Tips on How To Make Your Website Secure
How safe is your website from intruders? You wouldn’t leave your home at risk, would you? Find out how to make a website secure.
Website hackers have been the worst enemy in cyberspace. Their criminal activities usually include minor theft and cyberspace mugging. However, they also extend to organized crime syndicates and state-sponsored terrorism.
According to website hacking statistics published by WebARX, over 18,000 sites hosted in the United States were hacked in February 2018. The report also reveals that over 90% of these websites and blogs ran on Joomla and WordPress.
Most of these sites were either defaced. Others had their traffic redirected to malicious third-party sites or hosting known malware.
What can you do to protect your website from hackers? We do several things to protect our customer’s websites from hackers, including picking the right hosting company for your website.
Discover essential tips on How To Make A Website Secure;
Keep Software and Scripts up to Date
Your website may run third-party applications such as the Content Management System or forum. Make sure all these software applications and scripts are up to date. You can use tools such as npm, RubyGems, or Composer to find out and manage the security vulnerabilities of these third-party software applications.
Install Security Plugins and Applications When Possible
An article published by HostGator highlights the importance of installing security plugins. If you are on a budget, you can use free WordPress security plugins like Bulletproof Security and iThemes Security.
These plugins address the vulnerability of your website. They can foil any hacking attempts that could compromise your site. Or, you can use SiteLock to close your website’s security loopholes.
Toughen up Access Control and Network Security
You need to come up with a username and password that can’t be compromised by hackers. You also need to limit the number of login attempts and password resets within a specific time.
An unauthorized user may gain access to your website’s admin page, so you need to be careful when sending login details by email. Additionally, you also need to hide admin pages from being indexed by search engines.
After toughening up your site’s access control, the next thing you need to do is to tighten the network security.
Install a Web Application Firewall
A web application firewall (WAF) sits between your website server and data connection to regulate all data passing through it. This hardware or software-based application can be installed on your website.
It blocks all hacking attempts providing you complete peace of mind.
Limit File Uploads
Another thing you can do to secure your website from hackers is to limit file uploads. You also need to prevent direct access to any uploaded files. Ensure you store all uploaded files outside the root directory and use a secure script to access them.
There are many other things you can do to keep your website secure.
They include using an SSL certificate, removing form auto-fill, and backing up your site frequently.
You can also lock down your directory, file permissions, and more.
Common Website Hacking Techniques Used By Scammers
Currently, most of our interactions happen online.
This gives hackers an opportunity to manipulate website hosts as they seek to exploit existing loopholes.
Online attacks come in different versions. Those seeking unauthorized access to personal details from various sites and invent new techniques from time to time.
For that reason, it is necessary for all users to gain insight into the approaches that online intruders use to infiltrate various websites to guard against the vice.
Here are some of the common hacking techniques that online attackers use.
Bait and Switch
Hackers can use the bait-and-switch technique to buy advertising space on specific sites. They use these sites to lead users to a page with malware after clicking an ad. As a result, attackers can install malware and adware on a user’s computer.
Most individuals become victims of bait-and-switch scams. This is because the malicious ads on the sites they visit are very appealing thus encouraging them to click.
Consequently, scammers can run malicious programs that appear authentic through the bait and switch technique. They can then gain unauthorized access to personal computers.
Phishing Online
Hackers can track the sites that users visit frequently and devise a replica of these websites to trap victims by sending a spoofed link. Additionally, it is possible to combine phishing and social engineering. This is one of the most common and deadliest approaches that online scammers use.
Also, phishing attacks allow hackers to get private details of their primary targets through the Trojan running on a fake site once the victim logs in and enters some data.
Denial of Service Attackers
Hackers can take down a server or site by flooding any of these with loads of traffic through Denial of Service, which is also part of the most common hacking techniques. Eventually, your server will crash due to the inability to process all the requests in real time.
The often approach that hackers use in the case of Denial of Service is deploying zombie computers or botnets to flood systems with request packets.
Ensure Secure Website Hosting
Staying secure is vital for any business site. If your site redirects people to a malware site or starts displaying embarrassing pop-ups, it will quickly ruin your business’s reputation. If you use the site for e-commerce, the results could be even worse.
Criminals could grab personal information on your customers.
If you lack secure website hosting, you might discover your site’s content has changed.
Worse yet, it might become a channel for depositing malware on the computers of anyone who visits. This will get your site blacklisted, as well as getting a lot of people mad at you.
