How to Secure Websites?

Website security can be a challenging or even confusing matter in an ever-evolving landscape. This article is intended to give a clear frame for website owners looking to mitigate risk and put in the security systems to their websites.

Before we begin, it’s essential to keep in mind that security is never a one-time solution. Rather, it is a continuous process that needs consistent assessment to reduce the overall risk.

Why It Is Important To Keep Your Website Secure?

Every website is likely vulnerable to such attacks.

You need to keep yours secure. An unsecured site can be compromised. Your customer’s data might be stolen and this can lead to lost revenue, expansive website coding repairs, and several other issues. Having a secure website is as vital to someone’s online presence as owning a website host.

Hackers do not compromise with your website’s size. Whether your website is small or big, less attractive or not, they hack websites to steal informative data or sabotage store on your website.

There are several goals when hacking websites, a few popular are:

  • Stealing informative data stored on the server.
  • Misusing site visitors.
  • Tricking bots and crawlers (you can also call it black-hat SEO).
  • Abusing server resources, and more.

There are numerous techniques to shield your website from hackers. We’ll start with a few essential tips to secure your website.

Steps to Secure Your Website

Protecting your website from being hacked can be achieved if you understand the simple steps described below.

This is not a step-by-step guide, although it will absolutely provide you with direction to opt for the right path.

  1. Install Software Updates

Countless websites are compromised every day due to outdated and unsafe software. It is crucial to update your website as soon as a new plugin or CMS version is available. Those updates might just contain security improvements or patch a vulnerability. Manufacturers keep operating systems and software running efficiently with regular updates. It can be fascinating to start those updates aside to save time. However, some of them need a complete system restart and little installation time which eats into efficiency. This is a risky method, as those updates include crucial latest security patches. You need to install these updates as they are available to keep your entire system protected.

  • Use Strong Passwords

Keeping your website protected depends on your security posture. Great website security begins with a secure & strong password. The backend of every website is password protected. Although it’s fascinating to use an easy to remember password; don’t. 

Source: iobit

Rather, choose something that is extremely robust, secure, and tough for anyone to figure out. The best practice for passwords is to incorporate a mix of capital letters, symbols or punctuation, and numbers, or use a strong password generated by a password manager.

Always keep in mind that never use something that is easy to guess. Using simple passwords are easy to crack.

  • Make sure you use a Secure Website Hosting Service

Host your website with someone who you can trust. Your web hosting service plays an important role in the security of every website under their control. Hence, choose yours carefully.

Before you develop your website to a host, ask them about their security policies. The best hosts work with or hire specialists in the internet security area. They understand the importance that their customer’s websites aren’t vulnerable to attack. So choose the most reliable Web hosting service provider to secure your site.

  • Be Cautious When Opening Emails or Email attachments

Sometimes opening an email message can’t be safe. Some emails may try to infect you once you open them. They may carry malicious programs as attachments or have links to malicious websites full of malware and scams. Clicking on those links or opening attachments can install malware, like viruses, ransomware, or spyware on your device. This is all executed behind the scenes, so it is undetectable to the normal user.

Hackers also transmit viruses through email. Everyone needs to be careful while opening emails from somebody you don’t know, especially if those emails have an attachment. Spam guards aren’t accurate. A hacker can compromise website security with a virus, on your website.

  • Install an SSL Certificate

One of the simplest things you can do to protect your website, yourself, and your users, is to install an SSL – Secure Sockets Layer certificate. You may not realize it, but every day you come across SSL all the time when you browse the web – it’s the reason for the “s” in “HTTPS”, including the padlock in the address bar. The characters in “HTTPS” stand for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure.” Any webpage that applies this protocol is secure. Those pages exist on a particular server and are protected.

Furthermore, even Google has started rating sites in the Chrome browser as “unsecured” that do not use SSL Certificates or encrypt data.

  • Be Careful of SQL Injection

SQL injection attacks are when an attacker uses a web form field or URL parameter to get access to or manage your database. When you use standard Transact SQL, it is easy to unknowingly inject scamp code into your query that could be used to modify tables, gain information, and delete data. And make it difficult for the website to detect what it needs to run. You can efficiently prevent this by regularly using parameterized queries, most web languages have this feature and it is easy to implement. 

  • Run Regular Website Security Checks

Executing a regular security check can assist to identify any viable issues with your website. Adopt a web scanning and monitoring service to automate this. You need to run a test on your site’s programming weekly. By conducting security checks, you will receive a detailed report, pay close attention to the findings. These are all of the vulnerabilities on your website and you can inspect the details of each in the report. It may also classify them according to the threat level. Begin with the most dangerous and then fix these issues.

Now You Know How to Secure a Website

High-grade website security starts with you – choose a reliable website builder or hosting provider, making sensible decisions about how you run your site, and putting in the extra effort to make passwords secure can successfully keep your site secured.

Hopefully, now you know the importance of a secure website. You also understand some of the essential steps to follow to limit hackers from gaining access to its code and details. This is by no means an exhaustive list. However – there are plenty more tips, tricks, and tools you can use to better protect your website. Stay tuned for more updates!

Article Referral

Leave a Comment