How to Protect your Business Website from Hackers and Other Cyber Threats

• By John Ocampos
• 10-01-2020
• Technology

As you, a business owner, who finally jump into the online world and start your own website, it’s great to know that you can reach out to more customers. However, with more data and information you get from your customers, the more that there is a chance you can become a victim of cyber threat or security breach. Nobody likes to experience this. And for that you have to hire a skilled mobile app developer.

Being a victim of cybercrime is scary. It makes you feel vulnerable and unsafe. When you become a victim of this crime, you don’t only lose the data you kept, but you also lose your customers. People don’t like their information being hacked, and once a website has been hacked, most customers will find it hard to trust the site again. Therefore, it’s always best to secure your site and make sure to not fall into the hands of these hackers.

Here are some simple ways you can protect your website from hackers or cyber criminals that are lurking around the internet.

Secure your website with SSL

Nowadays, many users are aware of sites secured with SSL. This ensures that there is security between a website and a browser. Therefore, important information such as credit card info, personal data, contact information, passwords, and so on are secure to enter a site.

A website that has an SSL certificate gives security to the users and the owner of the website. Having a secure website has also been one of Google’s criteria to be on top of their search engine.

Investing in one will allow your customers to trust you.

Always stay updated with your software

All websites have extensions and plugins installed in them. These are important to run some various features of the website. However, with these software and plugins, it requires updates for them to work well and to be protected.

If plugins are not updated, it will serve as a gateway for hackers to enter your site. It would be easy access for cybercriminals since most of these plugins are open-source software. Hence, the best way is to update your tools as much as you can.

Use Strong Password

When it comes to making or creating a password, we often use ones that we know, like our loved one’s name or pet. However, using personal information like the names of people you know are easy to guess passwords. It’s always best to secure your website with passwords that are strong enough to avoid hacking.

A strong password not only contains letters, but it must have special characters, numbers, and as much as possible it must be more than eight characters.

You also have to make sure that your employees must use secure passwords to keep your site’s data and information safe. Educate all of your employees to keep their password strong and secure.

Back up all your data

It is ideal to back up your data often so that in case of an attack, you still have the important information stored in the cloud. You could manually back up your data daily or weekly, or you could invest on an automatic program to back up your files.

Train your personnel/ employees

Whether we like it or not, some causes of data breaches or attacks are due to employees’ negligence or could be due to their unawareness. Hence, it is important to educate your employees about the use of personal devices when entering the site. They should be careful when trying to access the site using public Wi-Fi or entering unsecured websites. They should also avoid sharing of passwords as this could be an easy way for hackers to guess.

Your employees’ knowledge regarding this matter is a big help for you company. This will save you from future troubles and possible security breach.

Invest in an effective anti-malware and firewall software

It is best to install firewall software to protect your website’s server and the data passing through it. This program blocks codes or hacking attempts on your website. Furthermore, it blocks bots, spams, suspicious traffics, and more.
Investing in effective software helps secure your business’s website. There are a lot of anti-virus software that are found in the market which are great and also have features against ransomware.

Limit or avoid upload of files

Limit the permission to allow users to upload any files or images into your site. This could be a way for hackers to insert malicious content into your website. Once a malicious content is inside your system, it would be easy for hackers to crawl in and get into your data or information stored.

Remove auto-fill

Auto-login or auto-fill may help users to not constantly enter their username or password. It’s convenient in their end, but auto-fill can post a risk. Once a computer is stolen, it is easy for them to gain access to the user’s date or file.

Since we cannot control how our users secure their data, it’s best to help them by removing the auto-fill feature.

Conclusion

In every 39 seconds, a hacker exists, trying to get into websites that are vulnerable. They steal information and data that are valuable to a business and its customers. As sad as it may sound, we are not able to catch these cybercriminals. However, the best way is to implement the steps mentioned above in order to stay away from these threats.

You and your business can be safe from them when you practice a secure way to be online and when you adhere to guidelines that could keep your business protected.