Keeping your website’s information safe is extremely important for many reasons. Today, I want to share some tips to help you make sure your website is not one that contributes to some of the statistics below.
Keep Your Site Secure with These Tips
HTTPS
Have you noticed the lock that pops up next to the URL of the site you’re on? Or maybe you’ve noticed when the lock wasn’t showing and decided to navigate away from that site. It has become increasingly more important for a site to have HTTPS instead of HTTP for security reasons. (The “S” stands for secure.) The lock you see by the URL lets you know that site has HTTPS and that your information is secure and encrypted. If your site does not already have HTTPS, read this information from Google to see how to get your site’s certificate.
Website Vulnerability Scanner
A website scanner can help you find weak spots in your site’s security before anything else does. The scanner will scan and analyze all pages and files that are discoverable on the site. It does this by performing simulated attacks against the site, analyzes the results, and reports the findings. With a website scanner, you can be sure to find any weak areas in your site and fix them to avoid being vulnerable to an attack.
Web Application Firewall
A Web Application Firewall (WAF) can help protect your site by monitoring traffic between your site and the internet. A WAF stands in front of any web applications and serves as a guard that filters out any malicious traffic by using a set of rules to assess all traffic. Utilizing this can help protect your site, and your server, by requiring traffic to pass through the firewall before being able to access your site. A Web Application Firewall can be set up three different ways, a network-based WAF, a host-based WAF, or a cloud based WAF.
Updating Software
Regularly updating the software on your website can aid in keeping your website secure. For WordPress users, its vulnerability mostly comes from plugins. Before installing a plugin, check to make sure it is safe. Then, moving forward, be sure to keep it up-to-date as the majority of updates involve improving the security of the plugin.
Backing up your site
Backing up your site might not be something you originally thought to do, but if you ever find yourself in a situation where you need a backup of your site, you’ll be glad you did. Things happen. If your site gets hacked, having the latest backup is an easy way to get it back up and running properly. Other things can happen such as your site crashing or the last edit made broke some important pieces of the site or maybe you accidentally deleted some of your site’s files. If you have backed up your site recently, then it becomes an easy fix. When looking at different option for backing up your site, keep these in mind.
- Be Automatic. Having backups run automatically prevents you from forgetting to back up the site regularly.
- Backups are stored offsite. You don’t want it to be stored on the site itself.
- It is secure. A site’s backup will include private data such as customer data and certain database passwords. You want to make sure the backup and where it is stored is secure.
- Backups are tested. Do an initial test to ensure that your site can be rebuilt from the backup. Then this test should be performed periodically to make sure your backups will always work.
- Be sure to back up your site before any new plugin or major change to the site. If the plugin or change breaks the site, or you simply don’t like it, reinstating the version prior to the change is easy.
Passwords!
One of the most common ways for hackers to break into a site or computer is through guessing passwords. Creating a unique password that is not simple or easily predicted for all accounts is crucial to keeping your information secure. Multi-factor authentication is a way to add an additional layer of protection to your accounts.
Summary
Many people are affected by insecure sites every year, whether they be a business owner or customer. It is important to keep your website, your data, and your customers’ data secure. Doing this not only helps to protect your business but also helps build trust with your customers so they keep coming back. While no one can be 100% protected from cyber-attacks, utilizing the tips mentioned in this post will add extra security to your site and help you be prepared in the event of an attempted attack.
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