Best Practices

Suggested security practices

Verify that your app meets these requirements for managing your API Keys

Client ID & Client secret should not be hard coded in the codebase.
API calls requiring your Bearer Token should never be initiated from a client (browser/mobile app). It should be done from the backend/server part of the application
Client ID & Client secret should be stored in environmental variables or secrets manager.

Ensure a strong password policy is enforced e.g. minimum of 8 alphanumeric characters, an upper case, a special character
Input validation is in place during login
Implement controls against brute-force - account lockouts, second-factor authentication and so on.
Store database credentials securely using secrets manager preferably.

Ensure all app session cookies have the following attributes set
Secure
HTTP only
Upon the user logging out, the user’s session must be terminated server-side, and any client-side session tokens should be cleared and not cached on the user’s machine
Any session tokens must be stored within session cookies and transported only within HTTP cookie headers

Session timeouts should be configured on the server
Session duration should be limited to a maximum of 10 hours, after which the user must be required to authenticate again
Implement an idle session timeout
Deny concurrent sessions
Ensure session tokens are generated using a Random Number Generator (RNG) cryptographic provider so it cannot be easily predictable.

A clearly accessible button must exist which allows users to log out of the application, which in turn ends the session on the server
Application sessions must be invalidated at the server-side
Log out function must effectively destroy all session tokens and render them useless.

Securely exchange encryption keys - Ensure key exchanges are performed over a secure channel (TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3)
Limit the use and storage of sensitive data - Ensure sensitive data are not unnecessarily transported and stored. Where possible use abstract identifiers to reduce data exposure risk.
Encryption of sensitive data at rest

Ensure to log all privileged changes
Log all user (customer) and administrative activities
Log all access to sensitive data
When encountered with an unhandled exception, display generic messages to the end-user. Do not reveal details about the internal state of your application eg. database errors, app server errors etc
Store logs securely and follow international standards for log retention

All input (user and service) must be validated only on the server-side in addition to any client-side validation to permit only the characters required and field length necessary
All output back should be encoded
With proper input validation and output encoding, applications should not be susceptible to cross-site scripting, either stored or reflected. This includes all headers, cookies, query strings, form fields and hidden fields
Create a whitelist of acceptable characters to be used by the application
Ensure proper validation is done for files that are uploaded
Use parameterized SQL queries

Ensure caching has been disabled on all SSL pages and all pages that contain sensitive data by using value no-cache and no-store instead of private in the Cache-Control header
All OS, web server and app server security patches are up to date at this time, and new patches are applied in a commercially reasonable time frame after they are made available by the hardware and software vendors
SSL must be configured to support only TLS version 1.2 or higher.
HTTPS is enforced on all pages and endpoints of your application
The app web server must be configured to disable the TRACE and other HTTP methods if not being used

Ensure your application is secured against this non-exhaustive list

Last updated 2 years ago