Special Edition Using Enterprise JavaBeans 2.0

The Importance of Application Security

For all the talk and attention that Internet security gets these days, for some reason it often takes a back seat to other considerations during application design. Maybe it's because the nonfunctional requirements often are overlooked due to the importance that is placed on "the product working like it's supposed to." Or maybe it's because of the overall complexity of designing and building a proper security framework. The amount of planning and forethought for security planning and construction can consume a large amount of a project's cycle. The irony about an application's security framework is that if it's working like it's supposed to, no one will notice it. When it's not working like it should, everyone will notice. This might be another reason why not enough attention is given to the application security requirements. Whatever the real reasons are, the results of not paying enough attention to the security considerations can be disastrous for the application and possibly the company.

Obviously, not all applications have the same exact requirements placed on them from a security perspective. However, for typical B2C and B2B Internet applications, there are many similarities when it comes to security design and constraints. Most of these applications are distributed component-based applications. The key point in that sentence is "distributed." Because these components are physically distributed over a network, there are more security holes that possibly can be exploited by attackers and unauthorized users.

The types of networks that these components use to communicate with one another can vary greatly, but often some portion of the application must be exposed to an unprotected open network such as the Internet. For example, a browser that makes a call to a servlet or JSP page typically will send the request, and the data within the request, over the Internet to the Web server, which usually is listening on a well-known port. As this request travels over the open Internet, many bad things can happen along the way. The request might contain the customer's credit card information for an order. If an unauthorized person were to intercept the request and get this information, you can imagine how unhappy this customer would be.

Because most Web servers listen on a common set of port numbers , extra precautions must be taken to protect the customer's information and requests . This is just one piece of the security puzzle with which application designers must deal. This chapter takes a closer look at some of the other security issues that you must consider when designing and building EJB applications. Like many other things in software development, the earlier you deal with these issues during analysis and design, the better the chances you'll have of building a more secure and resilient application.