The Future of Web Application Security

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Introduction

There is no doubt that current technological developments have continued to play a key role in transforming the way business is conducted in the contemporary world. Vast business-related operations that would range from the approaches used by organizations to reach consumers, to the manner in which goods and services are delivered are conducted in a more convenient manner nowadays, courtesy of modern day technologies. The use of integrated web applications in today’s dynamic business environment has enabled entrepreneurs to reach great business milestones.

In this regard, this popular trend has become a central business platform for many enterprises globally. Almost every business organization has embraced the use of modern web applications as powerful tools that can be used to enhance business success and development. Among other benefits, the use of web applications has enabled entrepreneurs to conduct their businesses more efficiently. However, despite the many benefits that come with the use of modern web applications in business, there are also a couple of security risks that have raised constant concerns to both developers and end users. This paper extensively examines the future of Web application security in the contemporary society.

Aim of Web Applications

Web applications refer to sophisticated computer programs that are designed and applied on remote servers. The applications are deployed over the Web via browser interfaces such as Internet explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari, among others. Examples of common Web applications include things such as search engines, commodity catalogues, and project management tools. The main role of these applications is to facilitate the work of computer users in executing one or more functions that are relevant to their business operations (Pfleeger & Pfleeger 2007).

Web applications serve as interactive platforms through which users can easily fulfill various roles. The applications can offer any form of functionality that is required to make the operations of business organizations run smoothly. More importantly, these programs play a subservient function when it comes to the automation of the day-to-day tasks in an enterprise. By combining the functions of Web applications with other key abilities of the database, business organizations can come up with effective applications that can enable them handle tasks in a more convenient manner. In most cases, organizational Web applications serve as central databases through which users can easily access useful information about organizations and their business objectives. Web applications are easily accessible over the Web, and anyone with the internet can make use of them whenever they wish to do so.

Security Gap in Web Application

Apart from the significance of Web applications in today’s business world, the applications come in as a major hurdle to global acceptance of the internet as a central basis of online business transactions. Web applications have recently emerged as the main attraction for many people seeking to take advantage of the vast security vulnerabilities associated with the online environment.

Considering the great impact and influence of modern day technological aspects, business organizations are drawing huge amounts of information from numerous web sources as a way of remaining ahead in today’s competitive business environment (Stuttard & Pinto 2008). However, most of these sources pose serious security threats to organizations, and therefore, cannot be trusted. Web applications are the most visible and easily accessible entry points of enterprises and this makes them a major target for online hackers.

This security vulnerability has been necessitated by the fact that we are living in an era of dynamic innovations in computer technology where competition between programmers and cybercriminals is rife. In this regard, it is necessary for businesses to maintain a Web presence that will play a key role in helping them carry out their major business applications safely. This leaves entrepreneurs, who tend to see the Web as a core necessity of business success, with little choice about facing the diverse security risks associated with modern Web Applications.

Issues Associated With the Current Techniques

The major problem with modern Web applications is that, they serve as key entry points for all kind of cybercrime which may be directed on entrepreneurs and business organizations over the internet. Web security breaches have become more common nowadays, due to the increased usage of Web-based applications. As a matter of fact, many big and small organizations around the world have reported incidents of Web application breaches that have dealt massive blows on their financial strengths and reputations.

It is estimated that 75 percent of all major business organizations in the world have been victims of cybercrime at least once in the last 24 months. This intrusion has resulted into identity theft, breach of potential data, and defacement of brand, among other serious effects. This constant breach of Web applications is a clear indication that existing safety measures have failed to protect individuals and organizations against the dangers of insecure online environment. Following is a summary of some of the common Web application security issues observed in the current world.

Online Fraud

Online fraud or internet fraud refers to the practice of using web services or programs to access other people’s databases or online accounts with the intention of defrauding them. Being one of the common aspects of modernity in today’s society, the internet has emerged as a major target for many fraudsters around the world. Internet fraud happens when fraudsters maliciously gain access of users’ personal information and use it to steal money from them or to interfere with crucial data in their online accounts. Some of the common web-based sites where internet fraud is likely to occur are websites, chat rooms, and messaging platforms.

There are many forms of internet fraud and these would include purchase fraud, money transfer fraud, charity fraud, phishing, e-Marketing fraud, pharming, dating fraud, and business or employment schemes, among other things. Hackers have turned their attention to unsuspecting internet users, and are using sophisticated software and programs to infiltrate computers around the world for malicious intentions. This enables them to easily steal people’s identities, which they use to hijack people’s personal accounts over the internet.

Technical Web attacks

This refers to the practice of interfering with Web applications in a technical manner by using hacking approaches such as cross-site scripting and SQL. Among various other hacking techniques, these two are believed to be the most common ones that are used by cybercriminals to execute online fraud on unsuspecting users. Cybercriminals are becoming more intelligent as the development in technological innovations continues to rise and this has tremendously accelerated the rate of Web attacks around the globe (Huang et al. 2003).

Business Logic Threats

Apart from the technical Web attacks discussed above, cybercriminals have also been engaging in business logic fraud of late. As a matter of fact, hackers are spending many hours online perusing Websites for valuable information that will enable them exploit or mitigate users who might be of particular interest to them (Curphey & Arawo 2006). As it would be observed, hackers with the intention of carrying out this form of fraud are mainly equal opportunists who are in the look out for ways to compromise, wreck and tarnish the reputation of competitors in the market.

Hackers conducting business logic threats could also be operating on behalf of business organizations against their rivals in the market. Once they make their way in the Web applications or databases of the targeted organizations, the hackers will be seeking to unveil valuable information that could be used to bring the targeted organizations down.

Why Web Applications Security Fails

Computer hackers are said to have been in existence since the time when business organizations first embraced the internet more than two decades ago. Following this technological development, cybercriminals would probe computers with the aim of identifying database vulnerabilities. In order to counter breaches of web applications, businesses came up with the idea of applying intrusion prevention systems and firewalls. However, cyber criminals quickly circumvented the security systems once the applications were released, and would use sophisticated programs to compromise the applications.

More security capabilities were realised later, following the introduction of next generation firewalls that could be used to trace the nature of the data passing through the application traffic. The main limitation of this application, however, was that it did not play any role in detecting fraudulent devices or stopping cyber crime. This clearly explains the reason why businesses that depend on network security alone are more vulnerable to Web applications breach.

Possible Future Solutions

Considering the many threats posed by hackers on Web applications, there is a need for individuals and business organisations to embrace integrated security measures that will enable them stay ahead of potential threats. In this regard, enterprises should focus on utilising security solutions that integrate tight security measures into both Web applications and Web gateways. These security measures will not only help organisations deal with existing Web security breaches, but also provide enterprises with secure working environments.

There is no doubt that the future of web application security is under serious threat in the hands of more advanced Web attacks that have continued to rock the computing sector over the years. In this regard, it will be wise for enterprises to focus on applying the necessary mitigation measures in those areas where cyber criminals are likely to hit next. Users must go for Web application firewalls that will guarantee them the best protection from the latest threats (Cheswick, Bellovin & Rubin 2003). However, in order to effectively address the most advanced threats posed by modern cybercriminals and hackers, the Web application fireworks must include the following features.

Understand Web Applications

In order to accurately deal with the issue of regular Web attacks, Web application firewalls should be able to understand every aspect of the application being protected such as the URLS involved and cookies, among other key details (Joshi et al. 2001) More importantly, Web application firewalls must be able to automatically detect changes made to the applications without any manual intervention.

Staying Ahead of Hackers

Hackers are as smart as computer programmers, and this means that they can easily compromise any web application that they lay hands on. Cybercriminals around the world are constantly designing new attacking tools that will enable them undertake their evil mission effectively whenever they wish to do so. In this regard, users should try to keep up with the latest Web threats as one way of taking full control of all kind of cybercrime. For example, effective Web application firewalls should be made into up-to-date protection that will effectively address the latest application threats and attacks.

Thwarting Evasion Techniques

Web application firewalls should be able to employ the concept of advanced analytics and correlation, for this will enable them stop web attacks without blocking legitimate users who may happen to enter unusual characters accidentally. The main advantage of the analytic engine is that it will easily assess special characters, violations of protocols and attack details, and be able to carry out extra analysis using security expressions to differentiate hackers from legitimate users who may have entered wrong details accidentally.

Stopping malware

Cybercriminals have always come up with new ways of stealing people’s identify from economic and banking Web applications using sophisticated malware which is capable of detecting user login details. In this case, an effective security application must be able to control the distribution of fraud malware which has become a major issue to many financial institutions.

Conclusion

Hackers have become more industrialized in their mission to steal users’ personal data for fraudulent reasons. Internet fraud has emerged as the biggest security threat that has ever happened to Web applications nowadays. The bitter truth, however, is that modern security products such as IPS and firewalls have completely failed to provide desirable security levels against these growing threats.

Web applications have found great use in the corporate world nowadays than at any other time in history. In this regard, there is a need for enterprises to utilize effective security programs that will play a key role in safeguarding their most important business data from cybercriminals. I suppose that the internet will be a safe environment to trend on in the future, with these measures having being put in place.

Reference List

Cheswick, W, Bellovin, S & Rubin, A 2003, Firewalls and Internet security: repelling the wily hacker, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Chicago, Illinois.

Curphey, M & Arawo, R 2006, ‘Web application security assessment tools’, Security & Privacy, IEEE, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 32-41.

Huang, Y, Huang, S, Lin, T & Tsai, C 2003, ‘Web application security assessment by fault injection and behavior monitoring’, In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on World Wide Web, vol. 17, no. 9, pp. 148-159.

Joshi, J, Aref, W, Ghafoor, A & Spafford, E 2001, ‘Security models for web-based applications’, Communications of the ACM, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 38-44.

Pfleeger, C & Pfleeger, S 2007, Security in computing. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Stuttard, D & Pinto, M 2008, The web application hacker’s handbook: discovering and exploiting security flaws, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.

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