13 Tips to Secure your Website from Hackers
- Hacking is becoming a major concern for website owners nowadays.
- An average of 30,000 websites is being hacked every day.
- Almost every company is facing website security issues due to a lack of security.
- Most of the websites are hacked for the stealing of data or misuse of the website layout. Sometimes the hackers use your server for email spam or to install a temporary web server.
- It doesn’t matter if the website is small or big. Anyone can be the target of hackers.
- Many companies are facing website security issues daily.
- No one knows which website will be the next target of hackers.
- The purpose of hacking is mostly to use a website for illegal activities.
- When the data breaches happen, the website loses a huge amount of traffic that can cause a big loss for the company.
Automated scripts are used to perform the hacking by writing to scour the internet. Some useful tips that will help you secure your website.
1. Keep Your Software Up To Date To Increase The Website Security
Make sure to keep software up to date as it is critical for the safety of your website. It is equally important for the server operating system and CMS. When vulnerabilities are found in software, hackers can quickly attempt to abuse them.
You don’t have to worry about security updates for the operating system if you use the managed hosting solution. The hosting company should take care of this.
Make sure to run the software with an upgraded version.
If the site is using third-party software plugins, make sure to keep an eye on the updates within time.
Remove any extra or unused plugins from the website.
So, Keep all of your software updated!
2. Keep A Check On The Access Control To Increase Website Security
If your access control does not work properly, it can be an alarm for you. It means whenever there is a website security hole any hacker can affect your website performance. Broken access control can give access to your restricted APIs
In this case, an attacker or hacker can access the admin pages from any other account.
Do not only rely on automated testing tools. Do proper manual testing of your website to make sure that the access control is working properly.
3. Be Careful of Error Messages To Increase The Website Security
An error message is a kind of message displayed on the screen by an application or OS (operating system).
Beware of how much information you are putting in your error messages. Try to provide minimal errors to your users. So, nobody can misuse their information from your server.
Revealing your information from error messages can be a big threat.
The more information you will put in the error messages the more easy target your website will be.
4. Keep A Strong Password To Keep Your Site Secure
It is vital to use complex and strong passwords for the server and website admin area. For the users, you should insist on good password practices so their accounts can remain secured.
A strong password is one of the most effective website hacking solutions. You can enforce the password requirements for the users. The strong password should include at least eight characters with numeric values and uppercase or lowercase letters. This is considered a good choice to make your website and web pages safe and secure from hackers.
5. Use Antivirus Software, Firewall To Increase The Website Security
As time is passing the cyber attacks are growing more and more serious. That’s why we need multiple security measures and layers to prevent the website from hacking.
The first and basic step is to install antivirus software in your system. The next security option is a web application firewall. After that comes our IDS and IPS systems. The security devices are available in both hardware and software forms. These website security features are placed to monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic of your website.
6. Use Of HTTP Protocol To Increase The Website Security
HyperText Transfer Protocol is a communications protocol used to transfer information between a website and a web server. This protocol provides security over the internet.
This HTTPS protocol makes sure to secure your information.
It makes sure that no one can alter the data or even intercept the communication with your server
You can avoid different kinds of cyber-attacks and boost the
security of the websites by using the HTTPS protocol for the website.
7.Avoid Your Data Exposure By Installing SSL Certificate
There are some pages on every website that is usually the target of most hackers. These pages are usually data-sensitive public pages.
Hackers usually target this page to delete or destroy your files because this is where your valuable data lies. By removing the data from the public page, your website becomes useless, web traffic reduces to a minimum, and your customers become invisible.
Secure your sensitive information and data on your website by using an SSL certificate. These include your name, contact details, emails, credit card numbers, and any other information.
Encrypted SSL helps in the safe transfer of the data between a browser and a server. (or between servers)
SSL prevents the information from being transmitted without any authorization.
8. Validation On Both Browser And Server Side
Browsers can only point out simple failures and errors such as the empty (*) mandatory fields and others. This doesn’t check the data being entered in the field. Sometimes it leads to any malicious or scripting code. This code that is being entered into the database can cause unnecessary results on your website.
So, validation should always be done both on the browser and server sides.
9. Place Frequent Backup Options To Secure Your Website
Keep your back up ready for the worst-case scenario. When the hard drive fails, it can make you zero from the hero if you are not prepared for it.
To avoid the risk of a failed hard drive, back up your onsite and offsite data multiple times a day.
Set an automatic backup that works anytime when the user saves the file.
10. Most people leave the auto-fill details options. This is also sometimes a threat to website privacy.
Never leave the option of auto-filling on your website.
11. SQL injection is the most common web hacking technique which can destroy the whole database. Use safe programming functions and procedures to prevent SQL injections.
12. Use reliable website security tools to secure the website pages, such as your login and admin pages.
13. Sometimes the file uploaded by the users contains malicious scripts that can be harmful to the website. Avoid file upload options to secure your website.
Conclusion
Website hacking and website security issues have become common these days. Hackers are attacking several websites daily for the theft of information, data manipulation, and other factors. Different company’s accounts are getting hacked, which is causing them the loss of market credibility.
To avoid these security issues, multiple website security tools and software are recommended. Much work has been done in cybersecurity, and much has to be done to provide security to the websites. Antivirus software, firewall, IPS, security protocol HTTPS, SSL certificate are website security best practices used to reduce cyber threats. You can enhance the website with security plugins also.