With the increased dependency of our lives on the internet and mobile apps, application security is important, now more than ever. 

The importance of applications in our lives cannot be overemphasized. We depend on them for everything from dating to banking and from bookkeeping to private messaging. 

To give you an idea of just how essential applications are in our lives, 105 billion applications were downloaded in 2018. The number has increased by more than 25 percent over the last two years.

That means one thing, applications are here to stay for quite a bit of time. And if they do have to be a part of our life, they better be secure.

You cannot make anything secure unless you don’t know what exactly you are securing it against. For that matter, we’ll have a look at some of the common security threats applications are facing. Then we’ll see how they can be mitigated.

Major Application Security Threats 

There are more application threats than can be covered in any blog post of reasonable dimensions. We’ve picked the most common threats to give you an idea of what you need to steer clear of as a developer or a user.

Brute Force Hacking 

This is the most primitive and perhaps the rawest method of hacking into a secure environment. As the name suggests, these attacks rely on the use of force to break into an application. 

The way this is done is simple. A hacker programs a computer to try all possible combinations of letters, symbols, and numerals to guess a password. 

Definitely, that takes the computer quite a bit of time to crack the password but given enough time it can do that every single time. 

As of now, there are no active defenses to stop or prevent such an attack. There are some measures that can minimize the possibility. 

How to Avoid Brute Force Hacking?

There are two things that can secure an application against a brute force attack: 

• The use of a strong password that has a long combination of letters, numbers, and symbols in it. 
• Limiting the number of login attempts allowed from an IP address within a certain period of time.

Injection Hacking

Another common form of attacks on applications is injection attacks. The target of such attacks is mostly the web-based applications that run on data provided by the user. 

The way these attacks work is by “injecting” data into the application that compromises the security of the system from within.

The most common types of injection hacking attacks include cross-site scripting, code injection, and SQL injection attacks.

Rubutun Tsallaka-Tsallaka 

These are the attacks where the attackers inject malicious scripts into a trusted application. This causes the application to execute these scripts and behave in a way that exposes sensitive information about the users. 

Code Injection Attacks 

In these attacks, the hackers compromise the application by injecting malicious code into it. When executed, these codes can prevent the application from properly working.

SQL allurar 

These attacks involve injecting the application with malicious SQL codes. This makes it possible for the hackers to remotely control the application and access the sensitive data in its databases.

How to Prevent Injection Hacking? 

Unlike brute force hacking, injection hacking can be prevented. Here are some precautionary measures that can secure applications against such attacks:

• Enforce strict access criteria for getting into the app.
• Put in place strong screening measures for all the data entered by the users into the app.

Hare-haren Malware 

Malware is probably the single largest threat not only to aikace-aikacen tsaro but to the computer systems as a whole.

This is mainly because of the sheer amount of new malware coming to the market every year. It is estimated that as many as 317 million new computer viruses and malware were created in 2018 alone.

The effects of malware differ from one to another but once they have infected an application they can: 

• Allow the cybercriminals to make illegal backdoors into the application. 
• Give unauthorized access to the application.
• Result in massive data breaches and privacy compromise. 

How to Prevent Malware Attacks

As new malware is coming to the scene every day, there cannot be a singular solution to this problem. However, application security against malware can be improved by: 

• Putting strong antivirus and firewalls in place.
• Releasing security patches for the application as and when a new threat is revealed. 
• Scanning the app for vulnerabilities and fixing them.

While all these measures are to secure applications against specific attacks, there are some things that need to be made a part of the app development process in order to make the apps safer.

Making the Development Environment Secure 

It goes without saying that it is of paramount importance for the developers to make the applications secure. However, just like it is very difficult to proofread what you have written, it is an ego-shattering thing to enforce application security measures. 

A recent study has shown that as much as 83% of developers globally release their apps without implementing proper security measures.

Here are some things that every developer needs to do to ensure application security: 

• Applications must be developed in accordance with the security standards of the industry leaders and regulators. 
• Updates and patches must regularly be released to cope with the ever-lurking threat of malware.
• All the open-source components of the application must be regulated and made at par with the application security standards being followed.

However, it is not just up to the developers to ensure application security. Application users also need to play their part to make sure that the applications they use and the data they have are safe. The things that the users can do include:

• The use of long and mixed passwords that are hard to guess even for a computer. 
• Install a firewall on their devices.
• Don’t download any application from an untrusted source.
• Keep their credentials safe.