There is nothing as frustrating for a business than realising your site has been hacked. A hacked website will quickly lose its search engine position, possibly destroying many months or even years of hard work getting to the desired spot on search results. To protect your website, you should make plans to enhance its security as soon as possible.
- Keep Updated
Technology is ever-evolving and that means hackers are continually coming up with new ways to wreak havoc and hack sites. Regularly reading cyber security news blogs and news will allow you to stay up-to-date with the latest virus news and clever industry tips in how to prevent it happening to your site.
- Toughen Up Your Admin Login
This page is your site’s most vulnerable, so you must take steps to make it tougher for potential hackers. Ways to achieve this include using a long password that contains letters, numbers and special characters. A restriction on the number of login attempts is also advisable but remember that a hacker can also access employee emails so restrict the number of password reset requests as well. For all website assistance, think about contacting web designers in Reading like http://www.starwebinnovations.co.uk/
- Update All Software
It’s crucial that all software running on your computers is current and up-to-date. As many of these are open source, such as plugins and scripts, the source codes can easily be looked up and changed by hackers. That’s why it’s important to run updates as soon as they are available.
- HTTPS and not HTTP
Switching your site to HTTPS is highly recommended and older sites using HTTP might be penalised by Google bots soon. All sites that deal with personal or sensitive data do this already. Information exchanges through HTTP is unsecure while HTTPS is and not accessible by the public. Ecommerce operations must use the more secure exchange. You’ll need an SSL certificate which are inexpensive and provide your customers greater peace of mind.
- Web Forms
One of the most prolific attacks online is the SQL inject. The attack targets web forms that are used to collect customer or visitor information. It makes good sense to increase the security of any web forms that you use on your site. One way of doing this is to use parameterized queries. These ensure that your site has adequate parameters to make life harder for hackers to gain access.
- Choose Secure Hosting
Where you host your site plays a vital role in how secure it is. Cheap web hosting options might save you a few quid, but your site will be far more exposed to threats, as will all the sites hosted on that server. Ensure that the service you choose includes features like SSL, frequent backups and SSH.