By Venkatesh Sundar

Going digital has become the norm today and software applications have become an integral part of our lives. However, this has also meant that data breaches and cyberattacks are also growing at an alarming rate. These breaches often come from minor glitches in application functionality and web application security and vulnerability detection have become the buzzword these days.

Even before the pandemic, data breach incidents in India were the second highest globally in 2018, according to a report by digital security firm Gemalto. With over 690 million internet subscribers and growing, India has increasingly seen a rise in these instances, both in the private and public sector. The number of Indian user accounts impacted by data breaches in 2021 more than quadrupled from 2020, according to another report from Netherlands-based Virtual Private Network (VPN) provider Surfshark. Over 86.6 million Indian users had their personal data stolen. India had the third-highest number of users compromised after the US and Iran.

In recent years, web security has been viewed in the context of securing applications from attacks by unauthorized users. Recently, a systematic literature review was conducted on 519 publications to investigate the various security vulnerabilities, approaches or techniques used in the web development process, stages in the software development in which the approaches or techniques are emphasized, and the tools and mechanisms used to detect vulnerabilities. Only 56 key primary studies were finally included in the review based on defined inclusion and exclusion criteria. From the review, it appears that no one software is referred to as a standard or preferred software product for web application development. So, what is web application security?

Web application security refers to protecting a company’s applications hosted on its website or the mobile phone apps it uses to conduct its business. It focuses on preventing cyber attackers from hacking into the applications, stealing data or disrupting their functionality. It includes protecting applications from misdirecting or disrupting the services they are designed to provide. There are three main types of security vulnerabilities based on their more extrinsic weaknesses: porous defences, risky resource management and insecure interaction between components.

The Open Web Security Application Project (OWSAP), a non-profit organization that works to improve the security of applications, has come up with a list of the 10 most common web application security risks. By writing code and performing robust testing with these risks in mind, developers can create secure applications that keep their users’ confidential data safe from attackers.

OWASP Top 10 Vulnerabilities

1. Injection
2. Broken Authentication
3. Sensitive Data Exposure
4. XML External Entities
5. Broken Access Control
6. Security Misconfiguration
7. Cross-Site Scripting
8. Insecure Deserialization
9. Using components with known vulnerabilities
10. Insufficient logging and monitoring.

A lot of risk-conscious and security-aware software developers are now using web application vulnerability scanners that are automated tools that scan web applications, normally from the outside, to look for security vulnerabilities such as Cross-site scripting, SQL Injection, Command Injection, Path Traversal and insecure server configuration.

Another security component is the web application firewall. A WAF or web application firewall helps protect web applications by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between a web application and the Internet. It typically protects web applications from attacks such as cross-site forgery, cross-site-scripting (XSS), file inclusion, and SQL injection, among others.

There is also an increasing need for threat intelligence. Threat intelligence is any data or knowledge—ranging from technical and human knowledge to predictions about future threats—that helps companies: detect, identify, validate and investigate potential security threats, attacks, malicious threat actors and indicators of compromise (IOCs).

So, a comprehensive security platform that integrates web application scanner, web application firewall, DDoS and BOT mitigation, CDN and threat intelligence engine will help future players in the digital industry secure their businesses and ensure that they stay protected at all times to come!

The author is Co-founder and CMO, Indusface