Evidence review
What to inspect before changing anything
Start with the delivered website and the real user journey. Record the current state so the team can distinguish an observed problem from an assumption and compare the same surface after deployment.
- 01Inventory request bodies, parameters, headers and uploads
- 02Define schemas and size limits
- 03Find values passed into databases, templates or commands
Implementation
A practical improvement plan
Make the smallest coherent change that solves the observed problem. Keep normal code review, accessibility, security and product checks in the loop instead of optimizing for the scan alone.
- 01Parse and validate on the server
- 02Reject unknown or oversized fields
- 03Normalize only after the intended format is established
Verification
How to verify the result
Verification should test the intended outcome and the most likely regression. Use the production delivery path whenever headers, caching, rendering or third-party services affect the result.
- 01Fuzz types, ranges, encodings and nested objects
- 02Test error responses and unchanged state
- 03Confirm downstream systems never receive invalid data
Common pitfall
A shortcut to avoid
Client-side validation improves usability but is trivial to bypass with a direct request.
Further reading
Primary guidance and references
These sources provide standards, security guidance or the interpretation framework used to keep this guide bounded. Product-specific implementation still requires review in the actual codebase.