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The Best Online Courses for Learning Web Application Security in 2023

We spent several hundred hours meticulously testing and reviewing several dozen Web Application Security courses from various vendors around the web. Here are the absolute best online Web Application Security courses available right now.

Updated: January 5, 2024

Our Top Pick

Secure Coding Learning Path

Secure Coding Learning Path

Pluralsight

By Gavin Johnson-Lynn, Peter Mosmans, others

💰 $$$ 🕗 21 hours
👩‍💻 Videos| Code Files| Quizzes

Bottom Line

Great option for learning security best practices for enterprise-grade applications.

This Course Is Great For

  • Expert-led Learning
  • Real-world Examples

The path begins with several courses covering the OWASP Top 10 security risks and how to mitigate them in web applications. The second section covers goes deeper into how vulnerabilities are exploited, and how to prevent them.

Most of the courses in the path were published on or after 2022, so they are some of the most up-to-date video courses available.

As with other Pluralsight material, you get consistently high quality video training from industry practitioners. The courses are full of real-world insights and best practices.

If you're a fullstack JavaScript developer, you should consider taking the JWT Fundamentals course as well.

After taking the path, you may wish to go deeper into how to test applications for vulnerabilities, with the 14-hour Web App Pen Testing learning path.

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Runner Up

Web Security and Authentication

Web Security and Authentication

App Academy Open

By Various Authors

💰 Free 🕗 14 hours
👩‍💻 Readings| Exercises| Solo Projects

Bottom Line

Tremendous free resource for learning the foundations of web application security.

This Course Is Great For

  • Beginners
  • Self-motivated Learners
  • Frequent Practice

This course consists of readings, quizzes, exercises, and a guided project where you build an Express backend with authentication.

Each section contains quizzes to ensure you’ve grasped the material, along with hands-on practice executing an attack on vulnerable code, along with step by step instructions to mitigate the attack. This frequent practice is incredibly valuable for making your knowledge more tangible.

The topic coverage is just thorough enough to get you started working with these technologies. Often in the curriculum, the authors provide links to supplemental materials -- these are important for gaining a deep understanding of web application security. After taking this course, you'll have a solid understanding of some of the common application risks, how to mitigate them, and best practices for authenticating users in a full stack JavaScript application.

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How We Picked and Tested

Course Selection

Our initial research involved spending hours reading hundreds of reviews of various course options, and perusing forums for recommendations and user preferences. From this research, we narrowed down to a list of 12 highly-rated candidate courses.

Evaluation Criteria

We graded the candidate courses against the following criteria:

  1. Outcomes: The course needs to cover the essentials for someone to start working with Securing Web Apps in a professional capacity or on a professional-grade project. That means covering the right topics and not going beyond the scope of the course objectives.
  2. Learning Features: Real skill development happens with fingers on keys, not from passively watching. We looked for courses with more than just polished videos; exercises and projects were essential.
  3. Real World Application: A great course teaches you enough to work on a production application. We looked for examples and best practices from professional experience, not just basic examples of how something works on a toy application.
  4. Support and Community: Learning is better together! We looked for courses with thriving communities and rapid, helpful support for learners.
  5. Value for Money: Many of our recommendations are free courses. But where there's a cost, it should be justified by the quality of the experience and the outcomes.

From this thorough research and testing, we're confident this is the single best guide to Securing Web Apps courses available.

Another Great Option

Web Security and Authentication

Web Security and Authentication

App Academy Open

By Various Authors

💰 Free 🕗 14 hours
👩‍💻 Readings| Exercises| Solo Projects

Bottom Line

Tremendous free resource for learning the foundations of web application security.

This Course Is Great For

  • Beginners
  • Self-motivated Learners
  • Frequent Practice

This course consists of readings, quizzes, exercises, and a guided project where you build an Express backend with authentication.

Each section contains quizzes to ensure you’ve grasped the material, along with hands-on practice executing an attack on vulnerable code, along with step by step instructions to mitigate the attack. This frequent practice is incredibly valuable for making your knowledge more tangible.

The topic coverage is just thorough enough to get you started working with these technologies. Often in the curriculum, the authors provide links to supplemental materials -- these are important for gaining a deep understanding of web application security. After taking this course, you'll have a solid understanding of some of the common application risks, how to mitigate them, and best practices for authenticating users in a full stack JavaScript application.

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Another Great Option

Securing Express Applications

Securing Express Applications

Codecademy

By Various Authors

💰 $$ 🕗 60 hours
👩‍💻 Coding Challenges|

Bottom Line

Solid coverage of the core web security concepts that fullstack web developers need to be aware of, with hands-on practice implementing security in Node, Express, and Postgres.

This Course Is Great For

  • Learning by Doing
  • Microlearning

The course covers how to defend Node and Express applications against malicious attacks and improve user experiences using sessions, cookies, and password authentication.

The guided projects ask you to implement security measures in real-world scenarios, including password authentication for a dogwalking photo sharing app, and securing a Postgres database for a school.

In the final section, there's a fairly meaty solo project where you're tasked with securing a Node application for a bank against SQL Injection, XSS, and CSRF Attacks.

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Another Great Option

Web Security

Web Security

Frontend Masters

By Mike North

💰 $$$ (subscription) 🕗 4.5 hours
👩‍💻 Videos| Code Files| Lecture Notes

Bottom Line

Solid video-based introduction to securing web applications, with some hands-on examples.

This Course Is Great For

  • Learning by Example
  • Expert-led Learning

In this course, Mike North covers seven common client-side and server-side vulnerabilities and security attacks that every developer should know, and how to mitigate them.

Throughout the course, North gives students a chance to look through a demo application and practice diagnosing and mitigating security vulnerabilities. This grounds the topics in real-world situations as well as gives students a chance to practice skills rather than just watching explanations and demos.

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Another Great Option

Web App Security

Web App Security

Educative

By Alex Nadalin, Saurav Aggarwal, Liran Tal

💰 $$ 🕗 20 hours
👩‍💻 Readings| Quizzes| Coding Challenges

Bottom Line

Solid overview of the core essentials of web security for developers.

This Course Is Great For

  • Text-only learning
  • Knowledge Checks

This path mainly covers policies and procedures that are important to know about as a fullstack software developer.

The course frequently links out to supplemental resources like the OWASP Cheat Sheet and OWASP Developers Guide, which will help you go beyond the theoretical and into the practical. Be sure to follow these links to learn more about these topics.

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Why Learn Securing Web Apps

To become a well-rounded full-stack developer, it's important to integrate security considerations into your development process from the beginning, before it's too late. This includes secure coding practices, data encryption, access controls, and regular security testing.

Key Topics to Learn

To ensure the security of web applications as a full-stack web developer, focus on learning the following key topics:

  1. Authentication and Authorization: Understand the difference between authentication (verifying user identity) and authorization (granting access based on roles/permissions). Learn how to implement secure user authentication using industry-standard methods like OAuth, OpenID Connect, and JWT.
  2. Input Validation and Sanitization: Master techniques to validate and sanitize user input to prevent common attacks like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and cross-site request forgery (CSRF).
  3. Session Management: Learn how to manage user sessions securely, including techniques to prevent session fixation, session hijacking, and session timeout management.
  4. Password Security: Understand best practices for securely storing passwords using techniques like salted hashing, bcrypt, or Argon2.
  5. HTTPS and TLS/SSL: Ensure that your web application uses HTTPS for secure data transmission. Learn about configuring SSL/TLS certificates and understanding certificate authorities.
  6. Security Headers: Implement essential security headers like Content Security Policy (CSP), Strict Transport Security (HSTS), and X-Frame-Options to mitigate various security risks.
  7. Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS): Understand how to configure CORS to control which domains can access your application's resources.
  8. Secure APIs: Implement secure authentication mechanisms for APIs, such as token-based authentication or API keys. Prevent API abuse and unauthorized access.
  9. File Upload Security: Learn how to handle file uploads securely to prevent malicious files from being uploaded and executed on the server.
  10. Security Auditing and Penetration Testing: Familiarize yourself with tools and methodologies for performing security audits and penetration testing on your applications to identify vulnerabilities.
  11. Security Updates and Patches: Stay informed about security vulnerabilities in third-party libraries and frameworks your application uses. Regularly update and patch these dependencies.
  12. Security Best Practices: Continuously educate yourself on the latest security best practices, such as the OWASP Top Ten, and follow secure coding practices throughout your development process.
  13. Data Privacy and Compliance: Understand regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and others that may apply to the data you handle. Learn how to protect user data and ensure compliance.
  14. Logging and Monitoring: Implement proper logging and monitoring to detect and respond to security incidents in a timely manner.

By focusing on these topics, you'll be well-equipped to build web applications with strong security measures in place, protecting sensitive data and ensuring a safe user experience.

Prerequisites for Learning Secure Web App Development

Before diving into web application security, it's helpful to have a solid foundation in web development and a good understanding of how web applications work. Here are some prerequisite knowledge and skills:

  1. Web Development and Architecture: You should be comfortable with web development concepts, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Understanding how web pages are structured, styled, and interacted with is essential. You should also understand the architecture of web applications, including the separation of concerns (front end vs. back end) and the role of APIs in modern web development.

  2. HTTP Protocol: Familiarize yourself with the HTTP protocol and its request-response nature. Understand concepts like URLs, headers, and status codes.

  3. Front-End Frameworks: It's helpful to have knowledge of a popular front-end framework like React, Angular, or Vue.js.

  4. Back-End Development: You should have experience with a server-side programming language like Python, Node.js, or PHP.

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