Whitelist validation refers to data validation techniques such as checking the data type, data length, input range, nature of data by its format (for e.g. phone number will be ten digits separated by hyphens satisfying the format nnn-nnn-nnnn). Regular expressions may be used for format validation in inputs.

Blacklist validation refers to rejecting data based on a know bad list filter. This is not a powerful solution as the list of possible exclusions will be many and it is difficult to implement all possible scenarios. Blacklist validation should be used in conjunction with whitelist validation but in cases where whitelist validation cannot be applied at least blacklist validation should be implemented.