Over the past decade, millions of businesses have embraced web applications as an inexpensive way to build relationships and transactions with prospects and customers. But while they provide the opportunity for greater customer insight and efficiency, web applications also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by cybercriminals. One of the most common and devastating of these is a web attack.
A web attack is one type of cyberattack where the attacker is a fake to access sensitive information or engage in malicious acts, such as stealing credit card numbers and other personal information. Common types of web-based attacks include Structured Query Language injection (SQLi) and cross-site scripting (XSS), and attacks on file uploads.
In an SQLi attack hackers enter customized Structured Query Language commands into a web application or website field to steal private data stored on the database server backend. In an XSS attack, hackers inject malicious code into a web app or website, which is then executed by the victim’s browser with no verification or encoding. The attack can take online data room for business over the user’s session, display unauthorised images or words or redirect users to a phishing website.
The best way to guard against an attack on your website is to run regular vulnerability scans and apply patches to your website as well as its web servers and any underlying databases. It is also an ideal idea to establish an incident response plan to ensure that in the event of an attack it can be quickly detected and dealt with. Also, be sure to are aware of ways to spot an attack on your website by observing warning indicators such as slowdowns in the network or intermittent shutdowns of websites.