Cyber Security

Establishing secure development practices creates an environment where security is considered at every stage. Security training for development teams should focus on OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities and secure coding practices. Code review processes must incorporate security considerations using OWASP secure coding checklists covering authentication, authorization, input validation, output encoding, and cryptography.

Integrate static application security testing (SAST) tools into development workflows and CI/CD pipelines to catch vulnerabilities early, helping identify OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities during development. Dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools analyze running applications to identify runtime vulnerabilities. Combining SAST and DAST provides comprehensive coverage across the development lifecycle.

Threat modeling identifies potential security risks early in the design phase, addressing the OWASP Top 10 category of insecure design. Error handling must balance providing useful information with preventing information disclosure—error messages displayed to users should be generic, avoiding technical details.

The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) is a non-profit foundation dedicated to improving software security through freely available resources for developers and security professionals. The OWASP Top 10 represents the most critical security risks to web applications, updated regularly based on real-world attack data. This list includes broken access control, cryptographic failures, injection attacks, insecure design, security misconfiguration, vulnerable and outdated components, identification and authentication failures, software and data integrity failures, security logging and monitoring failures, and server-side request forgery.

The OWASP Secure Coding Practices Quick Reference Guide provides actionable guidance across critical security domains including input validation, output encoding, authentication and password management, session management, access control, cryptographic practices, error handling and logging, data protection, and communication security. OWASP also maintains language-specific secure coding guides and cheat sheets covering SQL injection prevention, secure password storage, authentication best practices, and cross-site request forgery defense.

Authentication and authorization determine who can access the system and what actions they are permitted to perform. The OWASP Top 10 identifies broken authentication and broken access control as critical vulnerabilities. Modern applications must implement robust authentication mechanisms including multi-factor authentication (MFA), which adds critical security layers by requiring additional verification factors.

Password handling requires using purpose-built algorithms like bcrypt, Argon2, or PBKDF2 that incorporate salting and multiple iterations to defend against rainbow table and brute-force attacks. Authorization requires carefully designed role-based access control (RBAC) or attribute-based access control (ABAC) systems following OWASP access control principles. Every request must be validated at multiple layers—never trust client-side checks alone.

Session management must generate cryptographically secure session identifiers with sufficient entropy, implement appropriate timeouts, transmit tokens over encrypted connections only, and set appropriate cookie flags.

Injection attacks, including SQL injection, command injection, and cross-site scripting (XSS), consistently appear in the OWASP Top 10 and represent some of the most exploited vulnerabilities. Input validation must occur on the server side following OWASP principles. Implement allowlist validation rather than blocklist approaches, and use parameterized queries or prepared statements for all database operations to completely eliminate SQL injection vulnerabilities.

Cross-site scripting prevention requires proper output encoding based on context, as detailed in OWASP output encoding guidelines. Modern frameworks provide automatic encoding by default, but developers must remain vigilant when working with raw HTML rendering. Avoid invoking system commands altogether when possible, and if necessary, use APIs and libraries rather than shell commands.

File upload functionality requires validating file types based on content inspection, enforcing size limits, storing files outside the web root with restricted permissions, and generating unique filenames to prevent path traversal attacks.

Protecting sensitive data both at rest and in transit addresses the OWASP Top 10 category of cryptographic failures. Always use HTTPS for all communications following OWASP communication security recommendations. Configure TLS properly by disabling obsolete protocols, using strong cipher suites, and implementing HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS).

Use industry-standard encryption algorithms like AES-256 for symmetric encryption, and never implement custom cryptographic algorithms. Store keys separately from encrypted data, use hardware security modules (HSMs) or key management services for critical keys, and ensure keys are never hardcoded in source code.

Minimize data collection—information not collected cannot be stolen. Never log sensitive information like passwords, session tokens, or credit card numbers. Implement structured logging and protect log files with appropriate access controls.

The OWASP Top 10 includes vulnerable and outdated components as a critical security risk, recognizing that supply chain vulnerabilities represent major attack vectors. Regularly audit dependencies using tools like OWASP Dependency-Check, Snyk, or GitHub's Dependabot. Maintain an inventory of all dependencies, including transitive dependencies, and keep them updated with the latest security patches.

Evaluate dependencies before incorporating them into projects, considering maintenance status, community support, security track record, and actual necessity. Use package lock files to ensure consistent builds and detect tampering, and consider using private package repositories for internal packages and approved external dependencies.

Establishing secure development practices creates an environment where security is considered at every stage. Security training for development teams should focus on OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities and secure coding practices. Code review processes must incorporate security considerations using OWASP secure coding checklists covering authentication, authorization, input validation, output encoding, and cryptography.

Integrate static application security testing (SAST) tools into development workflows and CI/CD pipelines to catch vulnerabilities early, helping identify OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities during development. Dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools analyze running applications to identify runtime vulnerabilities. Combining SAST and DAST provides comprehensive coverage across the development lifecycle.

Threat modeling identifies potential security risks early in the design phase, addressing the OWASP Top 10 category of insecure design. Error handling must balance providing useful information with preventing information disclosure—error messages displayed to users should be generic, avoiding technical details.