The Need for Web Application Security
Corporate web applications and APIs are the primary means by which many organizations interact with their customers. Web apps and APIs are exposed to the public Internet and can provide access to potentially sensitive data and valuable and restricted functionality. Web apps and APIs’ role as a gateway to this valuable content makes them a prime target for cybercriminals. By exploiting vulnerabilities in these web apps and APIs, an attacker can steal data or gain the access required to perform other attacks.
Web application security is essential to protecting against these types of attacks. By encouraging good coding practices, identifying vulnerabilities, and blocking attempted exploits, web application security solutions reduce the risk to corporate web apps and APIs.
Web Application Security Threats
Web applications face a wide range of potential threats. Some of the most common attacks against web apps and APIs include:
- Injection: Injection attacks exploit poor input sanitization by sending deliberately invalid or malformed input to an application, causing it to perform in unexpected ways. SQL injection is a common injection attack used to steal or modify data in databases.
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): XSS attacks embed malicious scripts within a webpage to steal sensitive information input in the webpage or impersonate the user.
- Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF): CSRF attacks trick a user’s browser into making requests to a site that they are logged into. This could allow the attacker to access the user’s account to change passwords, make purchases, or steal data.
- Credential Stuffing: Credential stuffing attacks try to use passwords that are weak or have been exposed in breaches to access a user’s account with other services.
- Denial of Service (DoS): DoS attacks attempt to take down a web application or API by exploiting vulnerabilities or bombarding it with more traffic than it can handle, making it inaccessible to legitimate users.
- API Abuse: Companies expose APIs to users to use in a particular way. However, an attacker can abuse these APIs to get them to behave in undesirable ways.
- Supply Chain Attacks: Web applications and APIs commonly use third-party libraries or plugins. These third-party components may have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by an attacker.
Types of Web Application Security Solutions
Organizations can manage their web app and API security risks by deploying various solutions, including the following:
- Web Application Firewalls (WAFs): WAFs sit in front of a web app and block traffic attempting to exploit vulnerabilities in these applications.
- Web App and API Protection (WAAP): WAAP provides much the same protection as a WAF solution but extends it to protect APIs as well as web apps.
- DDoS Mitigation: DDoS mitigation solutions are designed to identify and filter out malicious traffic attempting to overwhelm a web app or API.
- API Gateways: API gateways manage access to APIs, reducing the risk of API abuse and the use of undocumented shadow APIs by attackers.
- Bot Management: Bot management solutions identify and block malicious, automated traffic to web apps and APIs, reducing load on them and protecting against automated attacks.
Web Application Security Best Practices
In addition to managing web application security threats in production applications, companies can also take steps to minimize these risks before software is released. Some web application security best practices include:
- Validate User Input: Many web app and API attacks exploit poor input validation. Verify that input meets expected parameters before using it in an application.
- Automate DevSecOps: Automated static and dynamic application security testing (SAST/DAST) solutions can be built into automated DevOps workflows to support vulnerability detection and remediation before software is released.
- Manage Supply Chain Risks: Software composition analysis (SCA) identifies an application’s third-party dependencies, enabling developers to identify if any of these contain exploitable vulnerabilities.
- Perform Regular Vulnerability Scans: Regular vulnerability scanning enables an organization to find and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by an attacker.
- Avoid Shadow APIs: Undocumented shadow APIs can be discovered and exploited by an attacker. Only authorized, managed, and secured APIs should exist within corporate apps.
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