Website Security and Authentication: Protecting Your Data in the Digital Age

This comprehensive guide explores the crucial aspects of website security and authentication, delving into the importance of protecting user data and preventing cyberattacks. It examines various authentication methods, including password-based, email-based, two-factor verification, and biometric verification, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. The document also discusses common web security threats such as denial-of-service attacks, unauthorized access, eavesdropping, IP spoofing, and man-in-the-middle attacks, providing practical solutions and mitigation strategies. Furthermore, it emphasizes the role of firewalls in protecting internal networks from external threats and explores the use of secure access protocols like SSH and TLS to enhance authentication security. The paper concludes by outlining future directions for web security, emphasizing the need for continuous innovation and adaptation to combat evolving cyber threats.

What are and how to do with the security and
authentication of websites

Abstract:
Purpose: It has been generation till now that people are using computer networks for
different kind of work needs in the world. People living in this world are fully dependent on
the internet for various kinds of work. If a person needs information about something he
can immediately go to the computer network and find that thing about in few moments.
There is not even one job which is not available on the internet. Banking, e-commerce,
social media and now even the food is available on the internet you just have to order that
what you want it would be correctly delivered to your address in time.
Result: Although all the things are available on the internet, crime is one of the things which
are also there. As you know there is no perfect world. There are millions of types of crime
done on the internet or computer network. As people are going more on the internet for
everything the crime rate is also growing at the same increasing rate. To stop these cyber-
crimes various securities is being made on the internet.
Recommendation: With this security, people can share their data on the internet and
websites server without having the fear that their data can be lost or their information can
be shared. Through these security steps, people feel protected and can safely and securely
go on the websites servers or on the internet.
1

Table of Contents
Abstract:.....................................................................................................................................1
Introduction...............................................................................................................................3
What is authorization and why is it important in websites?.................................................3
Difference between authorization and authentication.........................................................3
What is web security and why is it important?.....................................................................4
Literature review........................................................................................................................5
How the authentication in a website works:.........................................................................5
Different types of threats available in networking world are:...............................................6
1. Dos error:.................................................................................................................6
2. Unauthorized access:...............................................................................................6
3. Eavesdropping:........................................................................................................6
4. IP spoofing:..............................................................................................................7
5. Man in the middle attack:........................................................................................7
Methods or solutions;................................................................................................................8
Authentication methods:.......................................................................................................8
What causes a security breach and how to avoid it?............................................................9
Solution to the web security;...................................................................................................10
Experiment results/analysis:....................................................................................................11
Protecting the internal internet from the external internet through the firewall:.............11
Future Directions;.....................................................................................................................13
Conclusion;...............................................................................................................................14
References................................................................................................................................15
2

Introduction
As the topic itself indicates that what are the steps that should be taken for the security and
for the authentications of the websites. Like in today’s world website have become a very
important form gathering information’s and for social media also, so to protect each one’s
privacy that the person doesn’t want to share with anybody else there is security and
authentication of websites. Before entering into the details of this topics let us discuss few
terms which you should know. There are many terms like authentication, security,
Authorization and etc.
What is authorization and why is it important in websites?
Websites authorization means the person or the machine or anybody else who
recognizes him/her or it and grants access to the website. They can do so by entering their
username or user id and one unique password which is only known to them. It attests them
and gives them the permission to enter through this password ID. Once the user has
entered his/her/its authorizations the website checks its identifications with the saved id’s
in the authorization‘s file server. Once it has been checked with the saved file one’s the
authentication process has been finished and now his/her/it has entered the website with
their personal account (Bansal 2014, pp. 603).
The major question that is all over is why it is so important. The answer to this question is
that, when you create account on such websites there are no of questions asked of yourself
which are some of the personal questions like address where you are currently living, what
your birthdate, your full name is and sometimes like in bank details you also enter your card
number which is highly confidential. These are some of the major details about you that you
enter in a website which should not be known to others. So to protect these details from
unknown person’s authentication is very important. No unauthorized person should log into
your account and gain information about you (Hedberg 2017, pp. 13).
Authentications and authorizations are the words used in the same place but have a quite a
difference between them. Which should be known to us?
Difference between authorization and authentication
Authentication means that by entering your credentials you get the authentication to
that website, by entering through your account.
3

Whereas authorizations mean after logging in or after authentication what are the rights
that are provided to you on that website or page. There are set of rules which are
authorized to the person for performing certain activities in the given website like reading,
writing etc.
You have learned about how authentication is done and why it is important now it’s time for
knowing about the security. Authentication and authorization are some of the authorized
access to the website. There is some unauthorized access also which are done to exploit the
website by silently taking your personal information or harming the website in one way or
another. To overcome this, there is a term known as security (Lau 2017, pp. 652).
What is web security and why is it important?
Website security is the security which is provided to the websites and servers form
different types threats like hacking, malware, Trojan horse and etc. Web security protects
the website from these vulnerabilities and informs about this. The major goal of the website
security is to protect the website from the cyber-attacks. There are several threats which
attack the website other than malware, hackers and all. These threats will be discussed
further in details. Now answering the question why the hell web security is so important to
us.
We all know that why security so important so that nobody steals from us or no unknown
person can know about our personal information so that no misuse is done in our name.
Similarly, on the internet, we protect our servers and crucial data like card no., address and
bank account no. these are some of the details that we can’t give to anybody on the
internet. To protect these details from cyber threats we need web security, which protects
and doesn’t share our data with others.
There are several ways to check the web security like by web security software and
antivirus. Which check that no malware is there no viruses are on the server which can leak
are crucial data to an unauthorized person (Collions, 2016).
4

Literature review
Today’s world if fully depended on the internet as we all know. For different types work we
fully dependent on the internet. We talk with our relatives in the different area of the world
through the internet, we do our banking through the internet and social media has become
a major factor in today’s generation. Everybody is on the internet at every moment of time.
The world can’t live without the internet. But the major question is that
1. Whether it is safe?
2. Whether the data which stored on the internet is safe?
3. Whether the banking details and all other personal details are safe or not?
Answers to these questions are network security, which not only protects our data from
vicious threats but also keep it safe doesn’t share it with others. The network security or
security over website servers is a very wide topic. Its major concern is that our data which is
on the server is not fetched by anyone else. The data, the information should not be read by
any nosy people and it can be protected and be securing from all the cyber threats (Bello,
2016).
Most of these problems or these threats are produced by the malevolent people to mischief
with the people’s data and the information.
Users of the internet are very nervous about the cyber-threats or cybercrimes it is very
important for the website to make the user believe that the internet is a secure place to be
in and user can easily store their data in here and the information given by the user would
not be shared and the website protects it from various cyber-attacks.
How the authentication in a website works:
The authentication process involves several steps to perform the authentication process of
someone’s account. These steps are as follows;
1. First, the dialogue box will be there on the on the website where the user has to
enter there user-id and the required password of that id.
2. Once the authorizations have been entered the user press the login button after it
has been clicked the entered authorization is checked with the saved data on the
authentication server.
5

If the data matches the entered data the authentication server allows the user to log in
successfully and enter the website (Narula 2015, pp. 503).
The different types of websites authentication are:
3. Login website authentication- is the most basic authentication. When you have to
log into your social media account or you want to enter bank account, this type of
authentication is used.
4. Single sign-on authentication-it works on the same principal as login authentication.
The major difference is that it allows the user to access the account from multiple
servers without giving the credentials again and again.
5. IPsec authentication – is the authentication which allows the user to sign the
documents or encode the document which is sent to the network to make it more
private (Kernighan, 2017).
Different types of threats available in networking world are:
1. Dos error:
Denial of services is the full form of dos error. It is generated very simply by the malicious
person. Generation of this dos error is done by sending more and more request to the
website. If the website has the capability of attaining 10 requests per second and the
malicious person start sending request more than 20 per second than dos error is
generated. It is very difficult to rid from dos error. It is one of the greater threats.
2. Unauthorized access:
Is this most common and most harmful threat? In this, an unauthorized person will gain
access to your account and take all the information needed form that account. For example,
an attacker attacks an account holding bank details of a person, but the person doesn’t
know its detail without authorized access to its account (Hossain 2015, pp. 24).
3. Eavesdropping:
It is also a major networking threat in which a person encodes the data which is shared from
one person to other through a network and that data is encoded. The encoded data is
misused that’s how data is compromised between the networks and eavesdropping is done.
6

4. IP spoofing:
Means changing the path of the package was going. Changing the IP address means
changing the internet protocol address of the current owner to some another address and
sending the package to a different address instead of the given address.
5. Man in the middle attack:
In man, in the middle attack, the attacker is between the sender and receiver. It sits in the
middle and meddles with the message coming from both the sides. The middleman meddles
with the message changes the message and sends to both the sides. It meddles so smoothly
that both sides never come to know that it has been changed or not (Perlman, 2016).
7

Methods or solutions;
Methods and solutions to different types of threats and cyber-crimes are given. The
methods for authentication and solutions to the threats of web security are given.
Authentication methods:
 Password-based authentication: It is one of the most used ways because most
websites use password-based authentications. When the user creates an account on
the websites the user has to create a password with alphabets, numerical and
symbols. Which makes it difficult for the hacker to find out? But it is also one of the
best ways for the hacker to crack the password and enter it into one’s account. This
authentication is easy to crack by the hacker.
 Email based authentication: It is the authentication in which no password is required.
One has to enter its email address in the login option that will send an email
verification to the account holder’s email through which it gives the account holder
to login carefully without any problem. It is better than password-based
authentication because whenever anyone wants to login to their account there
always will be an email verification sent to the account holder’s mail (Ogbanufe,
2017).
 Two-factor verification: It is the only authentication in which two times verification is
required. First for authentication the user has to enter its mobile no. and then the
one-time password is sent to your mobile no. After which you have to enter that OTP
to your computer through which you can log in easily. The password is new every
time and works only for a specific period of time. This is one of the best methods
because the hacker or anybody else cannot know the OTP. It’s hard to find the OTP
which only the user can know.
 Biometric verification: It is the best verification technique or best authentication
technique, it also better than two-factor verification because in this the user can only
log in through its fingerprint. The user’s account can only be login only through its
fingerprint that’s why it’s called biometric verification. It cannot be accessed by
anyone else because its open only through user’s fingerprint but not anyone else
(Lee, 2017).
8

What causes a security breach and how to avoid it?
The security breach is the one in which the hacker cracks the user’s password and enter the
user’s account. Once the hacker has a login to the user’s account he or she can access your
private data and use your data against you. Hacker just has to know user’s password if It is
not well protected the hacker can easily guess the password and take your credentials.
To avoid such data breach you should build a strong password which is difficult for the
hacker to crack it. As the authentication processes in the websites are not fooled proof so to
protect it from the hackers and other threats make a powerful password. Update the
software properly so that it works properly and doesn’t give other chance to access your
account. By updating your software properly it repairs all the faults which are there for the
hacker to crack. These are some methods to prevent unauthorized access to your personal
and private account (Filkins 2016, pp. 1560).
9

Solution to the web security;
Dos error: Be careful of the packaging capacity of the website, to carefully manage the
request which is incoming, if the request is more than the capacity it doesn’t allow any more
incoming. Always monitor the package which enters through request and doesn’t allow if
there is some threat. First, it is upgrading the security time to time on host system so that
no un-authorization is there.
Unauthorized access: Not providing any unauthorized entry to the user’s account. Not
telling anybody about the credentials to an unknown person. So that he or she can access
your account and know your data. Strong security over the login account so that no
unauthorized access be granted to anybody else who doesn’t have an account.
Eavesdropping: Network access control is applied to authorize section so that the
unauthorized access is control and no vicious access is granted. Network segmentation is
applied to the network so that no further threats attack it and prevent it from them. SSL
certificates are applied to make the risk less (Rafique 2015, pp. 4, 5).
IP spoofing:
ACL is applied so that no false IP-address is added. SSL certificates are their one which
lowers the risk of spoofing. The filtering process is done so that no spoofing is done and it
also effects on the traffic of the incoming and outgoing messages.
Man in the middle attack: Password and high-level security are generated so that not
anybody can come in the between the sender and the receiver. Public key infrastructure is
applied so that no risk is there regarding a man in the middle attacks.
10

Experiment results/analysis:
In web networking, the outcome of going through this security condition is that the threats
which were affecting your personal data or other of your credentials will be less. And the
risk which the user worries about is less to worry about.
There are several steps that needed to be a consideration when you are giving security to
your website or to the data which is online:
 Private- keeping your data and accounts private with an authorization login. No
unauthorized person should be allowed to log in without permission.
 Integrity- there should not be any modification done by any unauthorized person in
the information which is on the data or which is shared between two people.
 Internal and external reliability should be maintained which means it should not be
changed after the process is done or networking is done by the user.
 The user should easily access the information which they are authorized of. In time
and without any disturbance the authorized person should be able to access its data
(Ilyas 2018, pp. 2, 3).
In networking the user should also be aware of the threats that he or she can face when
they are using the network and taking it lightly. They should know if they didn’t protect their
data or credentials it can be misused and crimes can be attempted by using their names or
other data and they can be in problem. Other crimes like their money can be stolen if they
don’t put any security on their bank account details while accessing through other’s
computer or through multiple networks.
Protecting the internal internet from the external internet
through the firewall:
As you know it’s very easy to make a connection with the outside world. If there is an
organization which needs to make a connection with the outside world for the information
or for doing any other purpose it is easy connected and retrieves. There are millions of
companies which are connected to the internet and have an organization on the same
internet. Which make it dangerous to work on as these companies are connected to the
internet 24*7 so these are the external internet and the organization is referred to as the
internal internet. Building boundaries between the two internets are very important. This
11

boundary which has been building is known as a firewall. These firewall work as a wall which
separates the two internets and controls the traffic network of the organization.
Firewall works as external routers which control the data from one side to other. They have
to components one as the external internet and the other as an internal intranet. Firewall is
the one which decides that which of the data should travel from one end to another, allows
the traffic control from one end to another end, also decide which rules should be added on
it for the complexbility. The services which are transferred from one end to another are
greater than the requirement of the firewall becomes more complex (Hoy, 2018).
If the firewall is organized properly then the security of the organization at its best, whereas
if there are holes in the setting up of a firewall than it cannot prevent anything and security
breach is possible.
The 2 secure access protocols are:
There are two protocols SSH and TCL which were developed to provide security over
different authentications methods. It helps us to make a wall between an unauthorized user
and an authorized one. It makes the difference and increases the security level.
SSH- it is the secure shell client-server protocol which was made to make a shell between
the protected and unprotected network. It provides a protected network for the
authentication and encryption between the client servers and keeps the untrusted network
out from the shell. It doesn’t allow any untrusted network to authorized and gain access.
TLC-is transport layer security is also the authentication protocol same as the SSH one. It
differs from it that after making a connection with the network through successful
authentication, it gives the certificate to through which whenever it tries to log in or
authenticate through that certificate it verifies and let it make the connection.
These two protocols make the security on the authentication methods more and make it
difficult for any type of security breach or cyber threats to threats the client-server
connection (Ilyas 2018, pp. 2, 3).
12

Future Directions;
Well as we know that the web security or the network security is one of the major concerns
of today’s cyber world. People of this generation are worried about family or other aspects
worry about to secure their data. With the increasing rate of using internet by the people
with the same proportional rate threats also increase. As the new threats are being
increased new security options should also be implemented to keep the data safe and
letting the user work in an environment where they don’t need to worry about threats. To
make the treats less affecting and to increase the security there are several points that need
to be followed.
 Make a powerful firewall setup on the network so that client-server connection
network is strong and no interruptions are there.
 Versions of all the security which is there should be up to date and firewall should
update according to new threats.
 If you are having an account on the network like social media account or bank
account which you are accessing and you don’t know whether the network is secure
one or not make the authentication strong up to date.
 You should use encryption whenever a crucial of your data is being stored on a
website. Or when the website is new and you don’t know whether it is safe to give
your data or not (Ilyas 2018, pp. 2, 3).
 Keep an updated antivirus which should protect your information and other data
from the malicious activity which happen on the internet.
 Should keep both the perimeter security and the communicational security. One
provides security from outside networks attacks and the other secure the data,
integrity and etc. with the VPN.
 Install the software or download application which can detect the security breach
and also rectify it by blocking it from a security breach.
 Don’t go to the websites which you know that is harmful to your network and can
increase the risk viruses, Trojan horse, malware etc.
 Apply multiple defense layers on the network so it makes difficult for the attacker to
attack you. These are some of the steps that should be adopted for securing your
network and authenticating the websites (Rafique 2015, pp. 4, 5).
13

Conclusion;
With the increase of different types of threats in a cyber area like worms, viruses, hackers,
different security threats etc. even the secure networks are not being safe. Protecting both
the hardware and the software from the networking threats is very important. As the data
of a particular person is very important to him because it’s his private data which he or she
doesn’t want to share with anyone else? And now is the generation which keeps all its
things on the network. All the data stored on the network without any protection is not safe
because on the network everybody’s data is a store. Everybody’s information is there which
can be misused by any malicious person or any hacker or any other person who wants to do
some inappropriate action. To avoid all these activities from other person and to keep all
the information safe the network security is generated. Through the network security all
your data, all your important information like bank account details, address, mobile no, card
no. which all can be misused is protected under security.
It prevents this credential details you’re to be protected from different networking threats
which are discussed earlier. There are many types of methods which are available for the
security and authentication on a website. Methods like keeping your password strong,
different kind authentication can help you to protect your data and doesn’t share it. To
protect the data and to keep it safe and to secure the networking from different networking
threats like DOS, EAVESDROPPING, IP SPOOFING etc. can be overcome by the given above
solutions. At last, it’s very important for the security on a website with authentication and
authorization on a website for a good performance as well as keeping the data safe of that
person from malicious persons and cyber threats which are on the internet or the new
threats which are going to come should be protected from them. It’s very important for the
user also to take few of the prevention steps because not every time it’s from once side
sometime user also visit some of the untrusted sited on the network or open some of the
emails which can be harmful and can bring threats by the user itself. The user should also
visit only those sites which are verified and emails which are not is a span, to secure it from
data breaching or to bringing networking threats.
14

References
 Bansal, C., Bhargavan, K., Delignat-Lavaud, A. and Maffeis, S., 2014. ‘Discovering
concrete attacks on website authorization by formal analyses. Journal of Computer
Security, vol. 22, no. 4, pp.601-657.
 Bello, L., 2016. Information-Flow Tracking for Web Security. Chalmers University of
Technology.
 Collins, A., 2016. Contemporary security studies. Oxford University Press.
 Filkins, B.L., Kim, J.Y., Roberts, B., Armstrong, W., Miller, M.A., Hultner, M.L., Castillo,
A.P., Ducom, J.C., Topol, E.J. and Steinhubl, S.R., 2016. Privacy and security in the era
of digital health: what should translational researchers know and do about
it?. American journal of translational research, vol. 8 no. 3, p.1560.
 Hedberg, T.D., Krima, S. and Camelio, J.A., 2017. ‘Embedding X. 509 digital
certificates in three-dimensional models for authentication, authorization, and
traceability of product data’. Journal of computing and information science in
engineering, vol. 17 no. 1, p.011008.
 Hoy, R.B., Fenkner, M. and Farren, S.W., L3 Technologies Inc, 2018. Internet isolation
for avoiding internet security threats. U.S. Patent 9,942,198.
 Ilyas, I., Tayyab, M. and Basharat, A., 2018, March. ‘Solution to web services security
and threats.’ In Computing, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies (iCoMET),
2018 International Conference on (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
 Kernighan, B.W., 2017. ‘Understanding the Digital World: What You Need to Know
about Computers, the Internet, Privacy, and Security.’ Princeton University Press.
 Lau, J.K.Y., Kaheel, A., El-Saban, M., Shawky, M., Gonzalez, M., El Baz, A., Deif, T. and
Aly, A.A.H., 2017. ‘Using facial data for device authentication or subject
identification.’ U.S. Patent vol. 9, pp. 652,663.
 Lee, T.H., Wani, W.A., Koay, Y.S., Kavita, S., Tan, E.T.T. and Shreaz, S., 2017. Recent
advances in the identification and authentication methods of edible bird's nest. Food
Research International, 100, pp.14-27.
 Narula, S. and Jain, A., 2015, February. ‘Cloud computing security: Amazon web
service.’ In Advanced Computing & Communication Technologies (ACCT), 2015 Fifth
International Conference on (pp. 501-505). IEEE.
15

 Ogbanufe, O. and Kim, D.J., 2017. Comparing fingerprint-based biometrics
authentication versus traditional authentication methods for e-payment. Decision
Support Systems.
 Perlman, R., Kaufman, C., and Speciner, M., 2016. ‘Network security: private
communication in a public world’. Pearson Education India.
 Rafique, S., Humayun, M., Hamid, B., Abbas, A., Akhtar, M. and Iqbal, K., 2015, June.
Web application security vulnerabilities detection approaches A systematic mapping
study. In Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking, and
Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD), 2015 16th IEEE/ACIS International
Conference on (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
16