- Use HTTPS
- Keep software up-to-date
- Conduct regular security audits
- Limit access to sensitive information
- Use a firewall
- Enhance security with AWS services
- Educate your employees
- Have an incident response plan
- Use third-party vulnerability scanning
- Need assistance?
As the number of online transactions and the amount of sensitive information exchanged on the internet continues to grow, the need for robust website security becomes increasingly important. This is especially true for companies that operate public-facing websites. These sites are often prime targets for attackers looking to steal personal information or disrupt business operations.
To help protect your company and its customers, here are some best practices to follow:
Use HTTPS
Step one to securing your public-facing website is ensuring man-in-the-middle attacks are mitigated by using HTTPS. It encrypts the data that is sent between a user’s browser and your website, making it much more difficult for attackers to intercept and steal sensitive information.
Using AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) simplifies the process of provisioning and managing SSL/TLS certificates for your websites. With ACM, you can request public certificates at no additional cost, and seamlessly integrate them with AWS services like Amazon CloudFront and Application Load Balancers (ALB). This automated certificate renewal and deployment workflow reduces manual tasks, helping ensure encrypted connections remain valid and up-to-date.
Keep software up-to-date
Regularly updating your website’s software, including the operating system, web server, and any plugins or add-ons, is crucial for patching known vulnerabilities.
Conduct regular security audits
Regularly reviewing and assessing your website’s security posture can help you identify and address potential vulnerabilities before they are exploited.
Limit access to sensitive information
Only give access to sensitive information to the minimum number of individuals who need it, and ensure that those individuals understand their responsibility for protecting the data.
Use a firewall
Firewalls act as a barrier between your website and the internet, blocking malicious traffic from reaching your site. Modern firewalls often provide advanced inspection technologies suitable for cloud-based environments. For AWS workloads, AWS WAF is a managed web application firewall that helps protect your applications by filtering and monitoring traffic based on customizable rules. You can also leverage managed rule sets that cover common vulnerabilities like SQL injection or cross-site scripting.
Enhance security with AWS services
Amazon GuardDuty
Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors your AWS accounts and workloads for malicious activity. It analyzes data from multiple sources such as AWS CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs, automatically alerting you to suspicious or unauthorized behavior.
Log review and monitoring
Logs are critical for identifying patterns of malicious access, bot scraping, or exploit attempts. In AWS, you might gather logs from:
- AWS WAF Logs for detailed insights into rule matches and blocked requests.
- Amazon CloudFront Logs (documentation) for traffic distribution and edge-level access details.
- Load Balancer Logs (documentation) for understanding client connections, request paths, and error rates.
- Web Server Logs stored in AWS CloudWatch Logs or on your instances for full visibility into request details and error messages.
Regularly reviewing these logs helps detect unusual spikes, repeated intrusion attempts, or scraping patterns that might indicate an attack in progress.
Educate your employees
Inform and train employees on the importance of website security, along with their role in protecting the company’s and customers’ information. Many breaches happen due to phishing or social engineering attempts, so regular awareness training is vital.
Have an incident response plan
Develop a plan outlining the steps to be taken in the event of a security incident. This plan should include procedures for identifying and containing a security incident, as well as methods for restoring services and data.
Use third-party vulnerability scanning
Services like Qualys, Nessus, or OpenVAS offer automated vulnerability scanners that can discover potential issues in your website and infrastructure. These tools can be integrated with your CI/CD pipeline or used for periodic scans to detect newly introduced vulnerabilities.
Need assistance?
Securing a public-facing website in an evolving threat landscape requires ongoing effort and expertise. If you need help implementing any of these best practices and AWS services for your infrastructure, feel free to reach out to Jon Price for guidance and consulting support.