MERN Stack Security Best Practices: How to Keep Your Applications Safe

In this digital era, most local businesses are shifting to the world of the internet, which approaches too many benefits to entrepreneurs. As a result, there is rising demand for developing web-based platforms that one can easily access through the web browser. When it comes to developing full-stack web apps, the MERN stack remains the popular pick among programmers. Worrying about security? No worries, we are here with the best MERN stack security practices that one should follow.

No doubt the internet world brings too many advantages, but with that, it brings some security threats too. As per Statista reports 2022, there were 422 million individuals affected by the cyber attacks only in the USA area only because of data breaches, data leaks, and data exposure. Therefore, it’s fair to say that security threats affect a wide range of websites, both big and small. In this article, we will look for some best MERN stack security checklists that will lead the way to build a secure web application. Let’s start with the introduction of the four central elements of MERN technology.

Overview of the MERN Stack

Talking about the MERN stack, don’t get mistaken with MEAN; there is a lot of difference between full-stack vs. MEAN stack vs. MERN. MERN stack is a collection of four technologies – MongoDB, Express.js, ReactJS, and Node.js. The primary purpose of utilizing the MERN stack is to build apps using JavaScript Only. MERN stack is commonly used in the development of dynamic, complex, and data-driven web apps. Let’s understand four each component of MERN with its best security practices.

Four Key Segments of MERN Technology

MongoDB

It is used to create highly available and scalable internet applications. MongoDB is a NoSQL database that is designed to handle large volumes of unstructured data. It is a document-oriented database that reserves data in a JSON-like format, making it easy to work with in web applications. MongoDB is favorably scalable, which means it can handle the demands of even the largest applications.

Security Checklist

• MongoDB provides several authentication mechanisms, such as SCRAM, x.509, and LDAP. Ensure you use a strong mechanism and create separate users with different roles to limit access.
• Limiting remote access to the database reduces the risk of data leaks, which can occur when unauthorized individuals gain entry. To improve security, it’s recommended to whitelist specific IP addresses for remote connections, as this is considered as best practice.
• Upgrade to MongoDB enterprise model, which consists of too many features that are not accessible on the community version.
• Set up alerts and monitoring so you can spot unusual activity like high disk usage, slow queries, or unknown IP addresses.
• At last, its essential to stay up to date by updating the MongoDB software regularly, which will be beneficial to come over from vulnerabilities.

Express

Express is a backend web app framework utilized to build RESTFul APIs with Node. It provides a set of tools and features that streamline the creation of web applications with ease. Express.js is comprehended for its simplicity and flexibility, which lets programmers create custom APIs and middleware to suit their needs. It is used to develop single-page, multi-page, or hybrid web applications.

Security Checklist

• First of all, step out of the outdated versions where 2nd and 3rd Express is no longer useful. Therefore, it’s essential to shift to Express 4 to fix the performance.
• Use HTTPS instead of HTTP to ensure secure communication between the client and server. You can make use of Helmet.js to set up security.
• Sanitize user input using a validation library like Joi or express-validator to prevent SQL injections, XSS, and other vulnerabilities.
• Express-validator is another method to verify user input. It involves a collection of express.js middlewares that consist of validator.js and a sanitizer function.

ReactJS

ReactJS is the popular front-end JavaScript library used to develop user interference based on components and was developed by Meta. It is designed to create reusable UI elements, making it easier to build complex user interfaces. Primarily it is employed to build interactive UI and web apps quickly with fewer coding requirements. To achieve a speedy web app development process, one can make use of available React development tools.

Security Checklist

• Put on the limitation to the number of requests to a given IP from a specific to save from DDoS attacks. And it’s also essential to make calls on the server, not from the client side.
• To prevent cross-site request forgery attacks, make use of JWT tokens for session management and be sure the app reads only CSRF tokens.
• Make use of multi-factor and 2-step authorization to secure your platform from crashing, which results in exploitations of credential data.
• Regularly update third-party packages and dependencies, and keep your code base current to reduce vulnerabilities.
• Follow the best MERN stack security measure by ensuring that sensitive data is encrypted, both when stored and transmitted over the network.

Node.js

Node is an open-source, cross-platform run-time environment that functions on multiple platforms such as Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, and so on. Simply it’s a backend language that enforces codes outside of the web server. It provides a non-blocking I/O model, which indicates it can endure multiple requests at once without blocking the event loop. Node.js is also highly scalable, making it a popular preference for creating large-scale web applications.

Security Checklist

• It’s recommended to reinforce your authentication mechanism to safeguard against brute-force attacks. Moreover, you can implement mechanisms to limit the number of login attempts from a single IP address in order to notice any vulnerability caused by such malicious activities.
• Implement input validation and sanitize user input to prevent SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and other common attacks.
• The foremost thing is to keep an eye on the data that is transmitted to the front end. Where one can utilize myriad encryption techniques to secure sensitive data.
• In order to invent a strong authentication policy, avoid using node.js in-build crypto library; instead, go with Scrypt or Bcrypt libraries.
• Another essential thing is to set up a cookie flag like HTTP only or secure for session management.

It’s important to note that security is a continuous process, and you should always keep up with the newest version and should follow all the MERN stack security best practices to accomplish the desired results.

Why Should You Go With MERN Stack For Web App Development?

As we discussed earlier, MERN incorporates four different components: MongoDB, Express, React, and Node.js. Each of these segments plays a vital role in creating high-quality web platforms that are speedy, scalable, and secure. Now, let’s overview some of the greatest advantages to opting for operating with MERN for your next web app project.

Single Language Consistency

As mentioned above, the MERN stack is established on JavaScript, which is the most demanded programming language. Consequently, by utilizing a single coding language throughout the stack, programmers can write more concise and efficient code, which can lower the number of bugs and errors in the code.

High Performance and Extensible

The MERN tech stack is regionalized for its elevated performance and scalability. It is a lightweight technological stack that furnishes a faster and more efficient development cycle. MongoDB, which is the database segment of the MERN stack, is a NoSQL database that consists of high scalability and flexibility in nature.

Cross-Platform Compatibility

The MERN stack is a cross-platform technology stack, which suggests that it can be operated to create web applications that execute on multiple platforms, such as Windows, macOS, and Linux. It stands for a huge benefit for programmers who want to create web apps that can be accessed from any device or platform.

Open Source & Huge Community

The MERN stack is an open-source tech stack that has a large community of programmers and enthusiasts. This signifies that developers can effortlessly find solutions to their problems and get assistance from other programmers via community support. There are also a lot of online resources obtainable that provide tutorials and guides on how to get started with the MERN stack.

To Sum Up

As per one report, Finland’s parliament web platform faced a cyber attack, so you can guess if such a high-security website can get under security threats, then how about you and we? Therefore at present, it is a critical aspect to follow all the best security practices to save your platform from data breaches.

Talking about MERN, It stands for the ideal choice for coders who want to create high-quality web applications. Consequently, It is important to regularly assess and enhance the MERN stack security measures in place to protect your web app against potential attacks.

Want to build a fast and scalable web application for your business? You are at the right place. Elluminati is a market-leading web app development company that consists of talented resources of MERN stack developers to hire who work with the latest tech stacks to produce the goal-oriented outcomes that derive success to your doorstep.