Whether you have an e-commerce site where customers enter credit card information or a global collaboration site where users share confidential data, you should understand the security risks that could threaten your web applications.
Snooping and eavesdropping: Someone can monitor data sent over the public connections of the web.
User impersonation: Someone can impersonate a trusted user to gain access to information that only the trusted user should see or download.
Unauthorized access: Unauthorized users can gain access to sensitive information. This security risk is the most complex because the Internet links every computer to one large network. Completely allowing or disallowing access to a given system or data source is relatively straight-forward, but allowing the partial access required for an application to be useful remains risky. For example, a bank can easily publish a public, freely accessible site with general banking information. Creating an account maintenance site where users have exclusive access to their own personal account information is more difficult.
ColdFusion provides a highly secure environment for web application development and deployment. It helps you reduce security risks in the following ways:
Encryption: Use of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol prevents snooping, eavesdropping, and message tampering as information passes between clients and servers. SSL, which is supported by most web servers, encrypts Internet protocols (such as HTTP) with public key cryptography. A private key resides on the server to decrypt inbound data and encrypt outbound data. After the key is installed, the web server automatically handles encryption and decryption.
Authentication: Authentication checks whether someone is a valid system user. It prompts a user for a unique login or user name, and a password or personal identification number (PIN).
Access Control: Authenticated users have access to particular features or components based on security clearance, group affiliation, or other criteria specified by the developer.