public Web access to companys Application database

im struggling to find the best practice to this so any links or research reading materials or any Google search terms will be much appreciated.

Im a volunteer for a local charity organization, a childcare setting.

We have a mysql database that contai开发者_如何转开发ns various tables containing children & Parent information, invoices, staff rotas etc.

What we would like to attempt to do is have secure online access for parents to view there own contact details and invoices.

My question is, is it safe to allow the website to have access to the main database. it would be a second set of userPermisions with only read access to select tables and not the entire database. I don't want the website to open up a hole to allow users to obtain all our data or destroy or corrupt the main database.

Or

should i create a second database that the website will have access to and have the main database sync with the second? I can see future issues if we decide to allow parents to edit there own contact details, pay invoices online.

Web specific details will be kept in a second database such as user name password, forum etc

Its not any thing iv ever attempted to do before and don't know where to start in terms of research.

Kind regards

Matt

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You certainly couldn't hurt anything by having a second, slave/read-only database accessible to your user interface. If done properly, MySQL grants can restrict users to read-only operations, so it's not necessary from a functional standpoint to have a second database. Perhaps, given the nature of your business, there may be a legal reason why you must have a second database though. Be sure to investigate the requirements for protecting PII (e.g. HIPPA)

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Security is an ongoing process - part of it is ensuring proper identification and authorization as well as defense in depth - ensuring that the account used to access the database has least privileges and that the surface area exposed to that account is minimal. Also if the database is on the same machine as the web server, then ensuring that a compromise of the web server doesn't also compromise the database.

You also have to contend with the standard social elements - ensuring users have a way to get their first password/setup an account, maintain their own passwords. You should not store their passwords (even encrypted), but instead store only a salted hash. When they forget their password, the reset it themselves, since the web site cannot and should not send them a permanent password via email.

And you should be aware of XSS (cross-site scripting attacks), SQL injection - you should be able to find references to that in most discussions of web application development.