The Importance of Website Security

There are more businesses with websites than ever before, but most webmasters don’t understand the importance of web security. Not taking security seriously will leave your site vulnerable to malicious attacks.

A successful cyber-attack can take down your site, compromise the privacy of your visitors and hurt your bottom line.

Why Do Hackers Attack?

Whether you’re a large website or a small blog, hackers don’t discriminate. As a business owner, you have a responsibility to ensure that your site isn’t dangerous and un-secure.

So, why do hackers hack? It can be for any of these reasons:

• To steal sensitive information. Things like login credentials and credit card information can be accessed if a hack is successful.
• Political “hacktivism”. Hackers often hack to spread a certain message or to make a statement.
• For fun and practice. Many do it as a sort of test to sharpen their skills. Some do it because they find some enjoyment out of it. Some do it for no reason at all.

How to Protect Your Site from Attacks

Use Strong Passwords

Simple passwords leave you vulnerable to attacks. Instead, use a password that contains 8-9 characters with a mix of lowercase letters, capital letters, numbers and special characters. Don’t use anything familiar like your name or your birthday; the more random, the better. Never use the same password across multiple accounts—using the same credentials for your WordPress account and your bank account can cause a major problem.

Brute force attacks can be successful when a password can be easily decoded. A brute force attack is a trial and error method of decoding sensitive information like passwords.

Keep Your Website Updated

Hackers are always looking for vulnerabilities in web platforms. To combat this, content management systems like WordPress are constantly updating. Updates include security fixes to thwart these online attacks. If you don’t update your site, your site will be vulnerable to many of these security issues.

Switch to HTTPS

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a communications protocol that’s used to transfer information between a website and a web server. HTTPS ensures that users are interacting with the intended server, and that no outside party can intercept the sensitive information that’s being transferred. Any site that receives and stores sensitive information like credit card info and login details should use HTTPS.

Use Security Tools

It can be hard to keep track of everything you need to do to ensure that your website is secure. This is where tools like Sitelock and Sucuri can be of help. These tools:

• Detect if your site has been infected with malware
• Remove any malware and eliminate any backdoor vulnerabilities
• Protect your site from future attacks with continuous detection and web firewalls

Use Secure Web Hosting

Unsecure web hosting can leave you extremely vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Use a hosting company that values security. Ancell Hosting offers several hosting plans that include 24/7 monitoring and DDoS protection. Have peace of mind knowing that your hosting provider can keep your website safe.

Conclusion

Many security problems are often due to a lack of attentiveness. If you don’t take your security seriously, you are vulnerable to an attack, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a large ecommerce store with thousands of customers, or if you’re a small-time blog with only a few hundred readers. Employ the advice given in this post to keep you and your site visitors safe.