Nobody wants to have a hacked website. If a website is hacked and blocklisted, it may lose up a significant amount of traffic, harm your site’s domain authority, reputation and damage your SEO. Not having a secure website can be as bad as not having a website at all or even worse. That’s why security for your website is important. Cyber criminals always pose a threat to businesses. We see data breaches and hacks in the news all the time. Make sure your website is not one of them. Here are 6 essential things that you can do to protect your website and secure your online presence.
How to protect your website and secure your online presence
1. Update your Website’s Software and Plugins
Keep your website’s CMS, plugins and scripts updated. There are different types of software and plugins added by web design experts for proper website functionality. While using these sources, you may get updated availability notifications timely. Most users ignore these types of notifications and consider them as a waste of time. In reality, updates are released by the companies by adding solutions to different types of problems. It is the main reason why you should keep everything updated to ensure safety and about online malicious attacks.
In case you get any notification regarding software or plugin update regarding the website, you should take it seriously. Try to analyze the complete update to understand what kind of solution your update carries, how it can kick out website vulnerability, etc. If you face problems in understanding or proceeding with updates, you should ask professionals for help.
2. HTTPS and SSL Certificate
According to some people, HTTPS and SSL are just myths. It is not true. These things are useful in keeping your website safe from numerous online threats and frauds. Before creating any negative comments regarding these two aspects, you should understand such factors deeply.
HTTPS
If you check out the website URL, you can see HTTP or HTTPS in the beginning. HTTPS stands for hypertext transfer protocol secure, and it represents website security or secure servers. Now the question is how much encryption can be applied on your website. It is simple; only you need an SSL certificate for your website. In case your website has any functionality, like – login, signup, or transaction-based activities, you should keep the website connection encrypted with HTTPS.
SSL
SSL is a kind of site protocol. It works by keeping everything fully encrypted and secured by which data that visitors on your website share will be safe, and other ones cannot breach it. You can find multiple offers and plans regarding SSL certificates. You need to pick the best one that can be useful in protecting complete information.
3. Enforce a Strong Password Policy
Another important factor is the password. All websites have a user ID and password to protect the backend by which only authorized ones can access it and make changes on the website. In case someone gets success in cracking your password and gets details about your user ID, it becomes a big problem. By accessing the website’s backend, anyone can easily gather complete website data and ruin your website by changing or deleting files.
The solution to such kinds of problems is the selection of a perfect password. In case you pick a strong password that cannot be guessed or breached by anyone, it can be secure. Some people try to figure out what kind of password they should generate then.
- Password should contain at least 14 digits
- Try to create a mixture of numbers, symbols, small, and capital letters
Here, you should mix all these elements randomly and don’t follow any specific pattern or formation of setting up alphabets, signs, and numbers. A random order can increase difficulty.
4. Use a Secure Web Host
Your web host is the source that provides space on the internet to keep your website live and serve the audience. When it comes to choosing a web hosting service provider, you should try to check out multiple factors. Many people choose local or low-rated hosting services to save money. It is one of the biggest mistakes made by them. Here, you should focus on multiple factors, such as – service rating, testimonials, hosting solutions, reputation, etc. You should choose a secure web host that can provide a fully secured and strong server that hackers cannot breach.
5. Backup your Website
A backup is always a great option. It helps everyone in preventing several issues, such as – data loss. Sometimes, people face major security breaches and problems. Due to these problems, they may lose website functionalities and data. In case you have website backup in these conditions, you can easily recover the website and get back to normal. Here, you can ask the web design and development professional to keep the website backup.
After having the backup, you should generate more than one copy and save it on different locations and storage devices. It is the only way that can help you prevent major issues. You can also use the option of cloud storage. It allows you to keep the device space empty and provides the comfort of access website backup where and when you want.
6. Use Web Application Firewall
The use of a web application firewall can help you make lots of things perfect, such as – adding an extra layer of security between your data connection and the web server. It works by analyzing and reading all commands and data files to ensure that it will not harm the system or files. Availability of a firewall is also useful in dismissing the hacking attempts that may cause security breaches. It also analyses the traffic and its sources. In case the firewall detects any unwanted traffic (malicious bots and spammers), it will act immediately and ban them from accessing the website data.
These are some major ways by which you can keep the website fully secured. In case you want to explore more details and understand everything deeply, it can be good to consult things with professionals only. An expert can examine or inspect your complete website and suggest things accordingly. One thing you should always keep in mind is, put quality over money. Don’t pick low-quality or low-rated services and plans for saving money, especially when it comes to website security.
illustration: technology vector created by stories
Ravi Sharma
Ravi is CEO & founder of Webomaze Pty. Ltd. He believes in serving the industry with some unique solutions with a huge variety of services including web design & web development, SEO Services, ECommerce Development, and so on. Twitter