Currently millions of sites on the internet, servers and mobile devices are targets of cybercrime. Out of all of them, websites are more likely to be attacked by so-called hackers. That’s why is important measure website security as part of a managing process.
When a website is hacked, it can lose up to 98% of its traffic. That translates into a significant amount of lost money.
Web servers are used as a bridge between the network and the real world. The maintenance, updates, and coding of each site serves to have control over the website and mitigate any possible attack risk.
What is web security for?
Web security is the measures taken to protect a website by preventing and responding to cyber threats.
The website security division is as important as any other area of the digital process. Not having a web security means your online property is exposed to anyone with intentions to ruin your reputation and steal your client’s data.
A website’s ultimate goal is to convert visitors into clients, but the more traffic a site has without proper website security, the more likely it is to open holes through which attackers infiltrates.
Technically, the same programming that increases the value of your site on the internet and helps to improve interactions with users may also represent weaknesses or direct errors, which represents a security risk.
A cyber attack to your website can be totally silent, since it can involve the hidden installation of malicious code that collects information from visitors, and this can cause a strong loss of trust between the network.
Security tips for website owners seeking to mitigate risk to their web properties:
1. Update constantly
When you have an obsolete and insecure software, it’s like having the windows open to the cybercrime. That’s why it’s important to update the site as soon as a new plugin or version of CMS is available.
Nowadays most hacking is doing automatically. Robots scan every site, looking for exploit opportunities. Unless a website firewall is running, you need to update as soon as the updates are released.
2. Passwords
Many accounts use extremely simple passwords because they ignore these circumstances. There are several websites with lists of common passwords, such as haveibeenpwned.com. If you check and yours is there, it’s inevitable that your site will be hacked at some point.
To create a “strong” password there are 3 fundamental requirements that must always be followed: Complex, Long, Unique.
Complex: Passwords must be random
It is too innocent to think that someone cannot guess a password by not knowing the date of birthday or the name of the owner’s favorite team. There are decryption programs that can guess millions of passwords in minutes.
Long: Passwords must be longer than 12 characters.
When it comes to online access systems, even the most basic should follow guidelines for security like limiting the number of connection attempts failed.
Unique: Passwords must not repeat
Do not use the same password for different sites. If you are not able to memorize all these passwords, there are tools out there that can help you randomly generate and keep your passwords safe.
3. One Site = One Server
There is always the temptation to host numerous sites on a single server. Unfortunately, this is one of the worst security practices frequently used. Hosting many sites in the same place creates a very large attack surface.
This result in not only all sites being vulnerable at the same time, but also makes the process of cleaning slower and difficult. Infected sites can continue to infect each other endlessly.
4. Sensitive User Access
This rule only applies to sites that have multiple access points.
It’s important for each user to have the adequate permissions to do their job. If you require momentarily permission, grant and remove it once the work is complete. Not everyone needs privileged access.
For example, if a person wants to write a guest post on a blog, the owner must make sure that the guest’s account doesn’t have administrator privileges. The account of the guest should only be able to create new posts and edit their own messages, because there is no need for them to change the configuration of the web page.
5. Backup copies
Like everything else in the digital world, you can lost everything in a catastrophic event. People often don’t support things enough. Take the time to consider backup solutions for your website.
Backing up your website is very important, but storing these backup copies of your web server is also a major security risk. These backups contain outdated versions of your CMS and extensions that are available to the public, giving hackers easy access to your server. Consider encrypted or offline backups as a possibility.
Although it is always better to have the help of an expert to ensure total security, being aware of these problems will lead you to carry out these measures that are simple but that will reduce the risk of a site being hacked.
When you protect your website, you are also protecting your visitors from:
- Stolen Data: It could be sensible information such as email, addresses and payment information.
- Session hijacking: Cyber attackers take over a user’s session and make their command make undesired actions on a site.
- Unwanted redirects: Attackers redirect visitors from the site they are visiting to a malicious website.
- SEO Spam: Unusual links, pages and comments can be displayed on a site by the hackers to distract your visitors.
en Mérida, Yucatán