Four Ways to Minimize Exposure from SQL Injection

The average personal site owner has no idea of what it feels like to come under attack. In fact, web criminals tend to stay away from hacking projects that serve little benefit to them. That does not mean that the sites of those owners are safe because they are probably more vulnerable than most. One of the most probable and dangerous threats your site may be susceptible to is an inference attack, more commonly referred to as the dreaded SQL injection. With this particular attack, the hacker typically inserts SQL code into a web form to either change or access critical information residing on a back-end database. It has a become a significant problem for dynamic websites as successful execution could provide an attacker with access to an entire database or more. This attack is very real and has directly aided in the exploitation of some of the most well known sites on the internet.
Viable SQL Injection Prevention Methods
To help keep you protected, we have listed four proven methods to enhance your website’s security against SQL injection.
1.) Make sure your forms and other web applications are designed with up to date, secure, compliant code. Also keep in mind that the web forms on your site should not accept user input to SQL queries without being thoroughly tested and challenged for security purposes. You can start by reducing the number and types of characters that can be accepted by a form. Do not leave yourself open to exposure like so many other website owners who do not have anything in place to prevent malicious or unexpected input. If a hacker enters SQL commands rather than the expected username and password, those commands could be executed and lead to a lot of trouble for your vulnerable system.
2.) To ensure better protection against SQL injection, you should avoid dynamic queries where ever possible. These queries are placed over the internet in plaintext, which means they are likely exposing sensitive information such as login IDs, passwords and other confidential details. Because of the potential security risk, some experts recommend not using dynamic queries at all.
3.) Take advantage of data encryption technology. If your site involves the sharing of sensitive data such as credit card numbers, social security numbers or bank account details, this information should be protected with an encryption protocol like SSL or TSL. If a hacker is able to breach security, the information they capture will be rendered useless since encryption ensures that they cannot read it.
4.) Keep your systems up to date. Security is a full time job these days but fortunately, most software vendors patch the bugs and vulnerabilities in their products as soon as they become known. You can ensure better protection against SQL injection by making sure your SQL database and operating systems are regularly patched an updated. If you do not have your own server, these are tasks you need to make sure are being handled by your web hosting provider.