How can PHP developers protect user data from security breaches and unauthorized access?

To protect user data from security breaches and unauthorized access, PHP developers can implement secure coding practices such as input validation, using parameterized queries to prevent SQL injection attacks, encrypting sensitive data, implementing proper access controls, and keeping PHP and server software up to date with security patches. 

// Example of input validation to protect against SQL injection
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];
$clean_input = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $user_input);
$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '$clean_input'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

Keywords

SQL injection password hashing SSL/TLS encryption cross-site scripting (XSS) input validation

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