Application Security Best Practices To Prevent Threats

Cybersecurity is becoming one of the most discussed topics in today's business and tech industry. With the heavy dependency on applications, it has become mandatory that users should be ensured that the application they're using is properly secure. Similarly, as a tech security professional, it's also your responsibility that no matter in which computer programming language you've used, some main application security best practices are followed throughout the DevOps lifecycle.

Following secure coding best practices for safe application is every developer's responsibility in the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) based on the specific roles

Software developers who write code should know their code is secure . IT professionals should be responsible for setting servers and firewalls securely

DevOps engineers who work for optimizing the software development process, in charge of integration & deployment, release management, testing suites, etc.

Nonetheless, in this post, we’ll explore essential application security best practices that shouldn’t be overlooked. In addition, we'll also share examples of different available tools that you can use for certain functionalities.

Note: The tools we’ll mention here are solely examples and shouldn’t be taken as a recommendation or endorsement from our end.

Approach With A Secure DevOps

Securing the application means using the secure approach during the development & operation lifecycle (DevOps). It ensures whatever changes are made, everyone involved in the SDLC will get to know about it instantly and will be able to analyze how it impacts the security of the company. It’s recommended that people from both teams work together instead of being part of the same project or team and working separately.

With the help of the DevOps approach, you can reduce the risk of facing new security issues within your application. Similarly, it also provides flexibility for making a decision about what you can or can’t do without reviewing it.

Nonetheless, using secure DevOps needs an approach from both the teams involved. In addition, it’s also necessary that both teams have common objectives and achieve the best security. Some of the ways by which it can be achieved include:

• Implement a secure build and security-as-code approach for integrating security within DevOps tools, workflows, and practices to mitigate vulnerability risks.
• Threat model integration in DevOps process.
• Security automation tools for streamlining tasks.

Implementation of QA Checks, Internal Monitoring & Security Testing

To ensure the quality and security of software, it’s essential that you implement security testing and quality assurance regularly. Such security practices help find potential vulnerabilities or errors within your code with other issues. In addition, if you find issues early on, you can save time and hassles. Some common examples of the same are:

Static Analysis of Code

It’s the process to analyze your code without running it. It's helpful to find out potential errors like unused variables or syntax errors.

Dynamic Analysis of Code

In this process, you must run your code and observe how it behaves. It's usually used for finding security vulnerabilities or runtime errors.

Unit Testing

Its main focus is on individual code units, like modules and functions. It's useful for identifying security vulnerabilities or runtime errors. It’s useful for finding out whether your code is working as it must be or not.

Testing Integration

It mainly focuses on determining whether different types of units are integrated correctly and whether it’s working without issues.

Simultaneously it's also useful to find out errors within communications or flow between the system's different paths.

Security Testing

It usually focuses on finding out vulnerabilities within the code. It helps to ensure your system is safe from cyberattacks.

Lastly, by implementing these testing methods, you can ensure your software is error-free and secure.

Implement Bug Bounty Program

It’s not easy as it seems to find & fix bugs in web applications. Therefore, it's recommended that you look for one or more than one white-hat hacker also called ethical hackers, by opening a bug bounty program. Nonetheless, this approach isn’t for everyone, and you shouldn't consider replacing it with the security testing you do internally and the monitoring methods mentioned above.

A bug bounty is a type of program that rewards or payment to skilled people capable of finding and identifying vulnerabilities or exploiting them within your website, software, or any other system. It allows you to benefit the people who are naturally attracted to break into systems, software, or website but use their skills for good use. By using this bug bounty program, you'll be able to have more time to find and fix bugs in the application. And you'll only require rewarding the person who helped you find the bug.

Nonetheless, if you choose to go on this route, ensure to provide a clear way to the bug bounty program participants and be quick to respond to bug reports because it’s not useful for the security of applications if you don’t take quick action on it.

Secure Coding Best Practices & Standards

Security doesn’t mean that you should get into practice after building the application. But it also means how securely you build your application. When discussing secure coding best practices and standards, we mean to say that you should have a certain set of guidelines you must follow at the time of building the application. In other words, every line of code you write should follow security standards that ensure your entire system is safe and secure from the very first step.

Secure coding isn’t limited to having secure functions; it also means improving how you implement overall security standards throughout the development process. Further, for any reference, you can refer to resources like the standards mentioned by OWASP.

Here, the OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) says, “open community dedicated to enabling organizations to conceive, develop, acquire, operate, and maintain applications that can be trusted” that assures security, compliance, and privacy with the mandatory regulatory requirements.

Practicing Application Verification Security Standards of OWASP ensures you aren't taking security risks lightly and taking necessary steps to avoid them while designing web applications. Henceforth, it also helps you prevent common security issues like XSS (Cross Site Scripting), SQL injection, and other known vulnerabilities.

Vulnerability Analysis Of Application

Before you add any new feature or release an application, you should always analyze whether your application is free from the vulnerabilities and application code is safe. It's an important aspect that you should do before releasing your application. It helps reveal potential flaws and weak points of applications/programs, if there are any.

Some of the commonly seen vulnerabilities are like:

SQL Injection

It's a type of bug that allows a malicious hacker to insert SQL commands into your application interface. It gives them the right to view or even modify the data. Similarly, it's usually a server-side vulnerability.

Backdoors

As the name implies, backdoors are the hidden entry into your application. Attackers try accessing the application from the backend for malicious reasons. Henceforth, it can open security holes in the system that can result in data theft, data modification, or any other concern.

Leakage of Information

Data leaks occur once users find information that shouldn't be known to them through public interfaces, like exploitation of error message vulnerabilities.

Open Source Code

Third-party code integration into the system is often practiced. But it's possible the code you use may have a vulnerability that may get exploited by an attacker. Therefore, you should ensure it's not vulnerable to avoid any exploitation of an open-source vulnerability.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

Here, users inject client-side scripts within web applications or websites to attack site visitors. Such scripts are malicious in nature and get executed by the site visitor in their browsers. Further, it's used to infect devices or steal the user's personal information.

But, analyzing each version of your application may become difficult, especially when you try doing manually. Therefore, here we've some of the automated scanning tools that may help you ensure vulnerabilities aren't slipped away. For instance:

Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner

It’s a tool that scans your application for SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and other known vulnerabilities.

WAF (Web Application Firewall)

It's a software application that monitors and filters web application traffic. It helps secure applications from attacks that try to exploit known vulnerabilities.

Burp Suite

It's a security testing tool that tries to find vulnerabilities in web applications.

Nonetheless, by taking such precautions, you can ensure your application is secure from malicious users.

Keeping Third-Party Software Securely In Systems

Hackers often look for new vulnerabilities within popular applications to exploit them. Instead of attacking applications directly, they will look for third-party applications that are tied to networks. Henceforth, it's recommended that you ensure you're keeping all the software publisher's latest updates to keep your network and applications safe.

Further, updates should be rolled out regularly and confirm the organization's security policy. Many software publishers release updates on a certain scheduled period, whereas others do it when it becomes available. Therefore, users should also be proactive about verifying it for updates and installing it once it becomes available.

Users should also track the updates of each application and ensure an inventory of the software they're using is updated. It helps ensure applications are updated. So, it becomes easier to identify if any application requires updates when new ones become available.

Lastly, software developers or organizations should digitally sign the application or software with Code Signing Certificate to remove the warning and safeguard it!

SAST (Static Application Security Testing) Tools

SAST (Static Application Security Testing) tools scan and look at codes and try to find any known vulnerability. It looks through the source code of the application and reports if any known issue or bug is found. For example, if buffer overflow, command injections, or SQL injections, errors won't go unnoticed and will be reported immediately.

However, static testing differs from dynamic testing because you get results at the time of build and not at the time of program execution. Therefore, it's important to know that static tests can’t catch all vulnerabilities and can't emulate user behavior. So, you should always run both types of testing for an accurate result.