Boost Customer Satisfaction By Maintaining Web Security

There are many elements on the internet, who would like nothing more than to deface your website and place inappropriate content on it.

If a single one of those individuals (competitors or otherwise) has the resources, they can possibly take over your website and chase away customers.

Sometimes these individuals are your competitors but most of the times, they are just hackers trying to make a bit of money in the process.

Being a victim to one of these attacks could leave your brand name tarnished.

How Do Hackers Do It?

There is no one way to do it. In fact, there are hundreds of different tools and strategies hackers use to gain control of your website.

From security lapses in the operating system to unprotected web applications and even server security flaws, anything can be potentially used to gain access to your website. Regardless of the strategies, you should have adequate security protocols in place to protect your website.

Averting Website Defacement With Security

To prevent defacement, you will need to make sure that your data is adequately secured across your servers. Especially when looking for hosting provider, make sure that you keep security on top of the checklist. Don’t forget to inquire about degree of protection offered against website defacement.

At the same time, if you host a private server, consider using additional security measures. You can also go for co-location hosting options to avoid maintaining your own sever warehouse.

Avoiding Defacement With Securer Applications

If you avoid giving attention to your web application security, your servers are left vulnerable to exploitation. This is the reason why you should only use applications that are verified for security. You may also consider having your web applications designed by a team of professionals who are aware of your specific security needs.

Web Security and Customer Satisfaction

Web security is directly proportional to customer satisfaction. Only when customers are aware that your website implements top-notch security measures will they buy from you.

On the other hand, even in cases where a single security mishap surfaces, you may lose potential customers. The loss in revenue may take years to cover; not to mention the PR disaster you will need to fix.

Why not act proactively and keep your website and web applications protected? Give us a call to find out how our website security testing services boost customer satisfaction and interest in your business.

Why Choose Lean Security For Your Web Security Testing Needs?

At Lean Security, we are dedicated to protecting you, your business and your clients from hacks and data breaches. We provide proactive managed IT security solutions that are reliable, effective and hands down the best in the market.

According to a research study conducted by Kasperky, Australia accounted for 10% of attacked users and ranked 4th on the list followed by New Zealand and Brazil.

Even though hacks and attacks have decreased in number, thanks to business owners realising the importance of web application security, the threat remains.

To ensure that you stay on top of your game without having to worry about security, it is imperative that you conduct penetration tests, web vulnerability scans, and security testing on a regular basis. Doing so will not just help you surface the vulnerabilities in your web systems but it will also boost customer satisfaction and retention.

Particularly if you operate an ecommerce store, or provide a service that requires customers to pay online, you should consider beefing up security for your website and applications.

At Lean Security, we provide penetration testing and conduct rigorous web vulnerability scans, ensuring no gaps are left for hackers to come through. Our services are also aimed at highlighting the weaknesses of your IT infrastructure and applications so that you keep improving.

Here are a few more reasons why you should choose our services:

Completely Managed Services

We offer completely managed penetration testing services and vulnerability scanning services. Here is what’s in it for you:

· No need to hire additional IT technicians; we have all the professionals you need.

· You don’t need to install any software or hardware.

· Our services are priced around a pay-as-you-go model. This means you can start off small and eventually scale our services along as your business grows.

The Best In Tech

Our penetration testing technicians use modern techniques and open source tools that are guaranteed to give you the best results. Here are a few tools we use:

· Burp Suite – a highly reliable platforms to test application security.

· Metasploit – the leading penetration testing software in the market.

· Nessus Vulnerability Scanner – the most advanced and widely deployed vulnerability scanner.

· Netsparker – a false positive web security scanner

·  Qualys Vulnerability Scanner – Qualys provides cloud security for medium to large scale businesses.

·  SQLMap – Automatic SQL injection and database takeover tool

With online threats constantly evolving and breaches becoming more technical, it is important to invest in penetration testing service and web security to safeguard your business, boost profits and expand to new markets!

Call us at +61 (0) 2 8231 6635 or drop an email at info@leansecurity.com.au to learn more about our services.

Simple Tips For Security Testing Web Applications

Web applications offer a wide range of benefits for developers. One of the best parts about web applications is that they don’t need to be installed, therefore, there is no burden regarding patches or updates on users.

However, it goes without saying that native applications give developers tighter control over user experience, and are far simpler to secure.

This is also the reason why hybrid applications that combine the pros of both web and native applications are growing in popularity.

If you maintain an  ecommerce website, or one that requires users to fill out forms with personal information, you should take measures to ensure that the data doesn’t fall in the wrong hands.

To be effective at this, you need to take a different approach with application testing.

Here are a few simple tips that will allow you to make your web application securer:

Get In The Attacker’s Shoes

Try to make your way into the shoes of the attacker. Just like you try to become the user when testing web applications for security, it is time to become the attacker. It is quite possible that the attacker will try to make his way through the least secure path.

Begin with the common attack scenarios and techniques. Don’t forget that the attacker will try everything to gain access. Therefore, test out everything.

Application Assessment

Assess your application just like an attacker. What technologies does your application use? What are the degrees of access given to users? How is the data stored? More importantly, what type of data is stored?

Safe Passwords

The simplest way an attacker will gain access to your application controls is through password cracking. Is there any chance of a user guessing your password and username? Does your web application enforce stronger passwords? Don’t forget that passwords need to be encrypted at all times.

SQL Injections

Do you think attackers can input harmful SQL statements into text fields and gain access to your database? At times, they are also able to make it into your database through error codes in the browser. If you don’t take the right precautions, they can download, modify or even delete key data.

At Lean Security, we help clients boost their web application security through modern techniques and systems. We also offer comprehensive penetration testing services to uncover all vulnerabilities in your websites and suggest remedial measures. Get in touch with us to learn more about our services.

How Important Is Penetration Testing?

According to leading insurance company, Lloyd’s Australia was vulnerable to a $16 billion cyber attack risk last year. While many companies averted the risk, the need to keep developing even better security systems is ever growing.

This is why company owners are constantly investing in vulnerability scans and penetration tests to ensure they can deal with any sort of attack.

Penetration testing works by examining the risks web application, servers and networks are exposed to. It exploits the threats, allowing developers to create security measures or even better controls that work around those threats. The testing is typically stopped when the objective is achieved.

In the modern online environment, companies need to conduct rigorous web application penetration testing due to the following reasons:

· To make sure effective controls have been implemented

· To identify the weaknesses in web applications, hardware and management to ultimately develop better controls

· To test applications that are often breached or attacked

· To discover vulnerabilities, bugs and risks caused by updates or patches

If websites are attacked through social engineering, this circumvents, the stringent security protocols and highlights least protected assets. Perhaps the worst possible situation is to have a risky vulnerability within the infrastructure and not be aware of it while the attackers keep stealing information.

As the leading penetration testing service in Australia, we have hundreds of cases where the attackers went undetected for months before the clients reached out to us.

Apart from highlighting potential risks within web applications and websites, penetration testing also helps examine an organisation’s ability to avert those risks. At the same time, business owners should also focus on protecting themselves from external risks along with identifying compromised individuals within their organisations. Internal testing should also include controls between different security zones to make sure they are appropriately configured.

As experts in the field, we advise you to conduct regular penetration tests. Doing so will protect you against recent threats. The frequency should be based on the type of testing conducted and the test targets. There are variety of standards like the PCI DSS that recommend preferable intervals for different scan types.

Whether you are deploying new infrastructure or need to test web application security, our penetration testing services can help. Get in touch with us to learn more about our web application security services and how we help hundreds of companies safeguard themselves and their customers.

Challenges Faced by Automated Application Security Testing Tools

With the growing number of online security threats and evolving nature of data breaches, the challenges involved in maintaining website security parameters keep advancing as well. For instance, if you download, run and install a product from a website and expect to get a report highlighting its vulnerabilities, you are probably wrong.

The right automated application security testing tools should be able to let you play around with the configurations so that you can adjust them for your website.

Here are some of the common challenges faced by application security testing tools:

Script Parsing

Flash, XML and JavaScript, all have come a long way since they were first introduced. They continue to become complicated, presenting a set of unique challenges when it comes to testing them for security.

Code isn’t as simple anymore. It now contains conditional behavior based on user preferences, website environments, dynamic links, etc. The download code is likely to change frequently depending on the function performed and the order of those functions as well.

Logical Flow

There are many websites that still require users to navigate in a certain order before enabling them to use a function. The right example would be the checkout page across most ecommerce websites.

Many websites still rely on crawlers that fetch a page, identify links and fetch them without the idea of actually filling a cart before checking out. These websites bring a set of unique challenges when it comes to testing them for security.

Sessions State Management

Perhaps some of the most complicated problems are faced in session state management. Websites use cookies and different tracking mechanisms to track user identity and activity. For vendors, this can be quite difficult considering that developers implement session tracking systems in their own way.

One common problem automated application security testing tools face is staying logged onto the website. When an attack is sent against application parameters it may end up logging out the tool. Another problem is when multiple requests for sharing a session token are sent simultaneously. They often invalidate themselves and you need to send them manually. The drawback of sending one request at a time takes up a lot of effort and might not be practical in some cases.

As the leading web application security and penetration testing service provider in Australia, we understand all of these challenges and work our way around them proactively.

Over the past years, we have helped countless number of clients stay vigilant, and safeguarded them from hacks and breaches. Get in touch with us to discuss your needs and find out how we can help.