It is a brand new year and a great time to ensure that we have the knowledge that will help us combat cyber threats. President Obama has declared that the “cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation” and that “America’s economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cybersecurity.” As Web developers, cyber security may seem foreign, uncreative, and boring to us, but since we are in contact with cyberspace quite frequently, it is always good practice to understand computer and network security. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, cyber security is big business.
"Cyber security is big business"
When we build sites or databases, security practices should already be in place. For instance, carefully check parameters passed to your SQL statements to prevent hijacking. PHP has already established a function called mysql_real_escape_string() that will prevent most attacks of this type. Many good developers already possess the knowledge of the “big 10″ computer languages (PHP, C#, AJAX, JavaScript, Perl, C, Ruby on Rails, Java, Python, and VB.Net), so why not take it a step further and learn more about cyber security. With this knowledge, developers will have a base for making cyber warfare applications.
LAN use and Computer Network Security have been added to my current Web Development/.Net degree program. From my bio you will see that I am currently a student of .Net Development. I am not for sure if all universities are doing this, but it is imperative to have a little background on systems security before building a site. Let’s say you are developing an e-commerce site for a customer, especially one that stores cookies. Unique signatures and passwords should be generated for the user instead of storing their username in the cookie. This addition will thwart hackers because oftentimes they are able to guess or forge the username. As mentioned before, the generation of a distinctive or unique signature in correlation to the stored login and password is wise compared to relying on the username alone to authenticate the request. So, delving more into the field of cyber security and increasing our understanding about the protection of networks, servers, and our applications will only strengthen our positions in the cyber community.
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