

Building a web app to be as secure as possible - SafeandSecure

If I hired a company to build out a web app that needs to be secure (i.e. a tip line to be used by law enforcement, etc), what would I look for?<p>For example...<p>- Is there a &#x27;most secured&#x27; dedicated host? (assuming that the machine will not be housed on-site)<p>- Is there a specific framework&#x2F;language used more often than others for creating these applications?<p>- Would transactional messages sent via email (i.e. sendgrid, mailgun) be a no-no?<p>- Firewall ideas?<p>- Etc.<p>I&#x27;m sure some of you guys from Palantir could chime in.<p>Would love to hear everyone&#x27;s thoughts!
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sgy
Look for building the full stacks of the app from the really down ground up.
Any cloud hosting will be vulnerable. If you can provide powerful in-house
infrastructure and platform, you're good to go. You might end up inventing a
new security protocol, which is an interestingly big deal
([http://ycombinator.com/rfs3.html](http://ycombinator.com/rfs3.html)) .

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fabulist
I agree that cloud hosting opens up many new vectors of attack, but I
completely disagree about building the app from the ground up.

The larger your app is, the less likely it is to be secure. A better strategy
is to keep your app lean and mean, and build it off of existing security
technologies which have proven to be reliable.

But as we've seen with Heartbleed, some of your security measures will fail.
Its important to follow the principle of least privileged, and to isolate your
system as much as possible; for instance, Colin Percival uses stunnel to
isolate OpenSSL from his webserver[1]. This solution is far from perfect, and
it still puts your private key at risk in a Heartbleed-like event. But that
majority of your user's data is kept away from OpenSSL; it limits your
exposure.

[1] [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2009-09-28-securing-
https.ht...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2009-09-28-securing-https.html)

