Hardly a day goes by without stating a business has been compromised by a Security Breach. It’s easy to count the ways that tech did you wrong, and security tops the charts. Have you wondered why? Simple, we consider accessibility and security as an afterthought instead of considering it as a well-developed strategy.
Do you think these complicated tasks can be tackled using difficult methods only? Probably not! Can you burst a balloon with your fist but you can definitely puncture it with a needle. It’s not always about speed and skills; it’s how you concentrate on all the possibilities and hit the bull’s eye. Fortunately, with the help of Content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, and others featuring highly extensible architectures, rich plugins, and effective modulus businesses can easily build a robust presence online. Wait a minute; the ease of launching an online business also includes protecting it from the bad guys. Have you given a thought?
Further below I would like to mention a
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few pointers to take into account to safeguard your website right now.
1. Keep Up-To-Date
It’s imperative to keep all platforms or scripts up to date. As hackers, these days are getting smarter aggressively targeting security flaws in popular web software and programs which needs to be updated to patch security holes. Whether it’s a website, mobile app or even software, make sure you keep it well-maintained.
2. Include a Strong Password Policy
Using strong passwords has become a must-have in today’s unsafe world. The bad guys are often seen utilizing sophisticated software to crack passwords. To protect against brute force, make sure you create passwords that are complex, containing uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numerals, and special characters.
Moreover, you can even think of maintaining this password policy throughout your organization.
3. Use a Secure Host
For this, you require choosing a relevant web development company that emphasizes on security. In addition to this, make sure they are well aware of potential threats and is devoted to keeping your website secure. In fact, you can even ask your host to back up your data to a remote server. In case, if the site is hacked, it becomes easy to restore.
4. SQL Injection attacks
These kind of attacks are mainly the ones in which hackers use web forms or URL parameters to acquire the ability to makes changes to your database. If you don’t use parameterized queries then rogue code and be inserted into your query to delete data.
5. Avoid XSS attacks
Do you know hackers can invalidate comment boxes to insert JavaScript which could then run on every other user’s browser and steal their login cookie? To avoid this, you can use input validation which prevents users from adding special characters into fields.
6. Use HTTPS
A basic protocol used to provide security on the internet. It ensures that no one can interrupt or change content as the users are receiving it.
7. One Site = One Container
For many of you hosting many websites on a single server might seem ideal especially when you have an unlimited web hosting plan. But I am sorry to say this is one of the worst security practices we commonly see. Yes, besides hosting many sites in the same location creates an extensive attack surface. What is cross-site-contamination? Technically speaking, it is when a site negatively gets affected by neighboring sites. Of course, they are within the same server but mainly affect due to poor isolation on the server or account configuration.
What I mean is if there is a server containing one sight which might have a single WordPress installed featuring a theme possibility is there around ten plugins can be potentially targeted by an attacker. To make matters worse, if the bad guy has found an exploit on one site, the infection can spread quickly to other sites on the same server.
8. Never Go With The Default CMS Settings!
As I said before, creating a website with the help of CMS is quite easy, but at the same time, it can be tricky from a security perspective. This means a large number of attacks can be avoided; all you have to do is change the default settings. Adjust to control comments, users, and the visibility of your user information or not allowing a user to install whatever extensions they want.
9. Selecting an extension
Do you know CMS applications extensibility is something which is loved by webmasters across the globe, but at the same time it can pose being one of the biggest weaknesses? There are add-ons, plugins and extensions that provide virtually any functionality you can imagine. So how to pick the right one?
Know a few things in prior –
- When the extension was last updated.
- The age of the extension and the number of installs
- Legitimate and trusted sources
10. File Permissions
As the name suggests, file permission clearly defines who can do what with a file. Each file has three permissions represented by a number.
- ‘Read‘(4): View the file contents.
- ‘Write‘(2): Change the file contents.
- ‘Execute‘(1): Run the program file or script.
In case you wish to allow multiple permissions, add numbers together to read (4) and write (2) you set the user permission to 6. Apart from this, it may also interest you to know there are around three user types:
- Owner –The one who creates the file, but this can be changed. Only one user can be the owner.
- Group – Each file is assigned a group, and any user who is part of that group will get these permissions.
- Public – Everyone else.
Wrap up!
By following these aforementioned steps, you can secure your website to a great extent. Of course, these steps alone won’t guarantee that your site can never be hacked, but the majority of automated attacks can be stopped, reducing your overall risk posture.
So that’s all for now! Keep watching the space to get a better perspective!
Featured image source: Freepik
