Technological advancement has allowed us many great things, however, it has also brought us many dangers online. For example, hackers are constantly finding new ways to break into highly secure websites. According to Hosting Facts, it is estimated 37,000 websites hacked every day.
The sad thing is that most business owners think that their website is completely immune to hacking. Unfortunately, they only realized the importance of improving security measures when it was too late.
Don’t let your business fall into hacker traps. Here are six things you need to think about to protect your site.
Install a Web Application Firewall
Hackers use several techniques to launch web attacks. Installing a Web Application Firewall (WAF) is one of the most effective defensive countermeasures you can use to reduce various security threats to a manageable list. Some of the attacks that are controlled by WAF include Cross Site Scripting, SQL Injections, and brute force attacks.
Since the hacker first determines the operating system, web server, and database platform, you must use camouflage techniques to trick the attacker. For example, removing and obfuscating a website’s signature via the WAF system can prevent hackers from attacking a site by making them spend hours guessing the exact point of attack.
Firewalls are also capable of detecting and blocking new threats by monitoring foreign patterns in site traffic data.
Update Regularly
Hackers can easily penetrate most of the websites because the owners don’t take the time to download the latest ones updates for content management systems (CMS) and other software. These updates contain important security patches and bug fixes that can prevent hackers from accessing your website content.
Failing to update your software regularly can result in weakened security systems that allow attackers to send spam from your server, tamper with SEO data, and place malware or adware on your website.
Make sure you check the CMS dashboard regularly, to see if any features need updating.
Use SSL
Most hackers can intercept data sent from users to websites. This occurs because the data is sent in plain text format and is not encrypted. Using a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) on your website can prevent this from happening.
SSL is a technology used to establish an encrypted link between a website and a browser. SSL technology actively monitors the transfer of information between browsers and websites and converts information sent in plain text into an encrypted format so that hackers cannot intercept it.
Therefore, when your customers enter credit card information and other sensitive data on your website, SSL secures the transfer of that information. Websites that use the SSL protocol have URLs that start with https instead of conventional http.
Use a Strong Password and 2-Step Verification
Using a strong password can protect your site from brute force attacks. This type of attack uses trial and error to guess weak and common passwords.
To prevent hackers from succeeding, make sure you use a combination of letters, numbers and symbols in your password which must contain at least 12 characters. You should also make sure that you change your password regularly and never use the same password for different logins.
Also, you can use 2-step verification process which requires you to allow or deny login attempts via the app on your smartphone or tablet. This will prevent someone from logging in if they guess your password.
Educate Your Employees
Unfortunately, most hackers and their cyber attacks are very smart and can easily trick your employees. With just one click on a malicious link in an email from an unknown sender, hackers can plant malware on your employees’ computers. This malware can, for example, track your login information and give hackers access to your website.
This is why it’s important to educate all your employees about online safety. Educating your employees is a valuable defense mechanism you can use against hackers. Just like its technical variants, human defense systems can make all the difference in the war against hackers.
Make sure all your employees know they should never click links in suspicious emails, always use strong passwords, and change them frequently. They should also avoid logging into the website your company uses not safe public wifi.
All your employees in the company need to know about security risks and how to prevent them. They should also stay up to date with the latest scams and hacking attempts.
Back Up Your Data
Even if you implement all the security measures mentioned in this article, you should still make sure to back up your data in case hackers manage to penetrate your security system.
When you back up your data regularly, you can ensure that your company can still operate after the attack. The smartest idea is to back up your data to an external hard drive and cloud.
This way you don’t have to worry about a fire or flood in your office and you can’t access the backups on the hard drive. You can rest assured knowing that another backup of your data is safe in the cloud.
Final Thoughts
Protecting your website is important, especially if you have an ecommerce store. Technologies such as WAF and SSL will ensure that you prevent hackers from intercepting sensitive information on your website. Practices such as data backup, strong passwords, and employee education further enhance security. Never forget that investing in website security is worth it.