Defense in depthEdit

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Defense in depth is a security paradigm in which multiple layers of defense are engineered into a system so that if an attacker breaches one or more levels within a system, there is still a chance that the remaining levels will prevent a successful attack.

An example of defense in depth as applied to a web application might include:

  • Protecting the server with a firewall
  • Monitoring for intrusion attempts with a port scanning sentry and log watcher
  • Keeping all software on the server up to date
  • Disallowing root logins
  • Allowing SSH logins only (not telnet)
  • Rejecting remote connections to the database
  • Using filesystem permissions to limit visibility of private data to other users
  • Encrypting all HTTP traffic (with SSL) to guard against man-in-the-middle attacks
  • Using CAPTCHAs to reduce possibility of automated attacks
  • Implementing a user login system
    • Imposing minimum requirements on passphrase quality
    • Storing only passphrase digests in the database rather than actual passphrases
    • Using random salts to generate digests
  • Requiring passphrase confirmation for critical actions to protect against cookie capture attacks
  • Storage of sensitive information outside the "web root"
  • Filtering of the sensitive information from logs
  • Implementing an Access Control List or some other kind of access control within your application at various levels in the Model-View-Controller paradigm
  • Limiting privileges of executable code using PHP Safe Mode, Apache’s suEXEC, or similar
  • Possible use of security through obscurity

These are just some general possibilities; in the specific case of a given application a defense in depth strategy would look to employ security measures at other points as well.