Security Best Practices (Helmet, Rate Limiting, CORS)

With Express.js, we can take simple yet powerful steps to protect users from threats like Clickjacking, cross-site scripting (XSS), excessive API requests, and unauthorized cross-origin access—keeping both our applications and the people who use them safe.

In this lesson, we’ll see how to use middleware libraries such as Helmet, express-rate-limit, and cors to build a secure API.

Securing HTTP headers with Helmet

Modern browsers use HTTP headers to enforce security policies. Security-related headers are embedded in HTTP responses and help protect web applications from various vulnerabilities. These headers are sent by the server to instruct the browser on security policies.

If these headers are not properly set, applications may become vulnerable to attacks such as Clickjacking, MIME type sniffing, and XSS, among others. Helmet simplifies security in Express applications by automatically applying these headers with secure defaults, helping developers protect their applications with minimal effort.

Using Helmet for basic security

Helmet applies multiple security-related headers by default.