What are the potential pitfalls to avoid when working with PHP security?

One potential pitfall to avoid when working with PHP security is failing to sanitize user input, which can lead to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements when interacting with a database to ensure that user input is properly escaped.

// Example of using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();