any problem. This will be helpful in making sure that the incorporation of automated security testing will be perfectly carried out in the CD pipeline.
- Poor API security: API will usually expose too much information, using the authentication mechanism or the lack of proper rate limiting concept which makes it a very attractive target for attackers. So, implementing the best possible Gateway in this particular case is important so that rate limiting will be used and validating as well as sanitizing of the input will be perfectly carried out to prevent the injection attack attacks. Avoiding exposing sensitive error messages and revealing the system details is important in the whole process so that there is no chance of any kind of problem and things are very well taken care of.
- Misconfigured cloud security: This is another very common appsec mistake that organizations are making because the storage in this particular case is not at all paid attention and the database has been exported publicly. So, making sure that things are very well taken care of, and implementing the least privilege excess policy is important so that enabling the logging and monitoring of the cloud activity will be perfectly carried out without any problem. Further using the network segmentation in this particular case is important so that database exposure will be taken care of without any problem.
Hence, being very clear about the mistake mistakes mentioned above is important for modern organizations because the modern-day application security is not only about installing security tools but also about taking the proactive approach of regular testing and secure coding practices so that cyber threats will be eliminated.