What Is Web Attack and How Does It Affect Your Business?
Over the past decade, millions of businesses and organizations have embraced the Web as a cost-effective way to communicate with customers as well as conduct business. This includes the use of web-based applications that store and collect data such as customer data submitted via content management systems shopping carts inquiries or submit forms and login fields.
These applications are often accessed via the Internet and can be hacked to exploit weaknesses in the application or its infrastructure. SQL injection attacks, which exploit weaknesses in databases, could compromise databases that contain sensitive data. Attackers can use the foothold they gain by breaching your Web application to identify other systems that are more vulnerable within your network.
Other popular Web attacks include Cross Site Scripting attacks (XSS) which exploit flaws in the web server to inject malicious code into web pages, and it executes as an infected code in the victim’s browser. This allows attackers to access confidential information or redirect users to phishing websites. XSS attacks are most common on blogs, message boards and web forums.
Hackers band together to overwhelm a website by sending more requests than the website can handle. This can cause a website’s performance to suffer, or even shut down completely. This affects the ability to handle requests, and renders it unusable to everyone. DDoS attacks can be devastating for small-scale businesses, such as local bakeries or restaurants that depend on their websites to run.
