Standard practices for protecting sensitive data in Java

#Every time we browse or download files on the Internet, we are exposed to the risk of virus attacks. Maybe that file contains some malicious code that can breach security and gain unauthorized access to system resources. If we are building an application that contains sensitive data of users, for example a banking system contains confidential data like credit and debit card details, addresses, emails, etc. Then protecting this data becomes our top priority.

In this article, we will discuss some standard practices for protecting user sensitive data in Java.

Checklist of Standard Practices for Protecting Sensitive Data

The Java platform and its architecture provide various security mechanisms to enable developers to build secure and portable software. Still, there are some practices we need to follow to protect our users' sensitive information.

Let’s discuss some key points about protecting sensitive data -

Authentication

Authentication is the process of checking or verifying the identity of a user interacting with an application. This is the most important step because in order to use other services of the application, the user's identity must be verified. One of the common ways to authenticate a user is to enter a username and password.

Authorization

After authenticating a user, the next step is to verify the types of operations a specific user is allowed to perform. This process is called authorization. For example, a human resources management system has two types of users, one is employees and the other is administrators. There are some differences between employee and administrator permissions. Regular employees cannot add, update, or delete information of any kind, while administrators may have such rights.

Use the built-in security features of the Java language

The security of a system is also affected by the choice of programming language used in its development. The security features provided by the Java language are an advantage for developers and can reduce various security vulnerabilities.

• It provides type safety feature, which means that if we declare an integer variable, then we cannot initialize it with a string value.

• It has automatic memory management function and can automatically delete unreferenced objects.

• Java performs bounds checking on arrays, which means that if we try to access array elements outside the array range, we will encounter ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.

• Java bytecode makes Java programs portable and secure.

Password encoding

Weak passwords lead to various hacking and phishing attacks. At the user level, we need to use a strong password that includes letters and numbers, and the password must be more than 8 digits.

On a developer level, whenever we ask a user to register with the system, we cannot store their login details in clear text. That was probably the worst mistake. Instead, we can use various hashing and encryption algorithms to protect passwords. Some examples of hashing technologies include SHA-256, BCrypt, and SCrypt.

Regular updates of dependencies

Dependency is a programming practice in which one component of a software system depends on another component. This can lead to serious security threats. This is why dependencies are checked and updated. Developers can use automated dependency management tools such as Apache Maven or Gradle to detect outdated dependencies.

Java Security Manager

A Java process has unlimited access to all resources, file systems and networks. But we may not want to give them all types of access. To do this, we can enable the Java Security Manager to control access-related permissions.

pack

They contain a series of pre-written classes, interfaces and methods for us to use. Using them without the correct knowledge can lead to security vulnerabilities as they may not be updated regularly and some of them may be in trial status. Therefore, it is necessary to use only libraries that are widely used and regularly updated.

in conclusion

The Java language is considered one of the safest programming languages. It provides many pre-built security features. However, following the above guidance is still necessary to avoid security threats. In this article, we discuss standard practices designed to help developers build secure software.

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