In an organizations technology stack, the application is the closet layer to the end user. Through this way companies interact and communicate with their end users, hence being in the eyes of thieves and intruders. Applications provide the largest attack surface for intruders, being something they all want to get their hands on. And it’s not like these intruders are never successful, they are sometimes and the reason for this is application vulnerabilities. Being a treasure trove of customer data, personal data and important insights and information attackers love to steal, tamper and destroy personally identifiable information (PII), so a company should always be on guard.
Application security acts as a discipline in protecting a company’s processes, tools and practiced from threats throughout their application lifecycle. It is important to carefully analyze and handle applications security risks, in order to make sure this happens web developers and administrators should follow best practices when developing applications. Over time the frequency of application security issues is growing day by day, let’s look at some of the international headers on news regarding dilemmas some big companies are stuck in.
- Android phones still need internet security
- Excellus will pay $5.1M to OCR after data breach effects 9.3m worth of information. The breach lasted more than a year.
- Over 22 billion exposed in data breached in 2021.
- Cyber cops register 68 online fraud complaints this year.
- Solar winds hack cleanup will take months, cyber-security experts say.
In order to prevent your company from security threats it is important to understand what kind of security threats you should be saving yourself from. You should have vast knowledge about the different kind of dangers out there. For those of you who don’t, let’s take a look at these top web application security risks in more detail.
Top Web Application Security Risks
1.Injection
Injection attacks are amongst the oldest and most dangerous attacks aimed at web applications, leading to exposing or damaging a company’s important data. It may not be that bad and may only create a denial of service or it can be on the other extreme of things, leading to a full webserver compromise. Such attacks usually take place because of vulnerabilities in codes of an application hence they are listed as the number one web application security risk for a reason.
2. Broken Authentication
This attack is an umbrella term for several vulnerabilities that attackers take advantage of when impersonating users online. Authentication is broken when attackers take hold and control of other people’s passwords, keys, sessions or general user account information with the goal of impersonating someone else’s identity. When such an attack takes place it refers to weaknesses in two areas: session management and credential management. Broken means an attacker has the opportunity to masquerade as a user: hijacked session ID’s and wrongfully taken credentials.
3. Sensitive Data Exposure
Sensitive data exposure occurs when an organization unknowingly exposes sensitive data or when a security threat leads to accidental loss and unauthorized disclosure of sensitive data. In such a case attackers get access to and are able to steal all this personal data and then use it for wrongful purposes. Such an exposure occurs as a result of not adequately protecting a database where information is stored and is basically linked to how a company handles its information. Sometimes sensitive data is stored in plain text documents, where websites do not use SSL or HTTPS security on their web pages, increasing the probability of a security attack.
4. Security Misconfiguration
Security misconfiguration arise when security setting is not properly defined, implemented or default correctly maintained. Meaning configuration settings do not comply with industry security standards which play a critical role in maintaining security and reducing business risk. Misconfiguration happens when a system or developer does not correctly configure the security framework of an application, website or server leading to dangerous open pathways for hackers. This way the attacker is able to easily login to our system and steal important data.
5. Cross-Site Scripting XSS
Cross-site scripting uses malicious code which are then injected into sites to attack a user’s web browser. It is quite easy for an attacker to insert this code through a link, with the help of social engineering will cleverly lure the user to click on the link and execute the code. Making them vulnerable to a security attack taking place right before their eyes.
Salesforce Services Rolustech Offers
[wptb id=32056]
Is the Salesforce app secure?
It would be wrong to say the Salesforce application is 100% secure, as no application is full shielded from any security threats all together. Of course, data security is the main priority of every platform and application, which is the same case in Salesforce. That is where Salesforce’s Cloud Security comes in, being developed in such a way to initiate proper data governance policy where codes are written with best practices using only verified libraries.
How to Secure the Salesforce Application?
Salesforce has not just one, but two types of security: System level security and Application level security. In this case, system level security is implemented across the whole Salesforce organization managing who can access the application as a whole. Whereas, application level security controls and restricts what users can edit, delete and view the values of fields of an object. System level security is more technical and is implemented using 2 methods: authentication and authorization. Authentication is the process or recognizing user’s identities to cross verify each logged in user is who they say they are. Authorization is the second step; it defines which data or features an authenticated user can use and implement according to the permission given to them. Also, lets not forget the Salesforce multi factor authentication and data security you can make the most of. If you want more information on this then you can look at the Guide to Salesforce Data Security and Best Practices to get a better grip on things.
Application Level Security
Let’s look at application level security in more detail. This acts as a means of controlling and restricting that users can edit, delete and view when it comes to fields in an application.
1. Security Health Check
This tool helps identify different threats that can be possible. It also gives you fixes and solutions to how you can overcome potential vulnerabilities in your security settings.
2. Auditing
Auditing provides a company with information on how to use a system, how to protect a system and how to store information on it. This helps in identifying potential or real security issues. Audits help you verify whether your organization system is actually secure, giving a detailed analysis of unexpected changes or usage trends that may occur. You can monitor record modification fields, login history, field history tracking and field audit trails for a more detailed analysis.
3. Salesforce Shield
Salesforce Shield is a trio of 3 different security tools that act as the purpose of helping admins and developers build extra levels of trust, compliance and security.
Shield Platform Encryption
Shield platform encryption allows your company to encrypt sensitive data at rest across all your Salesforce apps. This acts as another layer of protection to all your sensitive data, also giving an option of masking to bring more security to your PI and PII information.
Real-Time Event Monitoring
Real-time event monitoring is a very handy tool, giving you access to detailed performance, security and usage data on all your Salesforce apps. You are able to see who is logged into the system, who is making any changes or updates and finally, where they are logged in from. Helping keep a close eye on all your systems logins and security.
Field Audit Trail
Field audit trail helps you know the state and value of all your data in any point of time, during any date. This is helpful when you need to attain information on regulatory compliance, internal governance, audit or customer services.
4. Data Security
This is a handy security feature which helps you control users and the amount of information they are trying to attain, have it be regarding the whole organization, a particular object or field or of an individual’s record. It also allows you to set permissions and custom permissions for each individual person’s profile.
5. Security Testing
It is important to get all your custom code components tested thoroughly, where all permissions of objects, files, records and fields should be tested for each profile and permission sets. Not to forget, customer portals are something that will be used by external users meaning this should also be analyzed and tested thoroughly. When something is to be used by people outside of your organization it is very important to keep out an extra careful eye when it comes to protecting your data.
Rolustech Has You Covered
We want to make sure there are no bumps on the road once you’re on the Salesforce platform. Back-end processes are complicated and can be quite frustrating, considering not everyone has the technical finesse to find their way through them. Focus your attention on your business and leave managing and serving customers to us. Whether you need technical assistance with some bug identification or a new feature implementation, we’re here 24/7 to help you out with any issues regarding any Salesforce version. Sit back and let us help steer you towards your ultimate goal.
Rolustech is an Official Salesforce Partner firm and has completed several projects in Salesforce Integration, Customization, Implementation, and more. Get in touch now for a FREE Business Analysis. We will be glad to assist you!
