Web applications are indispensable yet most vulnerable aspects of businesses today – simple blogs or a complicated employee application or a high-volume e-commerce website. Businesses tend to focus on achieving speed, agility, and performance through quick changes to the applications as per changing market/ customer needs for competitive and strategic edges in the fast-paced business world. However, they may not be taking proactive and effective web application security measures to protect their web applications, digital resources, and sensitive data from hackers and other malicious actors who are pacing up their efforts to orchestrate breaches and attacks.
By prioritizing speed, agility, and performance over web application security, businesses are leaving the applications vulnerable and increasing the security risks. And these are costly risks to take for all sizes and types of businesses.
Businesses must understand their current security posture, types, sources, nature, impact, and magnitude of all potential risks, web application accessibility, legal obligations, types of users, etc. Based on this understanding, businesses must prioritize risks and resources/ assets that need higher or lower attention. The web app security strategies must reflect these.
Network firewalls are good for network security but are not effective with web application security. Network firewalls, for instance, can be configured to keep allow certain IP addresses while blocking the rest. But it cannot analyze the web traffic to identify if a request is from a legitimate user or a malicious actor. And this is essential for web applications as they are open to access by everyone.
Web vulnerability scanners only will tell you where known vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and misconfigurations exist based on the rules it is designed/ tuned. This is a critical step to fixing vulnerabilities as we can fix only those weaknesses that we know exist. Scanning must be continuously and consistently done every day and after any major business or application-level changes.
Not all scanners are effective in identifying gaps and vulnerabilities. Always choose a web application scanner that is comprehensive, automated and intuitive.
The other important consideration in choosing a scanner is a free website scanner vs commercial web vulnerability scanner. It is always better to choose a commercial scanner and consider the money spent as an investment for fortified security and the safety of your application. This is because the best commercial scanners ensure zero false positives, provide frequent updates and critical patches, are easy to use and offer professional support.
Remember that having only scanners is not sufficient; they must be part of a comprehensive security solution. It will be like installing a fire alarm but not calling the fire brigade when it goes off.
WAF is the first layer of defense shielding the web application from illegitimate requests, bad traffic, and malicious actors. It continuously monitors traffic to filter out bad requests and allows only legitimate users to access the application. When integrated with the web vulnerability scanner, it patches identified vulnerabilities until fixed by developers (even though it does not fix the vulnerabilities).
WAF and web application scanners are not enough for robust web security. These are effective against known vulnerabilities and threats but what about unknown vulnerabilities, logical vulnerabilities, zero-day threats, etc.? To strengthen security and protect the data and other digital assets from bad actors, regular security audits and penetration testing by certified security experts are critical.
Take a proactive approach and stay informed to keep strengthening web application security.
This post was last modified on May 28, 2021 12:28
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