Web Security Auditing

Synonyms

Web penetration test; Web vulnerability assessment

Related Concepts

Penetration Testing; Web Application Security

Definition

A Web Security Audit is a process of checking if a Web architecture or object is vulnerable or if it is being hacked or exploited by an attacker.

Background

With the proliferation of Web architectures and applications, mostly developed with an eye for ready-to-market needs rather than security, the number of targets to attack is increasing dramatically. A superset of audit tasks, targeted to the Web space, is thus required.

Theory

A security audit can be performed at various levels. It can address high level aspects of security (process, policies, procedures) all the way down to the most technical details, the former being related to organizational aspects and the latter to architecture.

Web security audits can be performed on the following targets:

• 1. Web architecture. In this case, a security auditor evaluates the architecture diagram, including all...