While internet was initially ‘created’ to make the information easily available for everyone thus with no security, things have changed massively over the last two decades. Internet has become one of the most essential parts in both the consumer and business’ life.
From doing online shopping to interacting with best friends who are in another continent, everything is done via internet now.
Naturally, this gave hackers innumerable opportunities to get information of people and use it for their illicit activities. Both individuals and big business corporations like Amazon, Facebook have been hacked with sensitive information either made public or used for illegal reasons.
Cyber-crime damages will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion just a year ago.
(Cybersecurity Ventures)
For any CEO, be it a startup or global organisation, ensuring that their website has top-notch security and cannot be hacked is important.
According to statics, 93% of breaches could have been avoided by taking simple steps. This fact emphasises on the fact that many website owners take security of their website lightly even in 2019, when hacking and cybercrime have become quite normal.
Although you might know about a couple of tips and ways using which you can make your website secure, here we have listed our top 5 picks that will help you immensely in keeping your website secure in 2019.
Let’s take a look:
1. Have Strong Passwords
This point might seem to be of common sense but unfortunately a large number of website owners still underestimate the power of a strong password. It is crucial for safety of your website that you only choose the strongest of password, which are complex and impossible to be guessed by a potential hacker.
The most important remains that of the system admin’s as once a hacker gets access to that account, they get access to your entire website and user base.
While selecting a password, make sure it is eight letter long with at least one uppercase, numeric and a special letter.
2. Use HTTPS
This protocol is used to have privacy in the digital world. HTTPS ensures to the users that they are interacting with the right server and that no third-party in involved. If you have an online website where users enter their credit card information and other personal data, it is highly advisable that you use HTTPS.
While HTTPS protocol used to be quite expensive a few years ago, they are not that expensive anymore. Moreover, when you compare the amount of money and time you save by getting the protocol, it becomes a win-win situation.
3. Invest in Trust-worthy Security Tools
No matter how strong your passwords are, it is still important that you purchase great security tools for your website that aid you in keeping tabs over all aspects of the website. These website tools are often called as pen testing tools that available for free and for money.
These tools work like the way script hackers do. They test all of the exploits, backdoors of your website and try their best to get into your website data systems.
Another important thing to understand is that these tools will provide you with extensive list of issues, which include both critical and minor ones. At least initially, only focus on the critical ones and once you get rid of them, you can work on the minor issues.
4. Keep Your Website Platform/Software Updated
While using a CMS like WordPress offers a large number of benefits, it also comes with some risks and drawbacks as far as security is concerned. According to stats, one of the leading cause of website hacks and infections is due to the vulnerability in CMS.
Majority of these tools are built as open-source software programs, which makes the code accessible to both developers and hackers easily. Thus hacking a CMS is easier for hackers.
To protect your website and make it secure, always keep it updated. It is a quick process: simply go to your website’s CMS and check if the website is updated to the last version or not. Though it might seem an insignificant tip, it is actually once of the most crucial tips.
5. Use Verification Steps for File Uploading
Ideally, you should not allow users to upload anything on your website as anyone can abuse this feature and upload a malicious file on your database.
If your business website does not absolutely require a user to upload a file, it is suggested that you skip this altogether and keep yourself. But if your website require file uploading option, here are a few steps you should take to protect your website:
- Set a maximum size for the upload files and avoid any DDoS attacks.
- Limit the type of files you will be accepting on your website, docs, excel etc.
- Use file type verifications when the file is being uploaded to keep vary of hackers who try to upload a file with some other type.
- Invest in a good antivirus software that will run through a file before you open it.
- Do not keep the upload files folder in the webroot, this will make your website inaccessible to hackers even when they upload a file.
Bottomline
Secure your website and ensuring that you have modern and most up-to-dated tools to fight with potential hackers is important if you want to retain the trust of your customers and not let the sensitive data get compromised.