Protect your website against security threats - 2020.

Website security is becoming an increasing challenge for companies with the growing number of cyber-attacks and threats from hackers. With improvement in technology, even cyber criminals have started using advanced equipment to target networks through different malicious activities.

Online companies need to protect their customer information and ensure that they can navigate your website in a safe and secure environment.

This requires providing data encryption using free ssl certificate provided by trusted companies to instill greater confidence and trust among your website users.

The free version is valid for 30 days and recognized by most of the browsers and devices.

What are some of the common website security threats?

• DDoS attacks

Distributed Denial of Service refers to malicious attempt by hackers to prevent normal traffic of specific server or network by flooding it with overwhelming internet traffic. They may be used to target multiple resources including banks or even news websites.

There are different types of DDoS attacks including application layer DDoS attacks which are aimed at exhausting the resources of the targeted server or website and disrupts user access to them. On the other hand, protocol DDoS are targeted at the networking layer of the systems.

• WHOIS domain registration

If the users register their domain name, all their personal information is available for viewing to the public. Thus, all one needs to do to find out anyone’s domain registration information is to quickly run the WHOIS search on the domain.

This can be quite scary as data miners can easily have access to your personal information and use it to send spam mails or add your contacts to mailing lists.

• Spam

Spamming may not have a direct impact on your website, but eventually it might harm your business.

Most of the spam messages comprise of spywares, harmful virus and other kind of applications which can infect your files and cause damage to your computer. They can even affect the disk space and the bandwidth of the web hosting server.

• Search engine blacklist

One of the worst possibilities is being blacklisted by the search engines as they may not appear in any of the Google searches and lose complete visibility on the Internet.

This can usually occur especially if your website has been affected with malware which can harm your computer and lower your search engine rankings.

• Viruses and malware

There are different kinds of viruses and malware which may cause harm to your computer or website.

Spywares are used mainly for stealing sensitive information whereas ransomware is used to blackmail, and other computer scripts may be used to send spam emails.

Trojan horses can be used to copy data or stealing, modifying and deleting information from your computer.

How to Protect website hacking and safeguard your website?

• Install SSL certificates:

Free SSL certificate can help in encrypting sensitive information on your website and are useful in securing communications across networks. Free SSL Cert provide a more secure and safe browsing experience to your users and discourages intruders from hacking sensitive information related to credit card or payment transactions.

Thus, having dedicated SSL certificates can ensure that any information passed over HTTPS connection remains secure as Google emphasizes on HTTPS connection over HTTP.

• Registry lock protection:

Registry lock can offer an added layer of security to your domain by making it difficult for hackers to hijack domains or make any modifications to DNS without doing stringent checks. With registry locks, multiple parties need to provide authorization while making any changes.

• Two step verification:

It’s recommended to have two factor authentications for all your online accounts which involves using two steps for verification that provides higher level of authentication and trust compared to single factor authentication.

This applies even to domain name registration which needs to provide two step verification for its users.

• Have regular backups:

It’s necessary to have a solid back up of all the vital information in case of loss due to theft or hacking attempts. It’s important to keep your files safe and secure and take a backup and store them using cloud storage.

There are other ways to have backups using DropBox and Google Drive for all your important files and restore them easily during disasters.

• Safeguard against cross scripting:

Cross site scripting attacks may cause serious harm to your website as they inject malicious JavaScript code into web pages. It runs on the browser and makes changes to the content or steals information which is sent back to the attacker.

One of the powerful mechanisms is the content security policy which helps to reduce the impact of cross site scripting along with other web security vulnerabilities.

• Set up hotlink protection:

Hot links can occur when another website displays the images and hyperlinks of your website on their website which is also known as bandwidth theft. It can reduce the disk space and bandwidth space available on your website.

Thus, having hotlink protection using web tools can prevent other websites from linking to your sites and helps to limit outbound traffic to your account.

• Prevent DDoS attacks:

DDoS attacks are one of the most common website security threats which has existed since a long time resulting in slowing down of web servers and can affect the performance of websites present on the server.

There is anti DDoS software which are available and included along with the firewall and router that may offer protection against such attacks.

• Bot blocking mechanism:

Bot management solutions may need to deployed to block unwanted and bad bots so that they can be redirected to another page or blocked completely from having access to the resource.

The robots.txt file may also be used to set up honeypots which exposes the malicious bots on the webpage by identifying their IP address.

• Providing spam protection:

Spams can have a drastic impact on your websites indirectly as they comprise of harmful virus, spywares and other kinds of applications which can infect your computer.

Installing anti-spam software or tools may help in preventing spams and protecting your website.

Conclusion:

Cyber crimes and fraud activities can have a significant impact on online business, and they need to be prepared to manage the growing security concerns and challenges.

It’s imperative that companies follow the best security practices and have the right measures to improve and strengthen their website security.

Jitendra Dabhi is blogger at Tech Untouch and The Windows 10 Tips. He is a passionate blogger and turned blogging into a money making ideas for smart passive income.