Top 6 Reasons to Choose Vue.js for Web UI Development

VueJs: The basics in 4 mins. The simplicity of Vue.Js and its light… | by James Samuel | codeburst

“Design is the silent ambassador of your business”.

Not long ago, brands and developers were magnetized to the latest technologies and functionalities. They used to introduce all the latest elements into their app development process to give a one-stop shop experience to their users.

But, they failed most of the time.

It was then they realized that they were missing a core element, i.e, app design. They were overlooking the importance of UI/UX design while building an application. And thus, lowering down their chances to touch the hearts of the audience.

Now, coming back to the present, almost every business and brands is now focusing on creating an intuitive UI design and introducing the right interactive elements. They are also considering the latest mobile app UI trends while planning their app’s look and feel.

However, some of the questions they are still struggling with is – Which JavaScript framework to pick for developing their web app UI? Should they go with Vue.js for UI web development or pick some other?

Considering the importance of tech stack on the success rate of app, I will disclose here some of the factors why going with Vue is an ideal solution.

But first, let’s have a quick recap of what is Vue.js.

Vue.js – A Brief Introduction

Designed by Evan You in 2014, Vue.js is an open-source MVVM (Model-View-Viewmodel) JavaScript framework used to create UIs and single-page applications. Its latest version is Vue.js 2.6 and it is the second most loved framework as per Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2019

The framework offers a complete set of features that makes it easier for business enthusiasts and developers to enter the UI world.

Characteristics of Vue.js

Top 6 Reasons To Choose Vue.js for Web UI Development

1. Virtual DOM

Vue.js operates using Virtual DOM. Meaning, any changes made while developing won’t be reflected directly on the DOM. Instead, a replica of the DOM is created which is usually present in the form of JS data structures.

This let developers experiment their design and see the changes in the UI design while having a scope of undo everything in a cost-effective manner. Something that makes it winner of Vue.js vs Angular war.

2. Data Binding

This feature of Vue enables developers to easily set values to HTML attributes, modify the style, and more using the binding directing called v-bind.

3. Animation/Transition

Vue.js also provides developers with multiple ways to implement transition to HTML elements when adding/updating something from the DOM. It also provides the option to add third-party animated libraries to the environment and build more interactive user interfaces.

4. Templates

Vue.js framework delivers a HTML-based template that binds DOM with the Vue instance data. It compiles templates into Virtual DOM render functionality, which simplifies the tasks of User Interface development.

5. Computed Properties

Last but not least, Computed properties is also one of the core functionalities of Vue.js. It encourages designers and developers to attend to the changes made to the UI elements and make required calculations. There’s no demand for additional coding anymore.

Now as you know what is Vue.js and what are its main features, let’s look into the brands which have embraced this JavaScript framework into their tech stack. And then move to reasons why you should prefer Vue.js for UI web development.

Popular brands trusting Vue.js for their development needs

Now as you know which companies use Vue.js, let’s move to the reasons that makes developers pick Vue.js for UI Web development.

Reasons Why to Choose Vue.js for Web UI Development

1. Small App Size

Top 6 Reasons To Choose Vue.js for Web UI Development

The foremost reason to use Vue.js for their application needs is that it is of 18-21Kb of size. However, despite the small size, it offers high speed, something that makes it easier for the framework to lead in the Vue vs Ember battle.

This, as a whole, encourages developers to pick Vue JavaScript framework for both small and large scale app projects.

2. Ease of Learning

Top 6 Reasons To Choose Vue.js for Web UI Development

Vue.js framework has a simple structure. This makes the learning curve of Vue less steep and thus, makes it easier for anyone to trace and eliminate errors in the coding environment and develop both small and large scale templates quickly. This is the prime reason why is Vue getting momentum in mobile market.

3. Higher Performance

Top 6 Reasons To Choose Vue.js for Web UI Development

Another pros of Vue.js for development is that it avails higher performance. And the reason behind is that it not works with Virtual DOM, but also pay more attention to the shortcomings. It also comes with the ability to manage high frame rate.

A result of which is that it provides better performance that React, when talking about Vue.js vs React.js.

4. Simple Integration

Top 6 Reasons To Choose Vue.js for Web UI Development

Since it is based on JavaScript, it can be easily integrated with any existing application where integrating JS is possible. This helps developers create app with Vue.js from scratch as well as introduce Vue.js elements into their existing apps.

5. Flexibility

Another advantage of going with Vue.js for UI web development needs is flexibility.

The framework enables every reputed app development company. to write templates in HTML and JavaScript and run them directly on different browsers.

6. Enhanced Documentation

Top 6 Reasons To Choose Vue.js for Web UI Development

 

Last but not least, Vue.js UI framework comes with a well-defined documentation that aids developers to understand the requisite mechanisms and build their own application effortlessly.

Now as you know why choose Vue.js for your UI web development needs, it is likely that you wish to contact the best UI developers.

But, wait.

Before you bring the team on board and step into the UI development with Vue, it is good to be familiar with Vue UI libraries that will bring more profits in the future.

So, taking the same thought into consideration, let’s wrap up this article with a list of prominent Vue UI frameworks and component libraries to consider in 2020 for UI development.

Top 12 Vue.js UI libraries to consider in 2020

1. Vuetify

Vuetify - Vue.js Projects

The foremost UI library that you should look out for your app needs in 2020 is Vuetify.

Vuetify provides developers with 82+ components, server side rendering support, premium themes, and business and enterprise support. Also, it is implemented using the Google Material Design guidelines and offer support to different browsers like Safari 9+ and IE11. This encourages developers to consider Vuetify for their UI app project.

2. Element

Created by Chinese, Element is a Vue.js based UI toolkit for web.

The library, with 350+ contributors, provides developers with a complete selection of customizable components alongside a full style-guide. It is specifically used to build desktop and mobile app with Vue.js. However, it is not responsive in nature.

Also, it offers a version for React and Angular. This makes developers more inclined towards this UI development library for their project.

3. Vue Material

Another VUI-based UI web development components you can rely on in 2020 is Vue Material.

It serves UI/UX designers with different resources like upgraded webpack SPA, single HTML file for easier setup, a universal application with Nuxt.js for SSR, and more. However, it is required that professionals have a basic knowledge of JavaScript, Vue.js, and Vue Router to build engaging UI solutions.

4. Quasar Framework

Introduction to the Quasar Framework - Quasar Framework

Quasar is one of the most-mentioned frontend development frameworks for creating responsive sites, electron apps, and hybrid mobile applications.

Some of the features that are behind this popularity are:-

  • Cache busting,
  • HTML/CSS/JS minification,
  • Sourcemapping,
  • Tree shaking,
  • Code-splitting and lazy loading,
  • Linting,
  • ES6 transpiling, and
  • Out-of-the-box accessibility.

5. Buefy

Documentation | Buefy

Buefy is also one of the finest development tools to consider for your app project.

It is basically a lightweight UI library based on Bulma, a CSS framework. The library holds various similarities with SASS and even avails a large number of ready-made components. This makes it easier for developers to start their beginner-level project. However, it is not a right fit for a large-scale project, provided the elements are limited.

6. Bootstrap Vue

BootstrapVue

Blending together the power of Vue and Bootstrap – a popular CSS library, Bootstrap Vue has also become one of the UX/UI developers’ favorite tools.

The UI library provides a vast range of Vue.js UI components that are compatible with the WAI-ARIA guidelines for web accessibility. This makes it perfect to build a responsive and mobile-friend project easily and quickly.

Additionally, it has a robust community support and a comprehensive documentation that makes it safe for anyone to step into the UI development.

7. iView

ABC iview - Apps on Google Play

iView is a high-end UI library that caters the needs of designers with ample of UI components and widgets, offline documentation, command line interface (CLI) tool called iView-CLI, and more.

If you are planning to step into the UI web development arena using this library, this starter kit will help.

8. Muse – UI

Muse UI : Material Design UI library for Vuejs 2.0-Codespots.com

Muse-UI is a Vue 2.0 based Material Design library that will gain momentum in 2020 too.

It is easy to install and use, and serve designers with around 40 Vue.js UI components and themes that offers higher customization possibility.

9. Vuikit

GitHub - vuikit/vuikit: A responsive Vue UI library for web site interfaces

Vuikit is another responsive library preferred by developers for Vue UI web development.

This library is created as a ‘monorepo’ governed by Yarn workspaces. It keeps icons and themes published as distinct packages, and delivers a clean and consistent design.

10. Mint UI

Introducing: Mint UI ? - DEV Community

Mint UI is a light-weight mobile UI library comprising of JS and CSS elements to introduce in your app development plan.

It is a chinese project, but comes with a well-translated broad documentation. This makes it easier for UI developers to employ it in their mobile application development plan.

Here’s a demo that will give you a better understanding of how to implement it into your app.

11. VuePress

VuePress

Another Vue.js UI web development library that you can opt in 2020 is VuePress.

It is primarily a minimalistic, Vue-backed static site generator, but can also be considered for introducing dynamic Vue components in normal pages and posts.

Here, each created page has pre-rendered and static HTML components after which Vue combines all the static content to form a single-page application.

12. Ant Design Vue

GitHub - vueComponent/ant-design-vue: ? An enterprise-class UI components based on Ant Design and Vue. ?

Last but not least, Ant Design Vue is yet another UI library that you can watch out for while planning your next app project.

The library is a good choice for development when you wish to build an enterprise-class UI design, share Ant Design of React design resources, and introduce a set of high-quality Vue components. But, one has to first ensure that Node.js 9 or above are already installed on your device.

What is DevOps? – AWS

FAQs on DevOps

What is DevOps?

DevOps (Development & Operations), a design and operations system, is an approach that works closely with software developers and operations. DevOps was developed in 2009 with the aim of improving communication and integration development and operations in order to benefit fully from modern software development approaches.

Build in one Org, Release from another with Azure DevOps | by Dave Lloyd | ObjectSharp | Medium

The entire range of application management operations has become considerably more complex in this complex environment. At the same time, software applications must be designed, developed, deployed, architected, and monitored via an ongoing, never-ending lifecycle. DevOps is an agent of change in the current business environment, which supports such complex applications.

The clear answer to the frequently asked question, “What is DevOps” is DevOps is a collaborative, team-based approach to technology delivery that leverages experts with cross-functional development and organizational expertise to address issues relevant to applications.

Characteristics of a good DevOps

Corporations and companies have varying degrees of success in introducing and implementing a DevOps system for their IT departments, these are the common characteristics they show:

1. Short, iterative development cycles

What Is the Agile Iterative Approach and Where Is It Used? | nTask

DevOps allows an organization to develop and launch new products and services more efficiently through a build-measure-learn process, beginning with minimally viable products (MVPs) running on the production infrastructure.

2. Driven by Metrics

An Intro to Metrics Driven Development: What Are Metrics and Why Should You Use Them?

Use lean startup methodologies, evaluating ideas, and designing of MVPs offers immediate feedback to product or service creators and backers, providing valuable data to decision-makers on the continued feasibility of the current process.

If a pivot is required to align the plan more closely with the organizational and strategic priorities, the indicators will support that decision.

3. Focused on People

FOCUSED | Karmel Soft

Even in library systems with a single member, the DevOps team of a library must always concentrate on the people being served. Professional resources and technology departments of the library need to guide research and decision-making based on the actual use of members of the library system and the interest of library leadership in looking for the edges of their populations.

DevOps working Lifecycle

DevOps principles are not only applied throughout the lifecycle, but they include growth, operations, and business stakeholders at all times. The DevOps framework explores the challenges of serving the dynamically changing and business-critical architectures of today’s technology.

In this model, the DevOps interactions at each stage are as follows:

1. Assess

How to assess what people learned? - TalentLMS

Business stakeholder feedback (for new services) and service-level agreement reviews, (for existing services) are used to define goals for new business offerings and to modify existing ones.

2. Design

Logo design process: how professionals do it -

At this stage design and development are given importance. The primary responsibility of design is to incorporate requirements into a software design. Business is responsible for educating production on specific requirements, as well as evaluating the project and signing it off.

3. Develop

Great Leaders Develop Their People: What Development Entails | Unbridling Your Brilliance

Development is ultimately responsible for building software that meets the needs of the business. Operations are introduced when necessary to support development teams in building and testing environments and/or to advise on network requirements and expected delivery times.

4. Test

Test Driven Development, like a boss | by Vedant Agarwala | Medium

While Development and QA teams perform unit and integration testing, Operations participates in integration and load testing to assess operational readiness.

5. Release

Release Notes · Small Improvements

This is the traditional handoff stage of DevOps, but the handoff in this scenario is a change in leadership roles versus a shift in responsibility. Development and Operations (or DevOps) teams lead this stage, while end-user acceptance processes are conducted by business stakeholders.

6. Manage

How To Effectively Manage Your Team's Workload • Asana

Infrastructure, systems and application management tools track manufacturing environments and applications during this phase. Service level management (SLM), quality and availability management, troubleshooting/root cause analysis and resource management solutions all track and assess the output of applications as part of ongoing assessments.

AWS DevOps

AWS DevOps with Amazon security & Amazon cloudwatch provides flexible and speedy DevOps services for companies.

Features

1. Monitoring

ICINGA2 – Monitoring MySql

Enables monitoring and logs to see how the quality of software and infrastructure affects the end-user experience of their service.

2. ChatOps (AWS Chatbot)

Introducing AWS Chatbot: ChatOps for AWS | AWS DevOps Blog

It is the latest feature which easier to review the notification and execute commands in Slack channels and Amazon Chime chat rooms. Chatbot supports:

  • Amazon CloudWatch
  • AWS Health
  • AWS Budgets
  • AWS Security Hub
  • Amazon GuardDuty
  • AWS CloudFormation
3. Microservices

Introduction to Microservices - Comunytek

Microservices turn the task of building an application into several microservices. Each system operates independently and communicates with other services via a well-defined interface using a lightweight mechanism.

4. Infrastructure as Code

What Is Infrastructure as Code? How Infrastructure as Code Works

The cloud-driven API model allows developers and system administrators to communicate programmatically and on a scale with infrastructure, rather than setting up and configuring resources manually.

5. Continuous delivery

FlexDeploy | Continous Delivery

DevOps have become essential elements contributing to the rise of continuous delivery. Continuous delivery is a software development practice, the term describes an iterative and continuous process of software development, evaluation, and distribution to the desired endpoint. The destination may be a manufacturing setting, a staging environment or a set of software products.

Advantages of DevOps

What are the Advantages Of DevOps?|DevOps & Automation

  • Speed: The developers and operation team is able to get their results faster
  • Scale: Operate and manage infrastructure and growth processes at scale. Automation and reliability allow you to handle complex and evolving processes effectively and with reduced risk.
  • Reliability: Devops highly reliable because of the quality of application updates
  • Security: You can use automatic enforcement protocols, fine-grained processes, and configuration management tools to implement a DevOps framework without compromising security.
  • Collaboration: Collaboration of developer and operation using DevOps team increases efficiency and save time

In this journal, we have discussed the enhanced definition of and vividly taken a deep dive in what is DevOps. We can now understand that DevOps provides software development teams with the ability to control and accountability to deliver software efficiently and often especially for small to medium-sized enterprises in the production environment.

In this case, the capability comes from their ability to acquire new skills from operations-related tasks while operating under pressure at the same time. I also established that DevOps in companies is a long-term endeavor that, in addition to technological methods, requires a supportive culture and a mindset. Such cross-functional collaboration is most effective when supported by senior management and customers.

Web Application Security : A Necessity, Not a Luxury

Web application security is an all-encompassing term that covers the security of websites, web applications and web services. Web applications are one of the prime targets for cyber attackers due to the following reasons-

  1. The complexity of their source code increases the chances of manipulation of the code with malicious intent and unseen vulnerabilities.
  2. These attacks can be launched easily and target multiple targets at the same time.
  3. The rewards reaped by the attackers are huge. They can get hold of the financial information or other private data that belongs to the users of the application.

Web Application Security: Complete Beginner's Guide | Netsparker

Organizations need to be wary of such attacks on their web applications as it can result in the disruption of their relationships with their clients or can lead to legal action against them. According to a report published by Forrester in 2020, 35% of all external cyber attacks on organizations came in through a web application. In fact, Security Boulevard reported that as the first batch of COVID-19 vaccine vials was distributed, an increase of 51% web application attacks on healthcare targets was noticed.

 

Also, recently, a report by Business Standard revealed that a hacking group called ShinyHunters leaked 1.9 million user records stolen from an online photo editing application known as Pixlr. In another case, the same hacking group stole the data of users from an online dating website named MeetMindful.

 

All of this should be alarming for organizations, especially the ones dealing with sensitive user information. Web application security, an often ignored aspect of cyber security, should therefore be given priority in the cyber security policies of organizations.

Types of Web Application Vulnerabilities

 

Web application attacks can take various forms. This is done using different vectors mentioned below-

 

  1. Cross-site Scripting (XSS) – It is a type of injection attack that targets users to access their accounts, modify the content of a page or activate trojans. Direct injection of a malicious code into an application results in Stored XSS.  A Reflected XSS occurs when a malicious script is reflected off an application onto a user’s web browser.
  2. SQL Injection – SQL Injection is a malicious SQL code used to manipulate a back-end database in order to reveal information. This can result in unauthorized access to the administrative control of the web application and unwarranted modification of data.
  3. Remote File Inclusion – Injecting a file onto a web application server from a remote location is known as Remote File Inclusion. Hackers use this vector for the execution of malicious scripts within the application. It has also been seen that this vector is used for data manipulation and data theft.
  4. Cross-site Request Forgery – This kind of attack takes place when a malicious web application makes a user’s browser perform an unwanted action on a site where the user is logged in to. This attack can result in an unsolicited transfer of funds, changed passwords or data theft.
  5. Denial of Service (DoS) Attack – Denial of Service Attack (DoS) occurs when a server stops responding to the incoming requests of its legitimate users or starts responding very sluggishly due to its overloading with different types of attack traffic.
  6. Misconfiguration of Security Settings – Attackers pounce upon the chance of exploiting misconfigured security settings or settings that are set at default, verbose error messages with sensitive information and misconfigured HTTP headers.
  7. Insufficient Logging and Monitoring – This is one vulnerability that can help the attackers further attack systems or tamper, destroy and extract data. According to security experts, it takes 197 days on an average to detect a data breach.
  8. Buffer Overflow – Buffer Overflow is the overflowing of the buffer’s capacity, which is a space in memory, resulting in the overwriting of the adjacent memory locations with data. This can be used to inject malicious code into the memory.

Measures for Risk Mitigation

 

  • Using a Web Application Firewall – A Web Application Firewall is a hardware and software solution designed to defend against any attack attempts. It is a good way to compensate for any code sanitization deficiency.
  • Gathering Information – Classify third-party hosted content and review the application manually to identify client-side codes and entry points.
  • Authorization – Test the application for missing authorization, insecure direct object references and horizontal and vertical access control issues.
  • Encryption – Encrypt the specific data and avoid the use of weak algorithms.
  • Bot Filtering – Mass-scale automated attacks are launched using malicious bots. This bot traffic can be detrimental for the web application and is therefore dealt with Bot Filtering tools.
  • Conducting VAPT– VAPT (Vulnerability and Penetration Testing) is an essential service for organizations in their quest for safer use of IT infrastructure. VAPT is like a self-assessment service that brings the vulnerabilities related to the APIs, technology, platform, etc to the fore, thereby shaping the cyber security policies of the organizations and helping them upgrade their systems. Web application security assessment, therefore, goes a long way in ensuring the smooth functioning of the web application.

Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing(VAPT) Services - BERRY9 IT  SERVICES

Apart from this, web application security is also necessary for GDPR compliance. If an application processes personal data of EU residents, then the GDPR requires that organization to follow security “by design and by default” for data protection (Art 25). It is therefore recommended that organizations running web services or web applications put the requisite cyber security measures in place to tackle any kind of attack

Security Flaws in Web Application and its Mitigation

The inability to identify vulnerabilities in a web application can leave it unprotected against potential attackers, resulting in the most severe consequences. Web application vulnerabilities include a system weakness or flaw in a web-based application that leaves you susceptible to security attacks, risking the loss of valuable company or customer data.The inherent complexity of a web application’s source code increases the possibility of malicious code manipulation and unattended vulnerabilities. High-value rewards such as sensitive private data obtained by successful source code manipulation have made web applications a high-priority target for attackers. This makes it essential to thoroughly understand web security vulnerabilities and how to prevent them.

Types of Web Application Vulnerabilities

Common Web Application Vulnerabilities | EC-Council University Official Blog

Web application vulnerabilities are caused due to misconfigured web servers, application design flaws or not validating or sanitizing form inputs. They are prioritized based on their detectability, exploitability and impact on software. So, here is a list of some of the most critical web security risks according to the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP):

  1. Injection: Injection flaws, including SQL, OS, LDAP and NoSQL injection, take place when a query or command with untrusted data is received by an interpreter. The hostile data by an attacker can trick the interpreter into accessing data without authorization or executing unintended commands. This can lead to the unauthorized viewing of lists, unauthorized administrative access and deletion of tables.

 

  1. Broken Authentication: This occurs when application functions related to session and authentication management are implemented incorrectly. It allows attackers to not only easily compromise passwords, session tokens or keys but also assume the identities of other users temporarily or permanently.

 

  1. Sensitive Data Exposure: Sensitive data can easily be compromised if special precautions are not taken when exchanged with the browser or some extra protection, like encryption at rest or in transit, is not implemented. Many web applications are unable to protect sensitive data properly, which allows attackers to steal or modify it, resulting in credit card fraud, identity theft and a number of other crimes.

 

  1. XML External Entities: Attackers can exploit poorly configured XML processors to access confidential data, inject additional data, create remote tunnels and execute applications. This vulnerability can also lead to Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF), denial of service attacks and remote code execution.

How to Execute an XML External Entity Injection (XXE) | Cobalt | Cobalt.io

 

  1. Broken Access Control: With access control, you can manage the sections of a website and application data accessible to different visitors. If these restrictions are not enforced properly, attackers can easily take advantage of these flaws to get access to unauthorized data or functionality. This can enable these attackers to access the accounts of other users, view sensitive files, change access rights and modify the data of other users.

 

  1. Security Misconfiguration: Counted amongst the most critical web application security vulnerabilities, it offers attackers an easy way into your website. Attackers can exploit unsecure default configurations, open cloud storage, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, verbose error messages with sensitive information and misconfigured HTTP headers. All operating systems, libraries, frameworks and applications can be susceptible to security misconfigurations.

 

  1. Cross-Site Scripting: This vulnerability occurs when untrusted data is included in a web page without validation. It injects malicious code into the web application and executes it on the client-side. It helps attackers execute scripts in a user’s browser to hijack user sessions, redirect the user to malicious sites or deface websites.

 

  1. Insecure Deserialization: Often resulting in remote code execution, deserialization flaws allow cybercriminals to perform a variety of attacks including injection attacks, privilege escalation attacks and replay attacks.

 

  1. Use of Components with Known Vulnerabilities: Various components such as frameworks and libraries run with the same privileges as the web application. Even if a single vulnerable component is attacked, it can cause server takeover and serious data loss. For this reason, a web application that uses components with known vulnerabilities can seriously compromise its defences, leaving it open to attack.

 

  1. Insufficient Monitoring and Logging: Insufficient logging and monitoring along with ineffective or missing integration of incident response can cause another major vulnerability. It can help attackers further attack systems, tamper, destroy or extract data and maintain persistence, pivot to more systems. According to security studies, it often takes more than 200 days to detect a breach. And it is usually detected by an external party instead of internal monitoring or processes.

 

How to Prevent Web Application Vulnerabilities?

How to prevent top 7 Web Application Vulnerabilities?

Organizations that do not properly secure their web applications are more susceptible to malicious attacks, resulting in information theft, revoked licenses, damaged client relationships and legal proceedings. There are several measures that you can take for securing your web applications:

  1. Web application firewalls (WAFs): WAFs are hardware and software solutions designed to examine and monitor incoming traffic for blocking any attack attempts. They offer the best way of compensating for any code sanitization deficiencies.

 

  1. Information gathering: Classify third-party hosted content and review the application manually to identify client-side codes and entry points.

 

  1. Authorization: Test your application thoroughly for path traversals, missing authorization, insecure, direct object references and horizontal and vertical access control issues.

 

  1. Cryptography: Secure all data transmissions, encrypt specific data, check for randomness errors and avoid using weak algorithms.

 

  1. Denial of service: Test for anti-automation, HTTP protocol DoS, account lockout and SQL wildcard DoS for improving your application’s resilience against denial of service threats. Use a combination of scalable resources and filtering solutions for protection against high-volume DDoS and DoS attacks.

Apart from the above measures, running a periodic Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing is essential too. VAPT looks for possible and common vulnerabilities related to the platform, technology framework APIs, etc., and runs exploits on the web application to evaluate its security loopholes. It provides the organizations with reports on discovered vulnerabilities, the nature of the vulnerability, threat level, its impact and measures to eliminate it.

 

A tour to Web Application Security Testing

Different Ways In Which Web Application Development Is Changing

What is Web Application Security Testing?

Applications are the most favorable medium for cybercriminals who seek to steal data or breach user’s security defenses. Being available 24/7 to users, web applications hold high chances of becoming a target for hackers trying to seek access to the confidential back-end data. According to the cybersecurity research, there were more than 3,800 publicly disclosed data breaches, exposing 4.1 billion compromised records. A huge amount of data is stored in web applications. With the increasing number of transactions taking place on websites lately, the need for comprehensive web application security testing must be considered a mandatory step.

A 6-Step Guide to Web Application Testing [Agencies Approved]

But what actually the term ‘Web Application Security Testing’ means? Basically, it is the process of checking the security of confidential data from being exposed to unauthorized individuals or entities. The purpose of this security testing is to ensure that the functionality of the website is not being misused or altered by any user. Apart from that, it also ensures that no user holds the authority to deny the functionality of the website to other users.

In order to have the best web application security practices, it is important to have knowledge of the following main key terms:

  • Vulnerability 

A Guide to Vulnerability Assessment For Organization Security

A flaw, weakness or misconfiguration in a web-based application code that empowers attackers to gain a certain level of control of the website or possibly over the hosting server.

  • Website SpoofingSpoofed URL - Wikipedia

Act of creating a hoax website to mislead users or target audience of the authenticated website for fraudulent intent.

  • URL Manipulation

URL Manipulation Attacks - CCM

The act of altering or manipulating information in the URL to get access to the confidential information and this information is passed on through the query string.

  • SQL injection

Introduction to SQL Injections. SQL injection is an attack technique… | by Charithra Kariyawasam | Medium

A computer attack in which malicious code is inserted in a weakly-designed web application and is then passed on to the backend database. As a result, malicious data produces a confidential database query result.

  • XSS (Cross-Site-Scripting)

What is Cross-site Scripting (XSS) and how can you fix it? | Detectify Blog

A security breach where the malicious scripts are injected into the otherwise trusted websites. This attack occurs when a cyber-attacker uses a web application to send malicious code to different end-user in the form of a browser-side script.

Types of Web Application Security Testing

When it comes to web application security, there are more than one standard ways to perform:

1. Vulnerability Assessment

Vulnerability Assessment

Done through automated software, this type of testing is performed to scan web applications against known vulnerability signatures. It is the process of identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities in the web application whereas it provides the knowledge, awareness, and risk background check which is necessary to understand.

2. Dynamic Application Security Test 

Dynamic Application Security Testing: DAST Basics - WhiteSource

This automated application security test includes dynamic scanning of a live running web application for analyzing the common vulnerabilities which are susceptible to attack. This process of dynamic vulnerability scanning requires a proper set up of the OWASP ZAP testing standard.

3. Static Application Security Test 

Static Application Security Testing: SAST Basics - WhiteSource

SAST solutions analyze the web application from “inside out” in a static form. Under this security application approach, both manual and automated testing techniques are involved. It is helpful in identifying bugs without requiring to execute applications in a production environment. Also, Static Application Security Testing, developers can scan the source code to systematically identify and eliminate existing application security vulnerabilities.

4. Penetration Test 

What is Penetration Testing? Pen Testing Tools - XenonStack

Penetration testing or ethical hacking is the practice of testing web application security in order to identify the security vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited by attackers. It can be performed either automatically or manually. This security testing is best for critical web applications and especially for those that are undergoing major alterations.

5. Runtime Application Self Protection

Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) - The Complete Guide

Under this approach, various techniques are applied to instrument a web application to detect and block attacks in real-time. When an application runs live, RASP ensures to protect it from malicious input or behavior by inspecting the app’s performance behavior.

Does Web App Security Testing Help in Reducing the Organization’s Risk?

Web Application Security Testing Software - PortSwigger

Every organization has got either one or multiple website applications, which eventually become the scope of potential data and security exploitation on an extremely broad level. Moreover, with developers working day and night on introducing the latest technology and frameworks with the code deployed, they often fail to think of security as a priority.

Any organization’s web application in today’s date can be easily affected by a wide array of security issues. Cyber attacks like SQL injection, Remote Command Execution, Path Traversal, and XSS can lead to harmful results like access to restricted content, installation of malicious code, compromised user accounts, loss of customer trust, damaged brand reputation and much more.

Beyond Data Science - Unit testing | by Mohammed Sunasra | Medium

Knowing that such attacks not only make web applications vulnerable but also lead to potential damage to the security, best web application security practices offer to preemptively address the security vulnerabilities and take action against them accordingly.

On the other hand, users now are becoming more aware of securing their data and therefore will trust secured web applications with their personal records and financial details, so it is up to the organization to provide them with robust security.

What Is Web Application Security? | Web Security | Cloudflare

Therefore, continuous security testing is highly crucial for regularly running web applications in order to mitigate potential vulnerabilities by fixing and improving security. As more secure the web application is, better will be the brand reputation of an organization.

Always remember that web application is 100% secure and it takes only one small vulnerability for a hacker to exploit everything that comes in its reach. With web application security testing tools, one can minimize cyber risks and can have the full trust of customers.

 

Big Brands Making Use of PWAs to Improve Their Business

What are Progressive Web Apps? - Ionic BlogAs the technology industry continues to make more and more investment in innovative web solutions, the progressive web apps aka PWAs are becoming more prevalent. Today, PWAs are fully supported by Chrome, Opera, Firefox, Microsoft Edge and iOS, making great progress in providing benefits of PWA for businesses.

This growing support for PWAs is driven by demands from leading brands seeking to take full advantage of their capabilities. Listing some progressive web app examples below to provide you the growing importance of progressive web apps:

Twitter invested heavily in making its main site a responsive PWA to create a faster user experience with an enhanced interface, joining the likes of Facebook and Pinterest which both use PWA features.

Similarly, media powerhouses like the BBC, The Washington Post, and Forbes have also launched progressive web app for business to distribute their content more seamlessly across consumers and various types of devices, from desktops to cell phones.

The PWA landscape is rapidly changing the e-commerce vertical and big businesses like Twitter, Starbucks, Washington Post, Pinterest, the Weather channel and much more have launched their PWAs in the last six months.

So why are top brands making the switch towards the technology and reaching out to PWA development experts? To get the answers, let’s read and find out.

What are Progressive Web Apps?

What are Progressive Web Apps and How Do They Work?

PWA stands for progressive web app that you can install on your system. It uses the cached data from your previous interactions to enable it to operate offline or without a stable internet connection.

A progressive web app is a website that functions just like a native app. It has all the functionality of a native app and still manages to deliver the usability of a website. PWAs are intended to address a range of problems ranging from inadequate networks to data obstruction or total lack of connectivity.

Google describes PWA’s as web experiences that are:

  • Reliable: Loads instantly and never shows a website to be down, even under unpredictable network conditions.
  • Fast: Responds easily to user interactions, with silky smooth animations and without janky scrolling
  • Engaging: Feels like a normal app, with an intuitive user experience.

Progressive web apps use the latest technologies to blend the best of both online and mobile applications. Progressive web application development is increasingly becoming the norm for the future. For businesses trying to optimise user experiences, PWAs fit right in the requirements in terms of budget, feature, development time and more.

Progressive web app benefits companies by offering an enhanced user experience through progressive enhancement. Robust PWA solutions are useful in accelerating the technological capabilities, empower companies and add the right balance to the business.

Since the advent of PWAs, many businesses have leveraged the power of this platform to reach new markets and enhance their user experience. After all, the Progressive web app framework is simple to develop, test and maintain, post-deployment.

How are Brands Using PWAs to Connect With Users?

The ease of access, cross-browser compatibility, and faster page load times help companies render a higher-level user experience that impresses consumers and gets them hooked.

1. Rising consumer expectations

How technology is changing customer expectations. | by Deborah Nas | The Startup | Medium

Customers have little tolerance for brands that have poor digital experiences. With plenty of choices at their disposal, consumers can easily move on to another brand if they have an underwhelming experience. When Pinterest and Starbucks launched their PWAs, they both saw a noticeable increase in interaction metrics. Pinterest saw a 60 percent rise in mobile interaction with quicker page loads, while Starbucks’ PWA was designed for web-based order management, and is now preferred by consumers over the native app for the coffee company.

 2. Native-like appeal

7 key principles of designing visually appealing websites | The JotForm Blog

PWAs provide a consistent and adaptive interface across all devices. It loads like a standard website but has many advanced native mobile app features, including the ability to add one touch to device home screens, to operate offline, and to allow push notifications. They also offer website benefits, such as search engine discoverability and the ability to be available from all modern web browsers. Additionally, PWAs can appear in the App Store and Google Play alongside native mobile apps.

3. Resource use and decrease in expenses

Maximise savings with cost cutting measures - Bizmag.co.za

PWAs need only one code base to provide website and mobile app-like experience across devices and browsers, which implies it needs only one team, one software platform, one test approach, and one digital product roadmap to plan, design, create and manage both a website and a mobile app-like experience. PWAs not only reduce the cost of product design, development, and maintenance, they also save money for organizations by allowing for quicker delivery of new features and bug fixes.

4. Adaptive

Adaptive thinking in practice

Innovative brands understand that technology is changing at an incredible speed, and they need to implement more forward-looking technologies to avoid rapid cycles of strategy, design, production and re-construct for digital solutions. Progressive Web Apps are fundamentally versatile and continually changing to meet the new functionality improvements. If you are rewriting a legacy website or native mobile application as a PWA today, it will work for years to come as expected. PWAs are built for transition, ensuring that companies should avoid investing in one-off websites and mobile apps that eventually need redesigns to meet evolving demands and technologies from the audience.

9 Best Examples of Companies Using PWAs

1. Forbes

Inside The 2013 Forbes 400: Facts And Figures On America's Richest

Forbes, a multinational media company, turned to Progressive Web Apps for their new mobile experience in order to improve loading times for their readers. The previous Forbes site took about 3-12 seconds to load.

The new site grounded in progressive web app technology is capable of loading in 0.8 seconds. As a result, Forbes saw a 43% increase in sessions and a 100% increase in engagement.

2. Flipkart

Flipkart strengthens fashion business; acquires stake in Flying Machine's owner Arvind Youth Brands - The Financial Express

Flipkart, India’s biggest e-commerce site, adopted a mobile-only strategy in 2015. After shutting down their mobile site and focusing only on their native app, the company was not seeing the desired results. They decided to combine their web presence and native app into a PWA to allow their current and prospective customers to have instant access to their store.

Compared to their previous mobile presence, Flipkart has tripled time-on-site with their Progressive Web App. Users spend an average of 3.5 minutes on Flipkart Lite versus 70 seconds on the predecessor.

Flipkart has also generated a 40% higher re-engagement rate among first-time visitors and a 70% higher conversion rate due to the “Add to Homescreen” icon, because customers have instant access to Flipkart whenever they want.

3. MakeMyTrip

According to the MakeMyTrip Survey, 1 in every 2 Indian traveller is looking to book an alternative accommodation for their next trip | Travel Trade News | Online Travel News | Travel Magazine

MakeMyTrip is India’s leading travel company with 8 million visitors monthly. After the addition of PWA, the major changes in the site such as improvement in conversion rate is 3X, the loading time of the page has increased by 38% and shopper sessions have increased up to 160%.

4. TwitterLite

Twitter Lite is now available in 21 more countries | Engadget

Twitter wished their mobile web to be faster and more attractive. In addition to PWA, Twitter launched TwitterLite which becomes the fastest and easiest way to use Twitter. With lower data consumption, TwitterLite also gives benefits such as reduced Bounce Rate up to 20%, and the page per session increased up to 65%, 75% in Tweets.

5. Alibaba

Alibaba.com | LinkedIn

Alibaba.com is the world’s largest marketplace for suppliers, buyers, and manufactures. It is the biggest E-commerce platform that recently adopted PWA and witnessed a significant increase in interaction rate up to 4X, and a huge rise in the conversion rate by up to 76%.

6. Starbucks Coffee

Menu of Starbucks Coffee, Connaught Place (CP), New Delhi - magicpin

Starbucks allows its customers to check the menu, create the orders and add the orders to the cart even when there is no signal or poor connection. With the addition of PWA, Starbucks improved its performance and rendered a highly responsive and fast performance.

7. Trivago

Trivago - one of the largest hotel search engine

Trivago is a big name in Hotel Search Engine Marketing. The availability of Trivago’s PWA is in 55 countries worldwide with 33 languages. After the adoption of PWA, the percentage of user engagement has increased by up to 50% and Click rate has increased by 97%.

8. Instagram

What Is Instagram and How It Works: a Beginner's Guide

We all use Instagram, but are not aware about its working. When you access Instagram on the mobile browser, you are accessing it through PWA. Presently the PWA looks very much like the traditional application and gives you some additional features like you can now upload images.

9. Pinterest

Pinterest - India

When you consider Pinterest’s UI and its design, it is totally fit to take advantage of Progressive Web App technology, thus they have. Their PWA gives them a lot quicker loading times and the capacity for clients to add it directly to their landing page with no download or installation. They’ve seen a 40% rise in time spent on the mobile site, just as a 44% increment in client generated ad revenue.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Progressive Web Apps

Advantages of a PWA

Smaller and faster

Sonic Running Wallpapers - Wallpaper Cave

Many individuals, despite the fact that native apps take a lot of space, would utilize these applications but they need more space on their smartphones so they can’t install them. But that is not an issue with PWAs, which only take space for what they need, making them quicker to download and saving space.

Offline capabilities

Lot of people realize the advantages of progressive web apps and that’s why they are downloading PWAs in light of the fact that it can be utilized even without an Internet connection. Also, these applications even work when the server is dead, making users not lose anything, and this is all such a great deal for conversions.

Cost-friendly than other apps

12 Time- And Budget-Friendly Tips For Updating Your Business' Mobile App

Since content just needs to be delivered once, PWA saves time and money in contrast to making content independently for iOS, Android, and a site. Also, PWAs don’t need to be updated very often. Clients don’t need to download new data. If PWA works, you presently don’t need to stress over its development, which makes it a financially alluring option, similarly to Flutter, for instance.

Independent app

Top 7 eLearning Apps: Check out Which One is on Your List

PWAs can be found by means of search engines and other platforms. PWAs can also be offered through social media, home page, or by another means. You are not required to be reliant upon application stores.

Disadvantages of a PWA

Limited browser support

Empoprise-BI: Revisiting my nine year old rant on sites that support limited browsers

PWAs are Android-driven and don’t work on popular browsers, including Safari, IE, and Edge. Since Safari overwhelms 51% of the browser market in the U.S., thus implying that a huge percentage of mobile clients will be unable to access PWAs.

But on the positive side, fresh browser versions of Opera, Chrome, and Firefox support PWAs, making other browsers to support this in the coming future.

 Limited Hardware and Software Support

Hardware & Software Support

PWAs are generally new and not yet upheld by many device hardware and software. For instance, iOS doesn’t support PWA’s notification and home screen shortcuts.

Also, PWAs don’t support the utilization of GPS, finger impression scanners, smartphone cameras, and other device features.

No download store

36 Best New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (11/6/14 - 11/19/14)

PWA don’t appear in popular application stores, for example, Google Play and the Apple App Store, which may delegitimize them.

Application stores not just give authenticity and social evidence of applications to likely users through reviews, however they additionally go about as a list that allows users to look for and find relevant applications.

Since most clients directly look for apps in application stores rather than in search engines, thus your audience may miss your PWA app.

No access to innovations

You Need an Innovation Strategy

Not every technical choice, like Bluetooth or Near Field Communication (NFC), can be applied to PWAs. This implies that you are restricted in the potential applications for your application. The inquiry is whether other future developments can likewise be utilized by PWAs.

Progressive Web Apps and The Future of Mobile Web

If you need a steady and consistent mobile app experience, then progressive apps are the best choice applications. PWA development company like Anteelo can offer interactive user experience similar to a native app without any high development expenses. The benefits of PWAs have been leveraged by many big brands, now it is your time to take up progressive web apps agency in USA and increase your conversions and revenue figures.

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