How to secure your website?

How would you feel if you woke up one day and find out that your website has been hacked? It’s every business owner’s worst nightmare. In fact, some businesses can never recover from that kind of data loss. It is very important to secure your website properly.

Who is really responsible for securing your website?

Consider an analogy. Think of web hosting being like an apartment block. Your hosting company is responsible for ensuring that the front door and the other entrances are fully secure. They also ensure that all facilities are up-to-date, safe and fully functioning and they comply with all the latest regulations and best practices. However, they can’t control what goes on within each apartment within the apartment block. So as the same way you are responsible for what happens in your apartment, it’s the same with your hosting. You are responsible for what happens in your hosting account.

How much does it cost if your website gets hacked?

In the worst case scenario, you would need a developer. And it is very important that you back up your data.

How hacks actually occur?

Well, hackers don’t publish their modus operandi. But basically, they are looking for any weakness in your website that they could exploit. It could be outdated software, weak passwords and so on. They just use automated tools to find weaknesses and when they find one they just do their stuff. But once they gain control they could do all sorts of damage like defacing your website, sending phishing emails out or using your website as a part of a larger distributed denial-of-service attack or DDOS attacks.

What are the ways to secure your website?

Perform regular automated backups. Data backup is your first line of defence. If your data is safe, you have got a good chance that you can recover. You can manually backup your data using the cPanel backup feature. We are all busy and sometimes these things just get messed. So it’s better to use a regular automated backup service using a tool like R1Soft. It will automatically backup your data to a completely different backup server.

Keep your website software up-to-date. This is a common issue. Let’s say that you are using a content management system like WordPress to build your website. It just needs to be kept up-to-date. You can find the latest version on the website of the software that you are using. If you are using plugins they need to be updated too.

Keep your passwords strong and change them frequently.

Switch to HTTPS or SSL. It is used as the basic level of website security. It is also a Google ranking factor. So more and more websites are adopting this. The way it works is to create an encrypted and impregnable link between the browser of the person looking at your website and your actual website and that way nobody can intersect any data that is passing between the two.

Setting up a Web Application Firewall or WAF. Well, you have got an antivirus software for your PC, haven’t you? WAF is like an antivirus for your website. It is a security software that continually monitors the traffic and code of your website looking for malicious threats. Certain WAFs will not only identify the threat but eliminate it immediately. You will also get a visible and clickable security shield which appears on your website so that your visitors and customers could see that your website is safe and secure.