Just like your business premises and office have safes and locks on doors for better security, your website needs protection and to be secured as well. You may think your website has anything worth being stolen or hacked for, but websites can have security breaches either to steal your data or use your server for spam activities. Hackers are invisible and fast. They normally search for your website to get customers’ account details, especially for their debit/credit card information. Apart from theft, some hackers may just want to erase or damage all your records to destroy your company/brand reputation. Once the hacking took place, you won’t be able to recover the damage done to your website. So it’s very important to take steps to prevent it and make your website more secure.
- Keep your website platform up-to-date
Keeping your website up-to-date is important to keep it secure. This will apply to both the server operating system and any software you use for your website such as CMS software. You or your hosting company will have to apply security updates every now and then to ensure your website’s safety. Also, make sure you quickly apply the available security patches. WordPress, Umbraco, and many other CMSes will notify you of new system updates and make sure you don’t miss them. You can use tools like Gemnasium to get automatic notifications when a vulnerability is detected in your system.
- Toughen up network security
Your website servers may be providing an easy access route to your users. This can make it vulnerable to hacks. So you have to ensure the following to make your network more secure.
- Auto logouts after a short period of inactivity.
- Passwords are changed regularly.
- Passwords are strong and difficult to guess.
- Every device that is plugged into the network is scanned for malware or virus every time they are plugged in.
- Use HTTPS
If you see https on a webpage, that means it’s safe and secure to provide personal and financial information on that webpage. An SSL certificate is vital because it secures the information about users’ personal data, credit cards, and contact information between the server and your website. An SSL certificate is essential for all websites, especially e-commerce websites. Also, If you want people to trust your brand, you need to invest in an SSL certificate, otherwise, visitors may leave your website immediately.
- Automatic backups
Losing all the data can be the worst-case scenario of a website hack. So the best way to protect your website and its data is to make sure you always do data backups routinely. By having a recent backup, you will be able to easily recover the data upon a data breach. While it may be hard to remember to do manual backups on a daily or weekly basis, you can invest in an automatic backup system to avoid headaches.
- Web application firewall
A web application firewall (WAF) monitors, filters, and blocks data packets as they pass to and from a website. It sets between your website server and the data connection and reads every bit of data traveling through it. It blocks all hacking attempts and filters out unwanted traffic, like spammers and malicious bots. So installing a web application firewall gives complete peace of mind.
Once you have done everything you can to secure your website, it’s better to test the security of the website with the help of website security tools. Tools like Netsparker, OpenVAS, and SecurityHeaders.io are some of the free tools available that are capable of testing your website on a similar basis to scripts hackers.
At Acemero, we build websites with custom mod security rules which helps in the protection of your website. We take every security and safety measures to make your website impenetrable for hacks and attacks. Our web development services are top-notch and affordable at the same time. We provide custom web applications with high security for any kind of business. Contact us today for more details.