Securing your enterprise application is indispensable to safeguarding your users and clients’ data, which actually propels your business forward. Enterprises’ data is a bonanza for cybercriminals, with which they can maneuver the patterns of digital presence, and breaches in your application can put your presence at stake.
Also, there is no survival without a digital presence, and that is why the stakes have never been higher before today. And as technology advances, so do the cybercriminals and their tactics; if you block one way, they trickle in through some other way and are always in quest of loopholes in your app.
Therefore, application security is not something done once and forever; you have to keep fortifying your system over time. That is why the security measures outlined in this checklist will make enterprise app development free from being prone to breaches, bolstering the final product’s security posture, as they cover eve ry aspect from authentication and authorization to APIs to backups to servers to being in compliance with industry regulations and much more.
So, all the people searching “business ideas 2024” to get an enterprise app in the near future, are you ready to indulge in the intricacies of its security aspect? Then, let’s cut right to the chase.
Data Encryption
Data encryption is the art of obfuscating data into a jumble, or, you can say, a mishmash of numbers, special characters, alphabets, etc., that makes no sense.
Data at Rest Encryption
Sit developers at the table and ask them to implement encryption algorithms during enterprise app development, such as AES and RSA, for encrypting sensitive data. Apart from sensitive data, secure your database, files, and even your app’s backup with encryption tools so everything becomes beyond understandable to anyone until they have the key.
Data in Transit Encryption
There are active and passive attackers always lurking to lurch into your app, so erode them from the game by employing SSL/TLS protocols for secure communication between clients and servers. Also, these certificates expire after a cycle of one year, and you have to get them renewed, so beware of this to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
Authentication and Authorization
Code robust and secure authentication and authorization mechanisms to prevent breaches and unauthorized access to the app. Wondering what is implementable? Below you go!
Strong Password Policies
Code a functionality that enforces complex password requirements on your clients and users, only allowing them to set passwords of over a specific length and ensuring the password contains special characters and numbers apart from just alphabets. You know more about what password generators generate for you.
Also, make it mandatory to change passwords after a certain period and implement strict password rotation policies that don’t let once-used passwords be used again to prevent the reuse of old passwords.
Secure Session Management
Implement secure session management to prevent session hijacking, as it involves maintaining a record of the user’s interactions and preferences.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
To take security to the next level, don’t just rely on mere passwords; leverage technologies and multi-factor authentication methods like sending an SMS code when trying to sign in or engage some authenticator apps. Apart from these, you can add a sort of biometric that increases the authenticity of the sign-in.
If you want to keep access to and experience of the app highly secure, you can make MFA mandatory for accessing sensitive data or performing critical actions that can have potentially serious consequences.
Secure Protocols and Access Controls
Use industry-standard protocols like OAuth 2.0 for secure authorization and token-based authentication of people based on their roles, you know, restricting access, just like we authorize people to access our shared Google docs or sheets with certain kinds of access, i.e., viewing, commenting, and editing.
Also, though it is an era where we focus on automating and streamlining tasks and processes, it is totally fine to manually review user roles and permissions regularly.
Secure Coding Practices
It is crucial to cling to secure coding practices from scratch in the mobile app development process and encourage your coders to follow the guidelines strictly.
Adherence to Secure Coding Standards
Encourage your developers to adhere to OWASP guidelines for enterprise app development that will mitigate common security risks such as injections, XSS, CSRF, etc. Java is used for enterprise app development, and so developers prefer its frameworks over others for backend development, e.g., Spring Security for Java to handle authentication and authorization.
Input Validation and Output Encoding
Lay down strict rules for user inputs so they enter only the right type of input. Also, don’t just accept any input, but rather validate and sanitize user inputs to prevent SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. Apart from inputs, encode output data to prevent script injection and content spoofing.
API Security
If authentication is not done right, there are always risks of data breaches, unauthorized access, etc., that can expose sensitive data through insecure endpoints.
Authentication and Authorization for APIs
Implement API keys, tokens, or OAuth for API endpoint access control to ensure only authorized users or applications can access the API and the resources it provides, intended to protect sensitive data.
The primary purpose of the API gateway is to standardize and centralize the delivery of services through APIs. API gateways help developers secure and organize an organization’s API integration in a number of ways, such as rate limiting, throttling, and IP filtering.
Data Validation and Error Handling
Validate, sanitize, and go hard on data to prevent parameter tampering and injection attacks. Also, during enterprise app development, when coding the code of your app, implement proper error handling without revealing sensitive information in API responses.
Rate Limiting
Quite self-explanatory from the name, you can limit how many requests a client (API consumer) can make in a specific time; usually, it is in seconds. Implementing this will reduce the chances of abuse.
Server Security
As we mentioned above, as technology advances, so do cybercriminals and their tactics. A hacker can use distributed denial of service (DDoS), SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), remote code execution (RCE), or man-in-the-middle (MitM) to attack and breach your servers. Therefore, it is important to take the following measures:
Regular Software Updates
Just when you see fixes and patches to make, instantly apply the patches to the operating system, web server, and application server to prevent the above-mentioned sophisticated ways of attacking your servers. There are myriads of tools out there; leverage them for vulnerability scanning to identify and mitigate weaknesses.
Secure Server Configurations
There is a whole different world of ports and things, so we can’t explain here much; just disable unnecessary services and ports to minimize the attack surface. Also, don’t undermine the firewalls; implement firewalls and cutting-edge intrusion detection systems to monitor in real-time and block suspicious activities on the spot.
Data Backup and Recovery
Use tools or, in some other way, ensure someone has your back.
Automated and Regular Backups
It is highly recommended to set up an automated backup that keeps a copy of databases, files, and other configurations that occur on a daily basis and deletes the previous copy. Also, don’t leave the backup on its own; you have to have a backup, so regularly test the backup integrity.
Off-Site Backup Storage
Though there is a buzz about keeping everything online, you can eradicate the importance of offsite backup storage, so store backups in secure, off-site locations to prevent data loss in case of disasters or physical breaches.
Logging and Monitoring
The higher the stakes, the greater the risks.
Comprehensive Logging
Automate the whole logging system and implement logging for all important application activities and security-related events occurring. Make sure you store logs securely and regularly review them for any anomalies or potential security incidents before they wipe a whole lot of data.
Real-time Monitoring and Alerts
Again, leverage the security information and event management (SIEM) tools to monitor real-time events and configure alerts for suspicious activities, unauthorized access attempts, or system breaches.
Incident Response
No matter how secure and robust your app is, you must always be prepared for anomalies and security incidents.
Incident Response Plan
Develop a detailed incident response plan outlining steps to identify, contain, eradicate, recover, and learn from security incidents. Don’t just code it and leave it to languish; rather, conduct regular testing and simulations to test the effectiveness of the plan.
Security Incident Response Team (SIRT)
Being an organization, you can establish a dedicated team with assigned roles and responsibilities for incident response that is always looked after. Also, don’t just assign them roles; ensure team members are trained and aware of the latest security threats and techniques.
Code Review and Testing
Coding is an integral part of enterprise app development, so keep it robust and spruced up.
Regular Code Reviews
So, just like you get regular updates for your favorite apps, conduct regular code reviews with the aim of ensuring zero security vulnerabilities and robust code. Bring tools into the play and let them identify potential issues. Also, use peer reviews.
Security Testing
Perform static application security testing (SAST) to analyze the source code for vulnerabilities, and conduct dynamic application security testing (DAST) to identify weaknesses in the running application that you can improve. Apart from these tests, engage in penetration testing to simulate real-world attacks and assess the app’s security posture.
Third-Party Components
Be wary when implementing third-party integration in your app. Here is what you can implement prior to implementation:
Vendor Security Assessment
Evaluate the security practices of third-party vendors before integrating their services or components, and ensure the vendors are following industry-standard security certifications.
Compliance and Regulations
One way to remain secure and safe is to be in compliance with regulations and follow industry standards. Here is what you can do:
Regulatory Compliance
Stay up-to-date with industry-specific regulations and compliance standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, etc. Apart from this, make sure you implement the necessary controls and processes to ensure compliance with relevant laws. Being in compliance not only secures your app but also makes your users and clients trust and confide in you.
Audits and Assessments
On a daily basis, conduct security audits and assessments to evaluate and ensure your app’s compliance with regulations and standards, as these regulations keep updating with the ever-evolving landscape. Yes, ensure you are staying updated with the changes in them and adapting app policies accordingly.
Also, do the audits with vigilance and in a proper way. What you can do is document and address the audit findings promptly. Not only will this keep you in continuous compliance with standards, but it will also keep all the records just in case you ever need them.
User and Employee Education
You should roll out a guide on dos and don’ts for users when accessing and using the app so they know the best practices, and the same for your employees when developing the app.
Security Awareness Training
Educate your employees and users on security comprehensively and tell them about phishing attempts, social engineering, safe browsing habits, etc., and what to do next if they fall victim to such an attack. For this, you can conduct workshops and training and give PDFs full of insights with vivid visuals.
Reporting Mechanisms
Apart from educating and teaching how to tackle and cope with such incidents, create clear and open channels for users and employees to report security incidents or suspicious activities to you so prompt action can be taken. Also, just like you strive to foster other sorts of cultures in your organization, encourage a culture of reporting and reward users and employees for responsible disclosures.
Not to mention, though it is quite common that people barely fall for it now, still ensure your employees are not oblivious to this.
Threat Modeling
Threat modeling is a multi-step engineering technique that helps you identify threats, vulnerabilities, glitches, and flaws, mitigate the potential risk, and ensure there are shortcomings left in the app and that all threats have been dealt with.
The Rundown
What we shared above is an all-encompassing, robust security checklist that is paramount to assessing, safeguarding, and enhancing your enterprise app’s security posture. Application security is not something done once and forever; you have to keep bolstering your security measures over time, as this is an ever-evolving realm where threats evolve as well.
