Security controls for external facing applications

Security controls for external facing applications

Securing access controls for an enterprise application that serves external customers involves a multi-layered approach to ensure that only authorized users can access the application and its data. Here are the key steps to follow:

1. Risk Assessment and Requirements Gathering:

• Identify Assets and Data: Determine what data and resources need protection (e.g., customer data, financial transactions, servers, infrastructure).
• Assess Risks: Identify potential threats and vulnerabilities related to external access (e.g., data breaches, unauthorized access, denial of service).
• Compliance Requirements: Ensure that the application complies with relevant regulations (e.g., PCI DSS, GDPR, HIPAA) and industry standards.

2. Implement Strong Authentication Mechanisms:

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Enforce MFA for all users to add an extra layer of security beyond just passwords.
• Password Policies: Implement strong password requirements (complexity, expiration, no reuse) and encourage the use of password managers.
• Single Sign-On (SSO): Use SSO to reduce the need for multiple logins, while ensuring secure access through a centralized identity provider.

3. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC):

• Define Roles: Assign access rights based on user roles (e.g., customer, admin, support) to ensure users can only access what they need.
• Principle of Least Privilege: Grant the minimum necessary access rights to each user or role.
• Regular Review: Periodically review and update roles and permissions to ensure they align with current business needs.

4. Secure Access and Communication Channels:

• TLS/SSL Encryption: Use TLS/SSL to encrypt data in transit, ensuring that communication between the application and customers is secure.
• API Security: Secure APIs with OAuth, API keys, and rate limiting to prevent unauthorized access and abuse.
• Web Application Firewall (WAF): Deploy a WAF to protect against common web attacks like SQL injection, XSS, and DDoS.
• DDoS protection: Identify and block/control volumetric distributed denial of service attack towards critical services.
• Firewalls: Control access to service by restricting access to services on limited ports and protocols.
• Network segmentation: Segregate and isolate services into closed groups to control access or limit blast radius of attacks.
• Resilience and failover: Implement Global load balancers (Smart DNS) and server load balancers to ensure availability and failover mechanisms.

5. Implement Identity and Access Management (IAM):

• Federated Identity: Implement identity federation to allow customers to use their existing credentials (e.g., Google, Facebook) securely.
• Identity Verification: Use identity proofing methods like SMS or email verification for customer account creation.
• Adaptive/Contextual Access: Implement conditional access policies that consider factors like device health, location, and behaviour to grant or deny access.

6. Monitor and Audit Access:

• Logging and Monitoring: Enable comprehensive logging of all access and authentication events. Monitor logs in real-time for suspicious activities.
• Auditing: Regularly audit access logs and IAM configurations to detect and address potential security issues.
• Incident Response: Develop and maintain an incident response plan for handling access-related security incidents.

7. Data Protection and Privacy:

• Data Encryption: Ensure sensitive data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
• Data Minimization: Only collect and store the data necessary for business operations, and anonymize (masking) or pseudonymize (tokenize) data where possible.
• Access Control for Data: Implement fine-grained access control to restrict access to sensitive data based on roles and business requirements.
• Backup: Define Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for the critical services and data and ensure regular backups are taken meeting RPO to an isolated environment and validate data integrity comparing hash codes.
• Restoration: Perform regular drills for restoration capability to meet security incidents. Check data integrity and service status with restored data

8. Secure Account Management:

• Account Lockout: Implement mechanisms to lock accounts after a certain number of failed login attempts to prevent brute-force attacks.
• Self-Service Account Recovery: Provide secure options for customers to recover their accounts (e.g., password reset via email/SMS) with strong identity verification.
• Deprovisioning: Implement procedures for deactivating or deleting customer accounts when they are no longer needed.

9. Regular Security Testing and Updates:

• Penetration Testing: Conduct regular penetration testing to identify and fix vulnerabilities in access controls.
• Security Patches: Ensure that all components of the application are up-to-date with the latest security patches.
• Vulnerability Scanning: Perform regular automated scans to detect and address security vulnerabilities.
• Red team exercise: White Hat or Black Hat hacking exercise to identify the possible control gaps and fix it by reporting to control owners.
• Controls and metrics: Define  metrics for critical security controls and check the performance of those with regular monitoring. Thresholds for metrics to be fine tuned for efficiency. Perform regular review of metrics to understand its relevance and applicability to the system or service and re-engineer it for enhancement.

10. Customer Education and Support:

• Security Awareness: Educate customers on best practices for securing their accounts, such as recognizing phishing attempts.
• Support Channels: Provide clear support channels for customers to report security concerns or incidents.

11. Compliance and Certification:

• Compliance Monitoring: Regularly review and update your access control mechanisms to ensure they remain compliant with legal and regulatory requirements.
• Certifications: Consider obtaining relevant security certifications (e.g., PCI DSS, ISO 27001, SOC 2) to demonstrate your commitment to security.

By following these steps, one can reduce unauthorized access, misuse of customer and organization data.

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