There is a constant battle raging in the world of web application security. Hackers around the world are always finding new ways to steal credit card data from web applications, while payment gateways and software developers are always working to find better ways to protect the data. It is important for every programmer and software product owner to keep up with current trends in software security and regularly update their software applications payment functionality as new advances occur. One of the more recent advances is to move away from using server-side integrations with the payment gateway to tokenize credit card data and start using JavaScript libraries provided by the payment gateways themselves to tokenize the credit card data on the client side.
When you update your checkout code to use your payment gateways client-side tokenization solution, you reduce the number of potential vulnerability points for your application. This is because the credit card data will now be transmitted directly to the payment gateway from the user’s browser instead of first traveling to your web application server then being relayed to the gateway for tokenization. The following graphics show how the credit card data has fewer points of contact to travel through, thereby reducing the potential for credit card data theft.
As you can see from these diagrams, using a client-side tokenization solution takes your web application servers and networking infrastructure completely out of the equation. This makes it much easier to achieve PCI compliance, and greatly reduces your risk of leaking credit card data if you server or network becomes compromised. While there is no perfect solution that will completely eliminate credit card theft, this will at least limit your web applications exposure to the bare minimum.
If your web application has been the victim of credit card theft, and you need help securing your application, contact our experts today to see how we can help you improve your application security. We have successfully helped other software owners identify and mitigate security issues in their web applications.