How to secure your website with cybersecurity testing?

As per Statista, the global average cost of data breach in 2021 was around $4.2 million. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency report stated that the world is now suffering with increased threat of ransomware than ever. Hackers are targeting cloud services, websites, industrial processes, software supply chain, and more. 

Amid global threat of ransomware, it has become business-critical for organizations to ensure their digital products and services robustly secured. Cyber Security Testing can help businesses validate the security effectiveness of their digital infrastructure in the event of an attack. 

Check out how cybersecurity testing can make your website more secure: 

• Identify the flaws and vulnerabilities in your apps 

Comprehensive security testing has the primary benefit of uncovering all your application’s security flaws and vulnerabilities. Web application security testing can make developers aware of security issues while building the application. Hence, reducing the cost and time to develop a secure web application. 

• Comply with applicable laws 

Governments across the globe have created laws to regulate web application data security and privacy. Many businesses including healthcare, e-commerce, finance, banking, and more require web application security testing to comply with these regulations and protect the interests of users. 

Business owners must perform regular web app security testing to stay on the right side of the law. Web security testing is also crucial for developers who release web apps via app distributor platforms or SaaS. 

• Analyze your current level of security 

Web app security testing examines your current security measures and identifies weaknesses, if any. The firewall used to protect your web app may have its flaws, and web application security testing can help you identify and fix these security flaws before exploitation. 

• Recognize suspicious activity and security breaches 

Auditing your application regularly can help you discover security flaws or hacker behavior. Companies, on average, are unable to discover a data breach before 192 days, according to IBM, and the damage may be irrevocable at this point. Regular web security testing recognizes and prevents hacks and breaches before harming your business. 

• Create a solid security strategy 

In the case of a hack or a security breach, an audit can help you better plan and prioritize your response. It also enables you to design an incident response mechanism for your app or business. 

Methods for Web Security Testing 

Security testing engineers use multiple methods to validate and identify various vulnerabilities in a Web Application.  

Check out the major cybersecurity testing techniques used to secure a website: 

• Data Protection 

There are three major techniques to implement data protection in web applications. As a first step, make sure that only people with specific rights have access to and use data. 

The web application must also store all data in a database and encrypt sensitive data. It must use strong encryption to protect sensitive data, including login passwords, banking credentials, and business-critical information. 

Also, the web app must maintain data security throughout data transfer, especially if the data is private or business critical. Data security testers must identify if data travels across multiple apps or inside a single web application. 

That’s why testers must check if the database contains sensitive encrypted data or not. And make sure billing information, user account passwords, and other sensitive data is encrypted. 

Similarly, the test engineer may need to ensure that the sent data is reflected after proper encryption. The decryption of all encrypted data at the destination should also be done securely. 

Salting could be necessary for testers. The tester must also confirm that the information passed from the client to the server is not displayed in the address bar. If any of these checks fail, the web application has a serious security problem. 

• Password Cracking 

To access the application’s private areas, a user may either guess a username or password or use a password cracking tool. There is a list of open-source password crackers with common usernames and passwords. 

If the online application does not have a complex password, breaking the username and password may be easy. 

A hacker can use various techniques including steal cookies and their data to find the correct usernames and passwords, if not encrypted. 

• Manipulation of URLs Using HTTP GET Methods 

A tester needs to check if the application’s query string passes essential information or not. It occurs when an app uses HTTP GET to send data between a client and a server. 

The query string parameters carry the information. The tester can edit a query string parameter to check if the server accepts it. 

When a user sends a GET request to the server, the server obtains their username and password. An attacker can manipulate any input variables passed to the server in this GET request to obtain or corrupt the data. Application or web server abnormalities are a gateway for attackers to access applications in these situations. 

• SQL Injection 

An application rejects any text with single quotes (‘) in it. However, a database error means inserting the user input into a query and executing it. This way the app becomes SQL injection vulnerable. 

An attacker can gain access to the server database through SQL injection attacks, which are extremely dangerous. Check your web application for SQL injection entry points by looking for code that directly executes MySQL queries on the database accepting user inputs. 

An attacker may get important information using SQL statements or parts of SQL statements as user input. 

Even if an attacker crashes the application, they can get the information they want from the SQL query error shown on a browser. In these situations, you must handle user input special characters correctly. 

• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) 

Check the web app for cross-site scripting. The application should not accept HTML or script, such as HTML> or SCRIPT>. Cross-Site Scripting (CSS) attacks can occur if the application is vulnerable. 

An attacker can use a malicious script or URL to corrupt the victim’s browser. Using cross-site scripting and scripts like JavaScript, an attacker can steal user cookies and the information saved in it. 

Many web applications collect valuable information and pass this information on to different pages using variables. 

Conclusion 

In today’s connected world, it has become essential for business to offer a secure and reliable web application to their users. Cybersecurity testing can help organizations take the first step towards identifying security vulnerabilities and fixing it before they become victim to security breaches. 

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