7 Proven Strategies to Accelerate Your Healthcare Web and Mobile Application Security
- SolvEdge
- May 12, 2022
- 4 mins read
This blog is a deep dive into some of the healthcare industry’s proven best practices that help maintain highest standards of web and mobile application security
From patient engagement platforms and care coordination solutions to holistic patient outreach solutions, building a healthcare application involves intensive processes including massive volumes of critical data exchange including structured and unstructured data. This blog is a deep dive into some of the healthcare industry’s proven best practices that help maintain highest standards of web and mobile application security. Read on.
1. Patient Data Collection
Analyze the Web/Mobile Application
It is essential that you use a spider to mine the data and identify any possible missing elements
Data leakage can be identified through server metafiles. For instance, DS Store, robots.txt, sitemap.xml
Also, identify the caches prominent engines to verify accessibility
Data leakage can also be prevented by verifying the webpage metadata and comments
Track Progress
Consistently check the application design framework
Verify the harnessed technologies
Evaluate the user roles
Decide on the points of data entry
Ensure that the client-side scripts as protected
Identify the multiple channels of delivery, including the mobile app, and web
Determine the Hosting Methodologies
Ensure that it facilitates simple and secure management of third-party content
Analyze the used ports and hostnames
Identify and evaluate the co-hosted applications
Verify all web services system
2. Effectively Manage Implementation
Ensure that it facilitates simple and secure management of third-party content
Evaluate administrative or application URLs that may be too common to be secure
Check for files that are unreferenced, old, or backups
Identify and evaluate all supported HTTP techniques and prevent the Cross-Site Tracing
Evaluate file extensions processing
Measure the impact of Rich Internet Application (RIA) cross-domain access
Analyze and monitor the secure HTTP headers in place
Track and monitor confidential data including login credentials and API keys involved in client-side script
3. Monitor the Privacy and Security of Data Exchange
Data Encryption Standards
Evaluate the key length, SSL, and used algorithms
Validate your digital certificates
Validate that HTTPS is used every time usernames or passwords are shared
Ensure the execution of HTTPS throughout the application
Ensure that HTTPS is in place for all session tokens’ delivery
Verify the implementation of HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
Verify HTML5 web messaging
Ensure that you use the Cross-origin Resource Sharing (CORS)
REST and Web Application Development
Analyze the implementation of REST
Cross-verify any potential issues with web services
4. Authentication Protocols
Identify the functionality of the application password
Double-check the quality of the passwords used
Confirm the functioning of ‘Remember me’ feature
Ensure that that recovery, reset and change password functionalities operate efficiently
Check the consistency of application authentication with other channels and shared authentication methods/SSO
Identify the functionality of the application password
Ensure that unauthorized third-parties cannot identify the users
Identify possible loopholes in authentication bypass
Check the defenses programmed against brute force attacks
Clearly define the functionalities of data encryption on credentialing channels
Check the HTTP cache management (including Expires, Max-age, and Pragma)
Ensure that the working order of user-accessible authentication history is in place
5. Check for Session Progress
Cross-check the tokens in cookies, URL tokens and other session management methodologies
Identify the cookie flags with session tokens including HTTP and HTTPS
Check for the expiration pertaining to the session cookies duration
Ensure that session termination happens after a maximum lifetime
Post a relative timeout and log out, make sure that the session terminates automatically
Check for the possibilities to start more than one synchronous session per user
Effectively manage the login, log out, role changes, new session tokens
Ensure consistent application of session management during the shared session management
Identify the session puzzling
Have a robust security maintenance for Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) and clickjacking
6. Authorization Management
Define the path traversal
Check if the workflow has any possible missing authorization
Check if malicious direct object references are happening
Check if privilege escalations are present
Check for possible issues with horizontal access control
7. Analyze the Algorithms
Evaluate the possibility of unstructured algorithms
Ensure appropriate usage of algorithms pertaining to the relevant context
Analyze the randomness functions within the framework
Check for the credibility of data encryption
To learn more on accelerating your healthcare organization’s data privacy and security, talk to our team
