Website Security Checklist For 2017

It's often challenging for online businesses to protect themselves from a wide range of security threats. Big or small, irrespective of the size of a business, any website is vulnerable and can become target of cyberattacks. In particular, e-commerce sites that are into selling of products and services to larger audiences, have to be aware of security breaches because they deal with customer's personal information. Those who fall prey for such an attack are at a higher risk of losing their business reputation and credibility. So unless they make continuous efforts to tighten their web security, the businesses could become target for malicious attacks.

The challenges involved in website security today

To understand the website attacks, first you need to know what the hackers are looking for in your website. The risks can come in many forms such as malware, spam, phishing, DDoS attacks and many others for hacking or crashing of a website. It could be intentional to gather sensitive information or your site can become a part of the hack to reach larger targets. Or perhaps, you are on the same server or network with other sites that has become target to hackers. Whatever the reason might, if attacks happen, the site could go offline or may slow down in its performance. This disturbance in web activity and insecurity to information can make your customers unhappy which may tend them to seek another website offering similar products.

Typical mistakes of trendy websites

Previously, much importance was given to site aesthetics and appeal to attract more traffic to the websites. But now-a-days the focus has shifted to keeping the site complaint with the right security measures. This is mainly because customers are very much concerned about safety of their information and no longer feel protected visiting a website with security vulnerabilities. Yet, some websites don't realize this fact and focus more on implementing trendy design features rather than taking required measures to make their site secure. The risk is more among websites that use outdated versions of popular CMS and other software which have security vulnerabilities that are fixed in newer versions. For that fact, no website is 100% secure. But it is strongly recommended that online businesses have to take measures to increase website's security and ensure proper protection to their customers.

Website security checklist

Make site HTTPs

HTTPs makes your site have a SSL encryption, which is a secured way of transferring data over internet. This allows secure flow of information between the site and the customer browser. It also works as a validation for security and provides an assured feeling for customers that their information is not going to wrong hands. To get HTTPs certified, your web host provider may be the most convenient source.

Have monitoring to check site vulnerabilities

Monitoring website is more like an automated process of scanning your website for vulnerabilities. Regularly monitoring of website gives assurance that you will be immediately aware if any discrepancy is found in the site functioning. Many hosting providers do not take the responsibility of notifying their customers if issues happen with their own servers. A monitoring service continuously scan websites for its functionality and notifies if any unexpected changes are identified in your network. It helps to discover major vulnerabilities across your website before they turn into security breaches.

Is the hosting safe & secure? Are you on shared server?

When choosing web host provider, make sure the service uses security protocols for protecting websites. If your site is sharing hosting resources on the same server with other websites out of which few are vulnerable to attacks, then there is no assurance of security as in dedicated hosting. A hacker attack on a single website in shared hosting can cause other sites to suffer as they are hosted on the same server.

keep software up to date

To keep your site secure from known security threats it is essential to have regular updates of software with new releases. Software platforms such as content management systems can become vulnerable for unwanted threats if not updated on a continuous basis. Unfortunately, old releases have more vulnerabilities and hence it is important that websites should stay timely on their software updates.

Add multi-level security

A multi-layer approach takes all aspects of web security into account and defends websites against security holes. It involves implementing several security steps in design, coding and testing of websites. The course of action for site security may include strengthening access controls through secure logins, implementing good design practices, restricting the usage of third party software with vulnerabilities, having timely updates and patches, using secure networks, using encryption for sensitive data etc. By improving security at different areas of vulnerabilities, you can defend websites from unwanted attacks.

Alertra is a leading provider of website monitoring and alerting services. We monitoring service uptime and check availability and performance of Internet-connected devices.