6 Tips to protect your website from attacks
Many website owners are still not taking the necessary steps to boost their online security to protect their websites from hackers. This is usually because they either believe that their website or blogs don’t have anything of real value to hackers or that their service provider makes them secure enough not to get hacked. There are many ways to help protect websites from malicious attacks, ranging from weak to much stronger security measures. The best strategy would be to implement a combination of as many ‘hurdles’ to hackers as possible. Here are six tips to contribute towards the overall security of your websites:
- Conduct regular website scans
Scan your site regularly for potential malware, vulnerabilities or changed files. This allows for you to see where potential vulnerabilities are so that you can take immediate action and fix these issues before hackers take advantage of them.
- Backup your website regularly
Backups ensure that you can quickly restore your site to the way it was before it was infected with malware. Backups should also be stored offsite somewhere where there is no physical connection to your network or websites to ensure that you always have access to them in the event that your hosting provider gets compromised due to a security attack or power outage.
- Enforce stringent password protocols
Using strong and secure passwords across all your online accounts and profiles is imperative when protecting your website from hackers. Make sure you update your passwords and passwords for every other user on your site every 6 months to minimise the chances of getting hacked.
- Use SSL and HTTPS
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is recommended for all websites and is the secure version of HTTP, encrypting all communications between a visitor’s browser and your website. HTTPS is activated once you install an SSL certificate on your site and its successful installation is confirmed by a green padlock or a green bar in your browser’s address bar next to your website’s url.
- Install a web application firewall
The firewall will act as your first line of defence and monitor your site for known threats. Firewalls analyse incoming traffic and evaluate it based on its behaviour. This analysis allows for legitimate visitors and blocks suspicious traffic such as spam bots and hackers.
- Make use of a vulnerability tool such as F-Secure RADAR
Using F-Secure’s RADAR vulnerability tool allows you to check for any potential security weaknesses on your websites and determine what updates are needed to improve the security of the sites. RADAR can identify outdated software, server misconfigurations, vulnerabilities in plugins and poor login details. This is especially important for companies using their websites for critical business processes such as e-commerce, bookings or accessing important data.
Failing to take basic steps to guard your websites against hackers means that you as well as your customers are at serious risk of identity theft and fraud. Finding out that your site has been infected with malware is a scary proposition but you don’t have to leave things to chance. Following these steps won’t guarantee that your website or blog will never be hacked, but it will at the very least significantly decrease the risk of it ever happening.
