Because of the rise in recent years in cybersecurity risks and attacks, protecting your website is now more crucial than ever. For websites that conduct online business, like e-commerce sites, and for websites built on widely used platforms like WordPress, security is even more important.
Protecting your data and sensitive client information requires securing your website. Preventative actions to safeguard your website can help you save time and money while preserving the reputation of your company.
To secure your website against hackers, you need preventative security measures in place.
You’ve put a lot of effort into developing your website and brand, so its crucial you protect it, below are fundamental hacker protection guidelines that should be followed.
1. Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security
It is best to enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) in order to guard against hackers.
By taking this precaution, all HTTP:// requests will be automatically transformed to HTTPS:// requests, ensuring that browsers only communicate with websites over SSL. If you don’t use HSTS, your website is more susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks, in which hackers can quickly change the domain name and route users to a phony website that looks exactly like the genuine one.
2. Watch Out For SQL Injection
Attackers can access or alter your database with SQL injection by using a web form field or URL parameter. It is simple to accidentally introduce malicious code into your query when using normal Transact SQL, which might be used to modify tables, obtain information, and delete data. Using parameterized queries is the best way to avoid this; most web languages have this feature, and it’s simple to use.
3. Use Secure Passwords And 2-Factor Authentication
We all understand how crucial it is to have a strong password that is different for each login, but unless we keep it in the forefront of our minds, it’s simple to forget. Make it a point to use unique passwords that incorporate lowercase, uppercase, a combination of numbers and letters, punctuation, and other symbols. Just as crucial is remembering to regularly change your passwords (and whenever an employee leaves your company).
One more option to ensure the safety of your website is to use 2-factor authentication (2FA). Yes, it can be annoying, but once the habit is formed, it only takes a short while before it becomes second nature.
4. Install An Anti-Spyware Package
Spyware is a specific kind of software that covertly watches and gathers data from individuals or businesses. It tends to produce unwanted adverts or search results that are intended to send you to specific (sometimes malicious) websites and is built to be difficult to detect and delete.
Some spyware logs each keystroke in order to access passwords and other sensitive financial data. Although anti-spyware focuses solely on this danger, it is frequently included in popular antivirus packages from companies like Webroot, McAfee, and Norton. Real-time security is provided by anti-spyware products, which examine all incoming data and thwart threats.
5. Consider Using Email captchas
When you receive a lot of spam through your website, email captchas are a terrific way to sort through it all and identify the legitimate inquiries.
However, they’re also a great way to ward against hackers, increase the security of online transactions, and stop spammy blog comments, which may turn off potential buyers.
There are many different kinds of email captchas available.
6. Ensure Using A Secure Hosting Service
One of the best things you can do for your company is to make sure that your hosting is safe and secure. In addition to guarding against malware and hacker assaults, this ensures that your website is constantly watched and that any downtime is kept to a minimum. This will safeguard you from any revenue loss and potentially improve your search engine results.
Your website can be hosted by the business that created it or by a different hosting provider.
Make sure your website’s security is a primary concern. Just a little bit of time and effort put in now could pay off later on!
7. Toughen Access Controls And Secure Your Passwords
The easiest approach for hackers to obtain all crucial consumer and corporate data is possibly through the admin access to your website. Making sure that user names and passwords are challenging to guess is the first step in safeguarding your access controls. Make use of both capital and lowercase characters, numbers, and symbols. Use different passwords for each login to your business websites, as well. For each website you log into, you should ideally use a new password. Make careful you update your password often, and take precautions to stop a lot of login attempts.
8. Hide Behind A Web Access Firewall (WAF)
A WAF, or Web Access Firewall, protects the Core dna platform. A WAF scans all traffic en route to a site, removing any potentially harmful activities or attempted attacks before they even reach the site.
If you hunt about, these firewalls may be found at reasonable prices and are great for security. However, because improper implementations of WAF solutions can be easily circumvented, you should have a professional implement your WAF system.
9. Established Admin Privileges
The management of large sites requires a team, and everyone will need varied levels of access. When granting admin access to your website, be important to carefully consider how much access a website management actually needs to perform their duties. Your website will be more susceptible to attacks if you provide everyone who works on it complete access without restriction.
We also advise creating a security policy that is applicable to all site administrators. To ensure that your team’s first priority is your site’s security, this should involve selecting a password, downloading third-party apps, and other crucial site management chores.
10. Change default CMS Settings
If you haven’t modified the basic CMS (content management system) settings, your website is simpler to hack. When creating your website, make sure to change these. By giving each of your site’s admins a different set of privilege roles, you can start by altering your comments and user settings, for instance.
By altering these default settings, your system becomes less susceptible to assaults and makes it harder for hackers to comprehend it. An increasing percentage of cyberattacks are automated, carried out by bots that are aware of and capable of exploiting numerous CMS default settings. By altering these settings, you make it harder for these bots to read your platform and attack it.
11. Encrypt Your Data
Encryption can stop hackers from accessing any of your data even if they are able to access your network and files. You can encrypt any USB flash drive that contains sensitive information, encrypt your Windows or macOS hard drive and utilize a VPN to secure web traffic.