Business Logic Errors: Identifying and Preventing Potential Vulnerabilities

The underlying systems that sustain business operations are varied and often complex. As a business scales in size, it must incorporate new processes, broaden its services, and produce new functionality. Under each new process, service, or system is a web of business logic that keeps operations flowing.

Understanding the major business logic errors that may occur in typical enterprise environments allows businesses to pinpoint potential vulnerabilities and mitigate them. In this article, we’ll turn to the leading vulnerabilities that occur in business ecosystems, demonstrating how to put in place procedures to avoid them and keep your business running smoothly.

Identifying and Mitigating Vulnerabilities

Business logic represents the core systems that sustain the everyday functioning of a company. This spans from the workflows that an organization uses to deliver on its promises all the way to the configuration of its platforms and even the code that holds everything together.

Considering the sheer scope of potential business logic errors, it can be difficult for businesses to understand where to begin their search. Any vulnerability in a system could provide the entryway that malicious actors need to access your systems and exploit your data.

Conducting recurring security assessments of the following areas will help a business to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities:

●Configuration Errors: Admin-level configurations are one of the most important, yet often overlooked, aspects of security. Make sure that your configuration suites are highly secure – if a hacker obtains access to these, they will have full control of your system. Where possible, take extra steps to secure and double-check your system configurations.

●Code Errors: Even minor coding errors could turn into a critical vulnerability. Ensure you penetration test your company’s defenses and employ as many security systems as possible. While threats are becoming more advanced, the tools we have to prevent them are equally advancing.

●Workflow Errors: Business workflow errors, especially in relation to how your business engages with and stores its data, could be a vital vulnerability. Be sure to store your data in encrypted cloud data warehouses and use encrypted tunnels to transfer where possible.

●Permission Errors: When you give users access to data, you must assume that if their account were to be hacked, you’d also be giving a malicious actor that access. Understanding the importance of effective permissions balancing will help avoid oversights and critical account losses.

●Manual Errors: Manual errors, also known as human errors, are the most difficult part of a business system to manage. Even with the most advanced security system in the world, if an employee accidentally clicks on a phishing link, there isn’t much you can do. According to Stanford, around 88% of breaches are due to human error. Training your teams in cybersecurity will help prevent many of these.

While not an exhaustive list, these areas represent where the majority of business logic errors reside. Understanding each of them will allow you to then implement better practices to secure them and prevent potential breaches.

Protecting Against the Most Common Types of Business Logic Errors

Business logic areas have an extensive potential scope, which makes it increasingly difficult to manage them. However, leading cybersecurity directives like the MITRE ATTACK Framework help to reveal the most common threat vectors at any one moment. By using these as a basis, you can start to double-check your system against leading threats to reduce potential vulnerabilities.

Beyond conducting continuous penetration testing, red teaming, and security audits, there are a few useful ways to cover the most common types of business logic errors:

●Multi-Factor Authentication: Many security exploits come from user errors. By introducing MFA, you ensure that only your employees can access their accounts, even if their passwords become compromised.

●Access Prevention Controls: Establishing a strict hierarchy of data access permissions will limit the total amount of data that a hacker could access if they enter your system. Give employees access to data as sparingly as possible and systematically review access levels to revoke permissions from older accounts.

●Secure Coding: Where possible, make sure that your developers are engaging with secure coding practices. Instilling shift-left ideologies within your staff will help to reduce the chance of bad coding causing a vulnerability in your system. Systematically review your code before pushing it to test for potential errors in code and configuration.

●Systems Reviews: Across your entire security system, launch audits that monitor your business ecosystem to look for threats. Modern security tools can leverage technology like ML and AI to even respond to zero-day attacks.

As a business continues to implement security defenses and various cyber defense ecosystems into its operations, the overhang of potential vulnerabilities decreases. While business logic is expansive, your security techniques and systems can cover the majority – or at least dampen the consequences of a breach.

Protecting Against Business Logic Errors

No matter how prepared your organization is, there will always be business logic errors. Over the past few years, we’ve seen the biggest companies in the world – including tech giants themselves – experience breaches and vulnerability exploits. While it’s impossible to create a system that’s 100% secure, constant vigilance will allow your business to get as close as possible.

Modern security systems are able to review your existing systems, right down to the code level, to check for potential vulnerabilities in your business logic. These systems can quickly become your first line of defense, helping to create powerful and fortified underlying business architecture.

A business logic error is only critical if a malicious actor finds it before your company’s security solution does.