Website Security Tests Protect against Application Vulnerabilities ?

Small and medium-sized enterprises can protect websites against application vulnerabilities with simple, easy-to-use, and affordable service. Firewall, Intrusion prevention and Detection System (IDS/IPS) are not enough to protect your Website against today’s application vulnerabilities.

Website owners are vulnerable to unwanted intrusions by malicious hackers and other harmful codes. If a website’s server and applications are not protected from security vulnerabilities, identities, credit card information, and billions of dollars are at risk.

Many companies rely on a firewall to protect their websites from security breaches. Unfortunately, firewalls do not provide enough protection.

According to the Gartner Group, “97% of the over 300 web sites audited were found vulnerable to web application attack,” and “75% of the cyber attacks today are at the application level.”

Firewalls, IDS, IPS Are Not Enough

Attackers are well-aware of the valuable information accessible through Web applications, and their attempts to get at it are often unwittingly assisted by several important factors. Conscientious organizations carefully protect their perimeters with intrusion detection systems and firewalls, but these firewalls must keep ports 80 and 443 (SSL) open to conduct online business. These ports represent open doors to attackers, who have figured out thousands of ways to penetrate Web applications.

The standard security measures for protecting network traffic, network firewalls and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), do not offer a solution to application level threats. Network firewalls are designed to secure the internal network perimeter, leaving organizations vulnerable to various application attacks.

Intrusion Prevention and Detection Systems (IDS/IPS) do not provide thorough analysis of packet contents. Applications without an added layer of protection increase the risk of harmful attacks and extreme vulnerabilities.

Web application vulnerability assessment

From the information above it’s clear that most e-commerce websites are wide open to attack and easy victims when targeted. While the security posture of some industries is stronger than others, the difference is insignificant when it comes to actually preventing a website compromise because intruders need only to exploit a single vulnerability.

A web application scanner, which protects applications and servers from hackers, must provide an automated security service that searches for software vulnerabilities within web applications.

A web application scanner should crawl the entire website, analyze in-depth each & every file, and display the entire website structure. The scanner has to perform an automatic audit for common security vulnerabilities while launching a series of simulated web attacks.

Web Security Seal and free trial should be available.

Most systems are vulnerable to thousands of known risk factors. A web application vulnerability Assessment should execute continuous dynamic tests combined with simulation web-application attacks during the scanning process.

The web application scanner must have the ability to validate security breaches and risks against a continually updated service database provides real-time vital business solutions. A website security test should identify the security vulnerabilities and recommend the optimally matched solution. The fix or workaround solution should be identified and implemented when you need it - not after it's too late.

Once the vulnerability scan is completed, the vulnerability check has to deliver an executive summary report to management and a detailed report to the technical teams. Both reports should list the vulnerabilities found along with the severity levels of each vulnerability.

It is recommended that the detailed report include an in-depth technical explanation of each vulnerability as well as appropriated recommendations and the website security test will conduct subsequent vulnerability scans and generate trend analysis reports that allow the customer to compare tests and track progress.

Secure Your Business’s Website to Make Conversions

When you consider that recent studies of the past few years suggest that 84% of polled Internet shoppers don’t think that online retailers are putting enough effort into protecting customers (Forrester Research, Inc),

75% of customers left sites because they didn’t feel safe (Internet Retailer),

90% would have completed sales if they saw security logos on the website (Internet Retailer)

70% of online shoppers will not purchase from websites without viewing security seals or logos, the importance of website security should be glaringly obvious

But it’s not just a matter of simply protecting the data that your online business collects. It’s also about making your customers feel like they’re having a safe shopping experience and convincing them that you’re doing all that you can to protect them

For small and medium ecommerce businesses with less brand awareness, the level of consumer security concern is naturally higher, the range of conversion improvement achieved among ecommerce websites with average gains between 5 percent to 10 percent. An article by Internet Retailer (March 2006 issue)

So now that we know that the extra security might as well stand for increase confidence and sales, what are you currently doing to ensure that your customers are getting the right security signals from you?

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