How Secure are the Top Frameworks for Development?

If you've stumbled across headlines like "Top Frameworks for Development," have you wondered why they are considered the best? What qualities does it have so that it's listed on trusted ratings and loved by developers?

If you ask a developer with some experience in using those technologies, they won't give a definite answer. It's mostly: "There are many aspects worth considering when choosing the right framework."

However, for most non-tech users, the reasons for choosing top frameworks for development are functionality, speed of deployment, scalability, and cyber security vulnerabilities and threats management.

The last one is becoming crucial as frameworks' security influences overall app safety. And who wants their data or source code leaked, right? Supposing there's a list of top frameworks for development, how about discussing their security?

Secure Frameworks VS Cybersecurity Frameworks

Before we dive into a comparison of web frameworks security and a few mobile, let's find out the scary truth. Cybersecurity frameworks and secure frameworks are entirely different things.

Security frameworks are security practices, policies, and procedures for establishing and maintaining security controls. To put it simply, a security framework is a mechanism for protecting organizations from cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threats.

They are the standards, and if the company doesn't have one security framework applied or a security professional, it risks losing data, suffering personalized attacks, revealing confidential information, etc.

Security frameworks comparison could be easily found, so we won't focus on them. We'll mention addressing the OWASP list as it's the most fundamental one.

Now, secure frameworks are technology with their own logic and structure, which the developer must adhere to. Their security standards depend on many factors like injection prevention, cross-site scripting, user handling (authorization, authentication), data protection, and many more.

Most frameworks claim they have no vulnerabilities, although it's mostly an exaggeration.

Comparison of Popular Web Frameworks Security

Let's see their built-in features to decide which of the top frameworks for development are doing best at security. I've chosen Django, Nodejs, Ruby, React Native, and Laravel because they are sought-after and well-known.

Django Security Features

Many security and cyber risks are taken care of or automated in this web framework. For instance, SQL injections are prevented by QuerySet API. It parameterizes queries and abstracts away from developers. Pre-built templates take care of cross-site scripting attacks on their own.

They are not perfect, but they do their job most of the time. Providing users access and authorizing them is another awesome feature of the Django framework. Managing the processes and users is easier and more secure.

There is a function that protects passwords (PBKDF2), and hashing is configurable. One more layer of protection is the Cross Site Request Forgery Protection which is explained in the documentation on their website.

The article offers a guide on how to defend against CSRF attacks. They are quite dangerous, as they behave like a typical user but, in fact, are a malicious website that uses the credentials of a logged-in user.

Nodejs Security Highlights

Node.js is a server-side popular framework that's easy to use for web development. The framework itself is pretty minimalistic, that's why it strongly relies on a skilled community of developers to handle security.

However, they have many guides on how to protect users, data, and applications. The framework has some available security options, like the ability to start up a web application using HTTPS to avoid data exposure.

Also, you could access a robust crypto library to protect data at rest. It seems that Node.js security features are scarce, but many modules are available in the community. They address threats on the OWASP list and take care of injection attacks, sensitive data leakage, broken authentication, etc.

Ruby Security Options

The abovementioned SQL injections are done by built-in Rails object-relational mapper (ORM). So, it's taken care of by default. There are security headers and multiple ways of protecting users or addressing the most common attacks.

There are "gems" for adding extra features to ensure app security. One example is Devise which helps set up secure user authentication functionality. Pundit prevents insecure direct object references, a part of broken access control.

React Native for Secure Mobile Development

To be honest, the framework itself doesn't have that many security layers or anything. However, it has a very active community of developers, and if the access to data and users is handled correctly by developers, it's one that has the biggest security potential.

In mobile development, a few points of OWASP list vulnerabilities are relevant like authentication, insufficient logging, and monitoring or using components with known security vulnerabilities.

The most helpful list of security set-ups is on React Native website. Follow their guidelines, and it'll work out.

Laravel Security

It's less popular than those mentioned above frameworks, but it has some amazing security configurations. Laravel typically uses CSRF tokens to not allow external third parties to generate fake requests.

CSRF protection should be set up, but that's not hard. Also, Laravel offers native support that protects the code from XSS attacks. The feature works automatically and protects the database in the process.

Moreover, there's protection against SQL injections in a few different ways. Last but not least, Laravel offers security packages to help protect its applications. As in other popular frameworks, the community of developers might help if you face security risks.

Sum Up

Cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threats are taken into account when choosing frameworks for application development. Development teams and businesses need to be aware of common dangers and be updated on security issues.

I can't say that some frameworks are the most secure and some are completely unsafe. All the top frameworks for development have pros and cons if we talk about security. Security is the metric that should be worked on at the same level as functionality.

Security policies, security frameworks, and secure frameworks should be combined to handle security risks. But, only an integrated approach will bring the best results.