Category: Support and Maintenance

How SaaS Products Can Expand Your Dream Business

Posted on by Debanjana Ghosh

Want To Gain Huge Revenues With Less Investment?

Investing in SaaS products is a great idea if you want to grow your business quickly without spending too much money on manufacturing, operations, and IT departments.

Implementation of SaaS products in organizations serve for versatile purposes to expand your business at its optimum level.

What Is SaaS?

Software as a service is the program integrated into the cloud-based infrastructure to store data in the servers that can be accessed online.

Never miss an update from us. Join 10,000+ marketers and leaders.

Hence, the third-party vendor provides the cloud servers to store the data from where the consumers can retrieve the online data from their computer systems.

The SaaS provider distributes the software integrated to the cloud servers to the businesses purchasing the SaaS products.

Why SaaS?

SaaS Products are gaining huge attention due to low cost as compared to the traditional setup.

1. Flexible Deployment

The deployment of cloud-based software is extremely convenient as it does not require any prior hardware setup. Hence, no need to invest in workforce and maintenance charges to set up the software. A sustainable and effective solution to deploy IT software into the systems.

2. Subscription Payment Model

No need to worry about purchasing a license by paying a huge sum of money. All you need to do is subscribe to the SaaS products on a monthly or yearly basis. Hence, extremely cost-effective by paying only a nominal amount as per your requirement.

3. Customization

Cloud computing has made it possible to customize software at ease. Tweak your dashboard with the information required to be displayed. Avail the features with different levels of payment. Hence, highly customizable to meet the organization’s requirements.

4. Scalable And Reliable

The extensive data and activity reports are stored in cloud servers, hence highly scalable to handle huge volumes of data in the server.

SaaS vendors accept to protect the privacy of the client. Hence, the client’s data and information are extremely protected and confined to prevent any data leakage.

5. Trouble-Free Setup

The easy setup of the software is hassle-free and user-friendly. All you need is a good and reliable internet connection to access your data from the cloud.

6. Cost-Effective

Deployment of SaaS products gets rid of manufacturing and maintenance costs, hereby no need for technical employees to set-up software. Hence, extremely cost-effective due to low investment.

Transition To SaaS Products

In the emergence of the digital world, the evolution of SaaS products is happening at an accelerating rate. Industries across the world are demanding SaaS tools to manage and expand the businesses.

Source: BetterCloud

According to Better Cloud March 2015 poll, the average number of SaaS applications used by IT is almost double of 2015. Hence, a dramatic increase in the usage of SaaS applications was observed in 2 years.

Hence, SaaS applications are becoming the driving force to boost productivity.

According to the 2017 research report of BetterCloud, nearly 73% of companies will completely adopt SaaS-based technologies by the year 2020.

Moreover, 86% of end-users have believed that SaaS-based applications have generated higher success rates than desktop technologies.

Therefore, SaaS technologies are no longer alternative solutions for business processes. However, it has become the integral core to carry out all the business operations at its optimum level.

Hence, the potential of SaaS technologies is increasing with the evolution of digital space.

How Do SaaS Products Grow Businesses?

The prerequisites of a successful business are engaging workforce and efficient management.

A business will grow in real terms when more revenue is generated with lower investments. In other words, more clients are generating and retaining.

You have a fixed budget to set up a business, imagine if you are spending a huge proportion of the amount to the development and maintenance of the software with a skilled workforce. This leads to the investment at three levels, manufacturing, maintenance, and labor.

But if you are integrating SaaS-based technologies in your business operations, you can bypass the multi-levels of investment. Hence, a one-time investment in SaaS products saves the company’s resources.

Top SaaS Tools To Grow Business

The SaaS Products has lots of potential applications serving different purposes for different teams to effectively run the business operations.

You don’t have to be a techie expert to choose the SaaS tool for your company. Just focus on the features required to meet your company’s requirements.

Here, we are outlining the important SaaS Products to run and grow your business effectively.

Project Management

Project management tools are important to track your tasks to accomplish the projects and deliver them on time.

Proofhub is an easy to use project management software integrated with collaboration chat, organized files, and feedback platforms to facilitate a simplified and coordinated work approach.

Human Resource Management

HR management software is predominantly used in all organizations to hire the right talent and manage employees’ requirements.

BambooHR provides a user-friendly dashboard displaying insight reports on employee’s activities. The effective tool to manage employees starting from hiring the right talent, on-boarding, fulfilling compensation, and promoting friendly culture.

Team Collaboration

Setting up meetings and to get ready for video chat, communication with your team and manager is critical to gain better clarity on work progress and to discuss the solutions to challenges elaborately and effectively.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

LEARN MORE

Zoom is the perfect tool to communicate with remote teams. Zoom allows video conferencing along with the options to share screen, file share, and messaging.

Employee Monitoring Management

When it comes to managing employees, employee monitoring tools are important to track your employees’ daily productivity.

WorkTrak is an effective SaaS tool that generates insight reports of employee’s daily productivity. Get acquainted with your employees’ performance, attendance, idle and active times and protect your company’s valuable data from insider theft. The best part is the tool comes with a load of premium features at extremely competitive prices.

Conclusion

The broad spectrum of SaaS products available can grow your business at an accelerating rate with less investment. Beat your competitors by integrating the SaaS tools into your daily operations.

How To Make Your SaaS Development Idea Successful

Posted on by Jay

With many SaaS companies in the market these days, it’s becoming harder for everyone to stand out from the crowd. That’s why it’s important for any SaaS business to have a well-thought-out development road-map. If you don’t, you’ll do yourself a serious disservice, because a successful SaaS business is built on solid, tested software solutions. Even so, there’s a lot of competition out there. That’s why you have to be extra cautious when thinking about your SaaS development strategy.

The statistics say SaaS has been wiping out the dependency of an enterprise’s old, outdated software to pursue its operations. And the reasons are:

  • Software-as-a-Service has the on-demand usage model with the minimum entry point. Unlike on-premise apps, as z huge upfront costs need to be showered at the time of software updates, customization & other IT-infrastructure related requirements.
  • On SaaS, the end-users don’t have to invest in the total IT-infrastructure setup, as the entire hosting, customer support, and hardware & software implementation process are taken care of by the SaaS vendors itself.
  • The elements inside these cloud offerings can be easily scaled up & down by doing changes with few clicks or adjustments from the data centers and with certain cost allocation, whereas if the investments are done on the on-premise infrastructure, the cost & load would be comparatively heavy.

By the end of this year , 80%-90% of businesses will run their core operations over the Software-as-a-service model. It’s because this software helps to continue with complicated tasks without putting a load on hardware memory, run from anywhere via an internet connection, purchased on a subscription basis, leaves the technical glitches & upgrades part with the providers only.

Never miss an update from us. Join 10,000+ marketers and leaders.

That means software-as-service is here to stay and those who are on a lookout to become a SaaS application development provider, they need to be mindful of the pitfalls of software-as-a-service development and come up with practices & measures that can help them stay afloat & reap home the desired revenue figures.

Don’t know these pitfalls or measures that can help you become a top-notch SaaS app development services provider?

Worry not, the following has all the answers that Infoxen believes will be of sheer help to you.

1. Know Your Client-Base First

Knowing the target audience is very important before starting the software-as-a-service-based development business – as based on that only you will prepare your acquisition & pricing strategy.

A complete list covering buyer persona in terms of his behavior, business type, profession, motivation, passion, demographics will help you march towards the path where you can easily identify “type of product or service they are looking for”.

Know Your Client-Base First

By interviewing such elements or your potential clients, you can plan to create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) first, as such products will always have scope for further enhancements & will always invite users to put-in their thoughts & functionalities within it.

You can develop as many product packages based on every different buyer persona to gain a competitive edge.

2. Choosing A Pricing Model That Compliments Your End-Users Requirement

On a broader level, there are 3 types of pricing models for extending software-as-a-service solutions that you can choose from-Usage-based pricing, flat-rate pricing & Tiered pricing. Let’s extend these terms to get their better understanding:

  • Usage-Based Pricing:

It’s the most common pricing model where users pay the fees each time they use storage, data or make transactions. As a development company, you can opt for this type of pricing model for your clients who have a small startup or financial base and cannot afford to pay extensively at one go.

  • Flat-Rate Pricing:

It’s the basic pricing model where only a single software-as-a-service product, with a particular set of features under one pay, is made available to the end-users. Here a predetermined subscription fee is charged from the client’s pocket. As a SaaS application development service provider, you can go ahead with this model if your end-users are comfortable at paying hassle-free all at once rather than after utilizing the services.

  • Tiered Pricing:

Here a variety of software-as-service packages at different cost plans, features & functionalities are circulated for different clients’ requirements. This model is great to have on-board if your company wants to target buyers of multiple personas & requirements single-handedly.

You can choose any of the above pricing models based on your client behavior, buying pattern & growth opportunities.

3. Keep User-Experience & Customer Satisfaction Mainstreamed

To start on a good note as a SaaS development company, make sure the user-experience & customer satisfaction you deliver to your clients is top-notch. Be precise & careful while developing your first software, choose the UX elements carefully.

Keep User-Experience & Customer Satisfaction Mainstreamed

Here is how you can add on to your Customer Satisfaction:

  • Be transparent with your customers, timely update them with every module, and ask them for necessary suggestions to ensure project success. Along with it, find the best solutions to treat lacking areas before final deployment. Since every development will be parsed through agile methodology, it will be easy to iterate fast & make the fixes asap.
  • To give your clients the hang of your developed software, draft some welcome emails, tutorial guides, or allot a personal assistant to guide through the functionality of developed products from your end.
  • There is no such thing as over-communication. You can strengthen your bond with your clients by always keeping them in the loop, questioning their requirements, gathering their feedback to foster a better product development environment & customer experiences.

4. Deploying SaaS-Specific Marketing Practices

Software-as-a-service solutions since they have no physical traces and changes constantly need special attention when it comes to their marketing. Although, if SaaS products are carefully architected & render top-notch services, there lies no need for marketing tactics, much.

But if the product has just started on hit & trial methods and demands huge penetration in the market on the initial levels, these all things for you as SaaS application development providers can do to gain better traction with your prospects:

  • Give your customers free trials to let them vibe with the product & get the better tuning with it until they don’t start paying for it.
  • Shoot a series of blog posts in the software-as-a-service community, defining your business stories and how you craft products suiting to every project requirement.
  • Reward a customer if he/she suggests you or refer your SaaS app development services by inundating some reward programs.

5. Preparing For Third-Party Integrations Way Before The Software Development

Since SaaS applications work on a cloud network, their integration with data centers & other third-party platforms has to be secure, effortless & quick. A SaaS development company here has to be well-equipped with third-party integration strategies way before they commence with the development phase. Here is how you can go ahead:

  • SaaS applications must have great data synchronization with different third-party channels. For instance, if the app targets the travel tech industry, the integration with accommodation options like Airbnb could be considered.
  • Consider developing a platform that makes your end-users life easier by enabling them to work with PDF files, ZIP files archives to streamline data import.
  • Create a browser extension of your product to let users have your product in hand all the time. For instance, popular app Grammarly has a web extension that allows users to integrate it with already in use applications.
  • Decide the payment integration option that users prefer and are safest in all accord.
  • To achieve great user coverage, integrate your product or software with SDK tools of framework like Microsoft (as it’s vastly used for enterprise suites).

6. Render Software With Possible Offline Mode Support

Downtime of the app or unstable Wi-Fi can take a toll on anyone, especially when the important task is in process.

International Data Corporation compiled a stat that “for the fortune 1000 companies, the average cost they had to bear after their unplanned application downtime was ranging between $1.25 – $2.5 per year”.

No matter the enterprises operate via software-as-a-service applications, one downtime or poor-connectivity can lead to unsubscription of such software.

Extend support of offline accessibility as a SaaS application development services provider:

  • Make provision for the information or data to store even in the offline mode, as soon as the connectivity restores, data should be able to sync well.
  • Make a feature of “download files” (to let users download important files) when situations like downtime come unannounced.
  • Make an automated/manual update function to help with the syncing of data or documents when a proper connection is available.

7. Bring Aboard A “Customer Success Management” Department

“Customer success is not about support or being reactive – it’s always about being proactive.”

Having a customer success management department will act as a link between “where the sales happen” & the “product’s functionality” – which will help to evaluate your customer’s actual health by using mixes of usage data, contextual inputs, marketing, sales & customer support strategies.

The advent of such will evoke the users to share their true stories behind the usage of such software or product, which will eventually help to drive more cross-sells.

This is how you can funnel your CSM or Customer Success, and Management team:

  • Customer success management (CSM) team should be collaborative with the other organizational teams be it sales, product or marketing as it will help in sketching & resolving customer issues from all ground levels.
  • “Users love when they are served beyond their expectations”, the job role of your CSM team shouldn’t restrict to just delivering what users are expecting but it should race beyond the delivered promises as well. Your team can go the extra mile by preparing product based on different users & their traits, arrange some webinars or seminars to educate your product scope, or shoot a support mail even after delivering the product maybe with a message “Hey, how are you doing with the software we developed for you”.
  • Be on tips with the consumer metrics, these metrics can be in terms of – when & how soon the user is willing to upgrade to high-subscription plans, or how much they are liking the product/software that they are ready to prefer it to a friend or inside their circle.

8. Keep Your Analytics Handy To Measure The Key Metrics

It’s important to keep the analytics handy to determine the progressing growth of SaaS development services company, as such businesses are prone to suffer losses in the early years of their operation. Losses occur because acquisition costs exceed, sometimes customers pay only after utilizing the product/services, which is why actual revenue comes very late.

Thereby, it becomes immense for such software development businesses to know & understand the key metrics in advance – to know whether their business is scaling up or is turning towards major pitfall.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

LEARN MORE

To know when to put the breaks on time or know if your company is viable in proceeding ahead, consider the following metrics to measure success:

  • Consider billing date over the booking date to evaluate your revenue flow, as on billing date you get the actual sum flowing into your bank account – this will help you access the true financial health of your company.
  • Evaluate the reason behind the churn rate. Churn rate is a situation where users stop subscribing to a particular service (here it’s SaaS). Calculate the number of churn rates & possible reasons that triggered its advent.
  • Balancing the Customer Acquisition Cost is the cost spent on customers to persuade to buy the product/service. LTV or Lifetime Value is a predicted net profit that is expected from the future relationship with customers. The LTV figures should be 3 times greater than CAC, even if it’s the other way, that should not be continued for a long time as higher CAC value depicts that the company is putting a lot of cost on retaining customers than actually gaining from them.

These were the few metrics that can help to evaluate your business drive & allow you to put in the breaks before you are close to any downhill.

Winding Up!

These were the few ways demonstrating how you can go big with your software-as-service specific development business, the success & profitability of establishing such business lies in how well you are staying in competition and treating your customers with the best possible product ever.

Go the extra mile, beyond delivered promises, know what your customer’s persona is, find what pricing strategy is keeping LTV in action, create your metrics that are visible in your customers’ success, and chalk out several other your side of strategies to funnel your business.

To get basic to extreme support in the preparation of your SaaS-based business model, reach out to Andolasoft Inc, a SaaS application development company, where we consult, develop & deploy the high selling SaaS-based products by following the aforementioned points & hundreds of others (which you will find out on consulting us).

Have a cloud-based app development project to finish? Request for a callback!!!

How To Change Custom Post Types In WordPress

Posted on by Jay

If you’re into WordPress, you must be familiar with “post types”. Considering how widely popular WordPress has become, everyday people are using it in different ways. And being an open-source platform… there are already too many options available. You can’t really ask for more.

However, every once in a while there comes a scenario where you need to change custom post type in WordPress for one or more posts. No more creating a new page, copy the contents & delete the earlier post. We’ve just made the process a lot simpler. 

Andolasoft is proud to announce the release of a ‘Custom Post Type Changer‘ plugin for WordPress. It’s easy to download, even easier to install & super useful. Let’s talk more about it.

How It Works?

Add a post-type drop-down to the quick edit and bulk edit sections. And you can reassign any post-type to a new post type. It’s that easy!

Never miss an update from us. Join 10,000+ marketers and leaders.

*Note: Make sure your database is backed-up beforehand.

Installation Process 

  • In the WordPress Dashboard > Go to “Plugins” > “Add Plugin”.
  • Look for “Custom Post Type Changer”.
  • Click on the “Install” button, and activate the plugin.
  • Move to posts/pages/any other post types & click on the quick edit option to select your current post-type from the dropdown.
  • Change the post types as required & update.
  • For “Bulk Edit”, select the posts you want to modify & click “edit” from “Bulk Options” dropdown. Then click on “Apply”.

You will find your current post-type auto-selected from the post-type dropdown.

Supported Types

The plugin is capable enough to convert nearly every combination of posts, pages or even custom post types, such as:

  • Page to Post
  • Post to Page
  • Post to Custom
  • Custom to Custom

Bulk Editing

With the bulk edit feature, you can select all the posts from a certain type & convert them to a new post type in a second or two.

Screenshot: 1Post Type Changer Screenshot: 1

Screenshot: 2Post Type Changer Screenshot: 2

Screenshot: 3Post Type Changer Screenshot: 3

Screenshot: 4Post Type Changer Screenshot: 4

We’ve put significant hours of research & brainstorming to come up with the perfect custom post type plugin for WordPress. Download it from the official WordPress Plugins Library. I am sure you’ll love it 🙂

Headquartered in the Silicon Valley, Andolasoft is a premiere web & mobile app development company with more than 13+ years of experience. If you need any assistance with WordPress, please get in touch with us. We’d be happy to help you 🙂

Most Important Values Of Choosing WordPress Development Service & Team

Posted on by Jay

It is usually supposed that in the field of dealing, one cannot participate if anything is presented for at no cost. However, there is one exemption call WordPress development.

If somebody would ask me to put my review on WordPress CMS or website, I would say the websites developed on WordPress are manifest with numerous functionalities, seamless usability, and search engine friendly.

The Business owners who aiming to launch an online presence always want an excellent web. The Most Important Values Of Choosing WordPress Development Service & Team site with notable designs these days.

However, WordPress has the perfect set up to make sure the contents of your store are structured logically, simple to achieve, and exhibit attractively.

Never miss an update from us. Join 10,000+ marketers and leaders.

By using the important standards in custom WordPress development services is the only sure-fire way to produce revenue from the wealth and efforts invested in website development.

Choosing A Custom WordPress Development Service:

There is inflexible competition in business and each brand name having a website as an efficient instrument to make their spot on the market.

A well designed, well structured, and attractive website is an important guard that can defend the business owners in this intensely aggressive era.

Also, a well-designed website can engage your users and influence them to return to your website. This will defiantly help a lot in defending your market share.

Wordpress Design

A quality WordPress service always creates a win-win situation as you can focus on your main business and also ensure continual growth in the value of your web properties.

These can be used as effective tools for generating leads and increasing revenue.

Once you kick off your website development task, you will recognize that there is additional compensation that you will be able to avail of throughout the WordPress Design package.

Bring Down The Risk Of Getting Hacked:

Wordpress Hacking Statistics by Sucuri.net Source: www.sucuri.net

The above statistics say more than 30K websites getting hacked last year and it is more than 80% in total.

But at the same time, the developer can bring the risk of hacking by installing the enterprise-level security and can save your website from getting deleted.

Also, the WordPress updates are automatic and free, and you can choose whether you want your plug-ins to update automatically or whether you will handle those updates manually by yourself.

Previously we already made a brief discussion to enhance the security of the WordPress website.

Choosing A Right Development Team And Productivity

When you choose a WordPress development team, it is always important to consider you that the ROI is achieved at the correct time.

Outsourcing is helpful tactics if it generates returns by itself. If you go for to hire developers then the output they would deliver will help you to generate adequate profits to help you cover costs.

ROI on WordPress DevelopmentImageSource: emuwiki.com

The world of the internet is packed with paid ads with assuring results.

Same time, the integrity of a developer is the most important point you need to judge at the time of finalizing the WordPress team to work with.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

LEARN MORE

So, choosing the low hanging team might not make sure you the class of outcome. On the other hand, it is also not good to go for a costly team as they might lack liability.

You can have a look at my tips to follow before choosing or hire a dedicated developer.

Conclusion:

So, you need to find an experienced WordPress development company, who are ready to give their support through the project within your budget.

They must have the feeling of accountability towards your project and concept to yield your business.

Just go for a quick inquiry related to skills of developer’s portfolios, budget limit, deadlines, and assurance to your ROI prior to initial the choice process of the WordPress development team.

Are you looking for a WordPress development team? Let’s Discuss!

How To Install Nagios Core on CentOS, Fedora, or RHEL Server

Posted on by Jay

Nagios® Core™ is the industry standard Open Source system and network monitoring application which enables organizations to identify, resolve IT infrastructure problems before they affect critical business processes. It watches hosts and services that you specify, alerting you when things go bad and when they get better. Nagios Core serves as one of the foundation blocks of Nagios XI – commercial monitoring solution.

It was originally designed to run under Linux, although it should work under most other unices as well.

Steps to install :

STEP-1:

Install prerequisites packages

       #   yum  install  gd  gd-devel  httpd  php  gcc  glibc  glibc-common

STEP-2:

Disable selinux. open the file: /etc/selinux/config by issuing the following command          

       # vi /etc/selinux/config

Then, type “disable” opposite to “SELINUX” e.g  SELINUX= disable

STEP-3:

Create a user “nagios” and set password for it by typing the below commands.

       #   /usr/sbin/useradd -m nagios
       #   passwd nagios

STEP-4:

Create a new group “nagios” for allowing external commands to be submitted    through the web interface and add both the nagios user and the apache user to the group by following the below steps

       #    /usr/sbin/groupadd nagios
       #    /usr/sbin/usermod -a -G nagios nagios
       #    /usr/sbin/usermod -a -G nagios apache

STEP-5:

Create a directory “download “ and download nagios-core and plugins to it.

       #  mkdir download                  
       #  cd  download
       #  wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagios/nagios-3.4.4.tar.gz
       #  wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagiosplug/nagios-plugins-1.4.16.tar.gz

STEP-6:

Compile and Install nagios-core package by following below steps

  • Change directory to “download” folder
       #   cd ~/download
  • Untar the nagios-core tar bal
       #   tar xzf nagios-3.4.4.tar.gz
  • Change the directory to “nagios-3.4.4”
       # cd nagios-3.4.4
  • Configure the package and install 
    #  ./configure
#   make all
#   make install
#   make install-init
#   make install-commandmode
#   make install-config
#   make install-webconf

STEP-7:

Create a password to log in to the web interface by issuing the following command.

       # htpasswd -c /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users nagiosadmin

STEP-8: 

Start the service and set it on chkconfig to start at booting time.

       #  service nagios start
       #  chkconfig nagios on

STEP-9:  

Compile and Install nagios-plugin package by following below steps.

  • Change directory to “download” folder
       # cd   ~/download
  • Untar nagios-plugin tar ball
       # tar xzf  nagios-plugins-1.4.16.tar.gz
  • Change the directory to “nagios-plugins-1.4.16”
       # cd  nagios-plugins-1.4.16
  • Configure the package and install.
       # ./configure
       # make
       # make install

STEP-10:

Start the apache service and enable it on boot by issuing following command.

       # service httpd start
       # chkconfig httpd on

STEP-11:  Now, connect to your nagios server through browser by typing.

       # http://Your-Nagios-IP/nagios or  http://localhost/nagios

Then, enter login credentials.
Username: nagiosadmin & password you have chosen earlier

Features of NAGIOS Core

  • Monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, PING, etc.)
  • Monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk usage, etc.)
  • Simple plugin design that allows users to easily develop their own service checks
  • Parallelized service checks
  • Ability to define network host hierarchy using “parent” hosts, allowing detection of and distinction between hosts that are down and those that are unreachable
  • Contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via email, pager, or user-defined method)
  • Ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution
  • Automatic log file rotation
  • Support for implementing redundant monitoring hosts
  • Optional web interface for viewing current network status, notification and problem history, log file, etc.

Recommended Blog: How to install and configure Jaspersoft in Linux Server(RHEL/Centos/Fedora)

I hope you liked this topic, if you have any questions or comments please feel free to put under comments!

Identify Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Vulnerabilities Threat

Posted on by Jay

Cross-site-scripting_xss

Do you know that almost every website or application has some security flaws which make them vulnerable to the possibility of being hacked or attacked. There are certain group, which are known as black hat hackers, take advantage of this security flaws and try to access or steal sensitive data, redirecting file and even shut down that application and lot more. There are various such types of vulnerabilities and one of them is Cross Site Scripting or alias ‘XSS’.

According to a recent survey conducted by White Hat Security, Cross Site Scripting remain top in the virus list in 2014. It happens when a web application accumulates data from a user which might be malicious, and then stores input in a data store for later use. Entered input that is stored is not correctly separated. Malicious data will be displayed to be part of the website and run within the user’s browser under the web application.

What attackers can do with this type of vulnerability?

  • Hack other browsers
  • Steal sensitive data viewed by application users
  • Fake damaging the appearance of the application
  • Direct delivery of browser-based work excessively hard and lots more.

Stored XSS does not need a malicious link to be exploited. A successful exploitation occurs when a user visits a page with a stored XSS. The following phases relate to a normal stored XSS attack scenario:

  • Attacker stores vicious code into the vulnerable page
  • User authenticates in the application
  • User visits vulnerable page
  • Vicious code is executed by the user’s browser

See Also: Serious threats from Heartbleed Bug

As a Web tester, I know that the technological foundation of Web applications consists of HTTP and HTML. The HTTP protocol is the delivery transport for HTML, the code used to layout and form the Web page.
Cross Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities exist when a Web application that accepts user input through HTTP requests such as a GET or a POST and then redirected to display inputs somewhere in the output HTML code.

System testing or Black Box testing to identify stored XSS vulnerabilities

Input Forms
The first step is to identify all points where user input is stored into the back-end and then displayed by the application. User input can be found in the following sections:

  • User Profile page: The application allows the user to edit or change profile details such as first name, last name, picture & address, etc.
  • Online Shopping: The application allows the user to store items into the shopping cart which can then be reviewed later
  • File Management System: Applications where there is a option to upload files
  • Application settings/preferences: Options to set or allow users profile
  • Blog: If the blog gives permission to user for comments in the application
  • Log: Stores some users input into logs of the application

HTML code Analyze
Input stored by the application is normally used in HTML tags, but it can also be found as part of JavaScript content. At this stage, it is to understand if input is stored and how it is positioned in the context of the page.The pen-tester should also investigate differently through which the application receives and stores users input.
Example: Email id stored data in index1.php

In this case, the tester needs to find a way to inject code outside the <input> tag as below:

[sourcecode language=”html”]<input class="inputbox" type=text" name="email" size="40" value="johndoe@gmail.com"> MALICIOUS CODE <!-/>[/sourcecode]

Testing for Stored XSS

This involves testing the input validation and filtering controls of the application. Basic injection examples in this case:

[sourcecode language=”plain”]johndoe@gmail.com"><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" data-wp-preserve="%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C%2Fscript%3E" data-mce-resize="false" data-mce-placeholder="1" class="mce-object" width="20" height="20" alt="&lt;script&gt;" title="&lt;script&gt;" />
johndoe@gmail.com%22%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C%2Fscript%3E[/sourcecode]

Ensure the input is submitted through the application. This normally involves disabling JavaScript if client-side security controls are implemented or modifying the HTTP request with a web proxy such as Web Scarab. It is also important to test the same injection with both HTTP GET and POST requests. The above injection results in a popup window containing the cookie values.

 

The HTML code following the injection:

[sourcecode language=”html”]<strong><input class="inputbox" type="text" name="email" size="40" value="aaa@aa.com"><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" data-wp-preserve="%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C%2Fscript%3E" data-mce-resize="false" data-mce-placeholder="1" class="mce-object" width="20" height="20" alt="&lt;script&gt;" title="&lt;script&gt;" /></strong>[/sourcecode]

The input is stored and the XSS payload is executed by the browser when reloading the page. If the input is escaped by the application, testers should test the application for XSS filters. For instance, if the string “SCRIPT” is replaced by a space or by a NULL character then this could be a potential sign of XSS filtering in action. Many techniques exist in order to evade input filters.

If you find the above process is little bit complicated or you need some sort of support then don’t worry you can get a free testing report through our accomplished QA engineers.

Hope you liked it. Go ahead and post your comments what you think about this?