Web App Development Practices to Prevent Cyber Attacks

Cyber attacks are the most crucial threats for any virtual environment – be it web apps, websites, smartphone apps, cloud services, blockchain, or more. For every business, a cyber attack done successfully can cause theft of sensitive data such as user credentials, payment information, and more. Thus, having proper strategies against such attacks to counter them, is really important. In this blog, we are talking about some effective ways or practices that can help you in making your cybersecurity more impactful.

Best countermeasures against cyber attacks

Cyber-attacks have impacted many big names throughout the last decade, including Adobe, Yahoo, and Equifax, among others. From stealing user data of millions of people by targeting companies to taking individual systems hostage for ransom, cyber-attacks have occurred in many ways. Now, there are some common practices that you can follow to prevent cyber attacks. Let’s have a look at them.

1. AI-supported real-time security monitoring

An AI-supported firewall is one of the most effective ways under cyber security applications. AI in app development can help you in keeping an eye on threats and possible anomalies in real-time so that you can take action before it’s too late. AI has the capability of learning about new threats through machine learning to protect your businesses against new cyberattacks coming into existence. You can also take other measures such as Web App Firewall. It can create a basic shield to protect web apps against XSS, DDoS, and SQL injection attacks.

2. Password creation restrictions

Even though this security measure has become a normal step now, it is still important for you to consider it. Ensure that you and your users are creating passwords that are hard to guess. In common cases, it is suggested that passwords should not be related to your life, and conditions like at least one upper case letter, one lower case letter, one special character, and numerals are important.

3. Use input checks for secure coding

Boundary checks or input checks are important to invalidate malicious processes that can enter the server. Whitelisting is one of the most effective ways to handle input validations as it approves only required characters. On the other hand, restricting threatening inputs can be hard with the blacklisting approach.

4. Use prepared statements to attain DB query

SQL statements can be used to target and enter into the database. With such measures, the attacker can input malicious codes into the database to make it vulnerable. Thus, instead of using the users’ DB query, it is ideal to use a prepared statement to attain any DB query your web application receives.

5. Use two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication requires verification through extra steps apart from passwords. After creating a strong password, ask users to verify through one-time passwords, secret codes, or biometrics like fingerprints each time they want to access the service. Two-factor authentication is a crucial step in cyber security applications that have prevented many cyber-attacks by blocking access via an extra step of verification.

Account lockout is another technique combined with two-factor authentication that detects the number of attempts taken to enter the password. There should be a restriction on tries as well to ensure the hacker does not keep trying.

6. Use encryption tools

Encryption tools like SSL/TLS can help you in ensuring that user data is encrypted. While entering details such as user credentials, these encryption tools allow secured interactions. Your web apps use HTTPS protocols to combine them with encryption tools for a secure layer of shield that keeps sensitive information secret.

Key takeaways

In this blog, we discussed cybersecurity practices that can help users and developers protect their web applications. These steps are taken from real-life examples that are already popular among top web application developers. Hopefully, you find them useful. In the end, before we wrap up this blog, let’s revise once whatever we discussed above.

  • AI-supported real-time can scan servers and hardware networks for any potential attack attempts or hardware failures
  • Use password creation restrictions such as 8 characters long password, requires at least one uppercase letter, lowercase letter, special characters, numerical, and more
  • Input checks can scan and invalidate malicious codes trying to enter into the server from the user side
  • Prepared statements can become a shield against threatening SQL statements trying to enter into the database
  • The two-factor authentication process can add an extra step into the cybersecurity strategies by asking for additional verification each time users try to enter
  • Encryption tools can help users in encrypting their data to avoid it from getting leaked

Well, that is all for today. Hopefully, these steps help you in improving the cyber security of your web applications and other digital assets where it is applicable.

Fawad Malik

Fawad Malik Technology geek by heart, blogger by passion, and founder of nogentech.org, He regularly explores ideas and ways how advanced technology helps individuals, brands and businesses survive and thrive in this competitive landscape. He tends to share the latest tech news, trends, and updates with the community built around Nogentech.

Related Articles

Back to top button