With all your focus on 3rd party risk, are you giving enough thought to your website supply chain? Do you know if your 3rd party digital supply chain is putting you at risk? We can almost guarantee it is. If client-side web application security is left unaddressed, the 3rd party vendors you use to enhance your site’s functionality can be used as an attack vector. Cybercriminals can leverage this pathway to inject malicious code into browser sessions to steal your client’s most personal data. This too-long forgotten risk is enough to cost you millions of dollars in response costs, fines, and judgments. It is a material risk that you need to immediately assess and most likely need to get working to mitigate.
In the first quarter of 2022 alone, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of client-side attacks with a high-profile attack on Segway being a prime example. Client-side web application security is vital to:
- Prevent client-side attacks like digital skimming, formjacking, Magecart, and more
- Mitigate a potentially material risk to your organization
- Ensure compliance with a number of data privacy and security programs
But not all client-side web application security is created equal. In order to eliminate website data breaches, prevent compliance violations, and do so without adding additional burden to your security operations, you need to implement prevention-first, client-side web app security. Let’s explore the benefits.
1. Prevention-First, Client-side Web Application Security Stops Threats in Real-Time 24/7
The value of detect-and-alert security solutions is waning. Your teams are drowning in alerts from across your ecosystem and the last thing you need is to add more stress on security operations. Source Defense was founded with an eye toward giving security a solution to a major problem without creating more problems downstream. The problem with detect-and-alert solutions is that they don’t prevent attacks from occurring and they add an unnecessary burden to your already overburdened security teams.
Instead of waiting until it’s already too late to take action, Source Defense works around the clock to stop attacks and client-side threats before they can affect your organization. Empowered with prevention-first, client-side web application security, you can protect your web applications from online attacks originating from:
- Your website’s own code (1st party code)
- Code from dozens of 3rd, 4th and nth parties
- Vulnerabilities introduced by open-source libraries
2. Addressing Client-Side Security Without Adding Burden on Your Already Overburdened Teams
With 69% of cybersecurity teams understaffed, it’s likely that your entire InfoSec team is burnt out. Add in the 11,000+ alerts they receive on a daily basis and the overwhelm is well… overwhelming. The Source Defense Client-Side Web Application Security Platform stops threats in their tracks without adding burden to your teams. This means there are no additional alerts being showered upon your security staff.
Source Defense simplifies and streamlines client-side security, dramatically reduces time spent drudging through meaningless alerts and provides continuous protection from the most challenging threat: client-side attacks. Now, your InfoSec team can spend more time on value-added tasks rather than spending hours responding to potential (yet, probably not dire) alerts.
3. Digital Marketing Leaders Can Safely Use 3rd Party Vendors without Fear of a Client-Side Attack
When it comes to optimizing a company’s website, digital marketing leaders are usually the decision-makers, using 3rd party vendors to implement contact forms and other widgets and functionalities to their sites. Thus, it’s understandable why marketing teams wouldn’t want to give up these easily integrated features. However, digital marketing leaders typically have to question whether the reward outweighs the risk. A major issue arises when digital marketing leaders implement seemingly harmless 3rd party plug-ins without conferring with the InfoSec team — there is no one to vet the read/write permissions of the JavaScript. What if cybercriminals can hack their way into the 3rd party’s JavaScript to steal PII, PHI, or credit card data? By the time they find out, it will be too late.
With prevention-first, client-side web application security, these digital marketing leaders gain the freedom to implement new web applications from outside parties to achieve their ideal user experience without having to bother their IT team. Source Defense leverages a fully automated and machine-learning set of policies that control the access and permissions of all 3rd party tools operating on a website. This means that any 3rd party vendor you’d like to implement into your site is continuously being monitored and vetted. So when a cybercriminal tries to sneak their way into 3rd party code, Source Defense automatically prevents it from gaining access to the code.
Now, marketing leaders don’t have to choose between security and enhanced functionality — they simply get the best of both worlds.
4. InfoSec Teams are Empowered to Preserve the End-User Experience
Client-side web application security eliminates unnecessary latency and protects the customer journey. This is highly important considering just about 90% of online users will leave a website and never return after a bad user experience. Given the shared desire to protect the users on their website while also delivering an exceptional user experience, InfoSec and marketing teams need to work together to ensure the site is safe, functional, and user-friendly.
When it comes to client-side security, the right technology will protect the site without compromising functionality or design. All of the protection and mechanisms to prevent attacks will occur behind the scenes. This way, website users will have no interruptions or inconsistencies during their time on your site.
Without affecting the efficiency or efficacy of the web application, prevention-first, client-side web application security protects the user and:
- Eliminates the risk of a data breach
- Ensures the user experience is consistent and delightful
Final Thoughts
Prevention-first, client-side web application security isn’t a luxury or a fad, it’s critical to keeping your site, business, and clients protected from a data breach. Not to mention, client-side security also:
- Alleviates the burden on your teams
- Mitigates 3rd party risk
- Stops client-side attacks from affecting your site
So what are you waiting for? Waiting to act is simply waiting to be attacked. Request a demo of the Source Defense platform and get a personalized threat analysis for your business.
PCI DSS 4.0 makes client-side security a priority.
Source Defense delivers a solution for 6.4.3 and 11.6.1 without adding a burden to your security teams.
