How can you ensure the security of web applications with new innovations?

No guarantee exists. By using new technologies, you can reduce some of the known risks, but you may be vulnerable to new unknown risks and risks due to this technology. The most important thing is to have a risk management plan. Always have a plan to manage unknown risks that are not necessarily IT-based.

Staying updated is key, but it gets more important the more popular the tech/tool you're using is. A practical example would be WordPress. WordPress is extremely popular as a platform, which makes it also a popular platform to attack. This is because attackers usually look to maximize their impact so the more popular something is, the more targets are available. This becomes even more true when you then factor in the fact that the majority of its users fail to keep their software up to date and updates are being rolled out more and more frequently as CI/CD becomes the industry norm. Docker/Containers could be a good way to help keep your stuff up to date since Docker images can pull the latest version as part of the build process.

Honestly, maybe I'm gonna get some hate with this umpopular opinion, but it really depends on how public and what kind of software is. It is all about risk. The risk of leaking data through misconfiguration is way higher when you upgrade something just for the sake of upgrading without a proper upgrade plan than running on outdated software. If some software isn't even publicly accessible, then upgrading with each available upgrade doesn't really have a justification. Sure, it is good practice to keep it updated from time to time, but what I'm saying is that it's not always worth it. Unless you are running Wordpress. Then update it with every chance you got.

1) Do not write your own Encryption unless you know what you're doing. There are a lot of industry standard libraries you can rely on depending on your tech stack. Use those. 2) Make sure your data is secure *throughout* the software pipeline. What does that mean? It's like having a password field on a web form that hides the characters to the end-user. Feels secure! If that data isn't sent over HTTPS or its otherwise improperly... hey, now I can get your password even though it looks like a secure page to the untrained eye. Let's assume we did send it properly... What if you store that PW unsalted/unhashed in the DB? Now internal users can see that person's password if they do a simple query. If a hacker gets in? Leaked PT Passwords.

Always use encryption when data flows through public networks. And never do your own encryption. Just use AES or RSA from a popular battle tested library for your programming language, and it's good enough for most practical uses. Trust me, I studied this and did my bachelor licence on cryptography related subjects. Never roll out your own encryption.

This isn't necessarily critical for security, because you shouldn't ever pass anything user generated to the database or shells directly anyway, and you should never trust user input. Like, never. Input validation is critical though to prevent corrupted data to accumulate. It will be a pain to "fix it" later on when you discover that some user pushed months of grabage data into your databases without knowing, and now is complaining why your product mis-behaves.

That's why I always say that personal projects are a must in a job application. A person who does them shows that they are moving with the industry and are curious by nature. And one of the crucial learnings a person can get from a personal project are the common security practices. Most software projects on the market run on outdated technology, and if you rely only on what you do at your job, you will become an expert in old tech. If you do personal projects, inevitably you will stumble upon the most common security practices: HTTPS, digital signatures and certificates, password hashing, SQL injections, etc. In personal projects, you are allowed to f**k up. And you learn from it. At a job, you are not allowed to f**k up.

- Look at the OWASP Guidelines & learn how to mitigate them. This may require significant time/code investment depending on your organization or codebase. Security is a marathon, not a race. - Read up on vulnerabilities even if you're not into infosec. It doesn't matter if you don't care about security, someone will make you care about security anyway when they breach your system. The question is, what will you do when that happens? Security is about preventing the scenario. I'd recommend also thinking about "What if my security fails me?". - Have a disaster recovery plan. Backup your DBs. Backup your files. Your code should be on Git/source control. System Images? Docker Containers? They all work, just make sure you have a plan!

When it comes to web application security, it's crucial to handle exceptions properly. If something goes wrong, it's best to show a basic error message to users, rather than revealing technical details that could aid potential threats. From a security perspective, there are usually three outcomes: 1. Allowing an action. 2. Rejecting an action. 3. Dealing with errors. In most cases, when there's an error, the safest option is to reject the action. A secure application ensures that unintended actions don't occur.