9 Common Cybersecurity Challenges and Their Solutions

When your website has public traffic but lacks security protection, it's like placing a cake in front of a hungry crowd. The security issues involved in web application development are diverse. Here are some common security problems and their solutions:

1. SQL Injection

Attackers can access or manipulate data in a database by inserting malicious SQL code.

Solutions:

• Use parameterized queries or prepared statements.
• Use ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) tools to handle SQL generation and parameterization automatically.
• Strictly control user input and avoid directly concatenating SQL strings.

2. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

Attackers inject malicious scripts into web pages to steal user data or hijack user sessions.

Solutions:

• Use output encoding to process user input data.
• Implement Content Security Policy (CSP) to restrict executable scripts.
• Avoid directly inserting unprocessed user input into HTML.

3. Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Attackers trick users into performing unauthorized actions.

Solutions:

• Use CSRF tokens.
• Validate HTTP Referer headers.
• Implement double confirmation mechanisms for critical operations.

4. Authentication and Session Management

Weak authentication mechanisms and insecure session management can lead to unauthorized access.

Solutions:

• Implement strong password policies and two-factor authentication (2FA).
• Use secure session management mechanisms to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of session tokens.
• Regularly update and enforce session expiration.

5. Data Breach

Sensitive data is leaked during transmission or storage.

Solutions:

• Use HTTPS to encrypt data in transit.
• Encrypt sensitive data stored in databases.
• Implement strict access controls and data minimization principles.

6. Insecure Direct Object References (IDOR)

Attackers can access or modify unauthorized data by directly accessing object IDs.

Solutions:

• Implement access control checks to ensure users can only access data they are authorized to.
• Use unpredictable identifiers (e.g., UUIDs) instead of incrementing IDs.

7. Insufficient Logging and Monitoring

Lack of effective logging and monitoring leads to an inability to detect and respond to security incidents in a timely manner.

Solutions:

• Implement comprehensive logging strategies, including access logs and error logs.
• Use centralized log management and analysis tools.
• Set up alert mechanisms to promptly detect and respond to anomalous activities.

8. Dependency Vulnerabilities

Using third-party libraries or frameworks with known vulnerabilities.

Solutions:

• Regularly scan and update dependencies.
• Use tools (like Dependabot or Snyk) to automatically detect dependency vulnerabilities.
• Review and verify the security of third-party libraries.

9. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

Attackers use a large number of requests to overwhelm server resources, making services unavailable to legitimate users.

Solutions:

• Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
• Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) can detect and filter malicious traffic, preventing DDoS attack traffic from reaching the application server.
• Configure auto-scaling to automatically increase or decrease server instances based on traffic demand, ensuring service availability during high traffic periods.
• Implement rate limiting strategies to restrict the request rate from a single IP address, preventing overload from malicious traffic.

Among the above cybersecurity issues, SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, authentication, session management, and data breach can be addressed during development or have already been resolved by the programming frameworks you use. By adhering to development standards, developers can achieve network security protection.

The issue of insufficient logging and monitoring is more about introducing third-party monitoring tools because if you want very detailed monitoring of access data, the development workload of the monitoring tool may be much greater than the development workload of your web application.

Dependency vulnerabilities are harder to protect against. Generally, when a dependency has a vulnerability, the impact is widespread, such as the Log4Shell vulnerability in 2021 and the Equifax data breach in 2017. This is because open-source technologies are used by many, and when a vulnerability appears, it can cause widespread issues along the dependency chain.

DDoS attacks are even more troublesome because they can be seen as a form of brute force attack. The server cannot handle a large number of malicious requests, and this requires a large number of CDN servers to achieve load balancing. Having a large-scale CDN server cluster is not something an ordinary startup can afford, so third-party protection is the best option.

You might ask, do you have to handle all these tasks one by one? It seems like a lot of work. In reality, when your website is not very popular, you only need to ensure basic network protection. When the business scale expands, you can host your web application to a third party and use cloud security to solve your network security issues.

If you are an independent website, you can also connect to security acceleration platforms (such as edgeone, Cloudflare, etc.) to achieve website protection.