Latest News

An unprotected website can cut into your business operations and ruin your reputation in a matter of minutes. Are you sure your online presence is secure?

In honour of Cyber Security Awareness Month, we’re highlighting a series of topics that business owners often overlook when developing their defensive strategies. In this article, we’ll explore the importance of website security.

Cybercrime is an ever-present and increasing threat to businesses in every industry. Without up-to-date and varied IT security services for your IT infrastructure, successful hacks can compromise your customers’ and employees' sensitive data and harm your systems, resulting in costly downtime, legal consequences, and worse.

You already know this — that's why you invested time and money in protecting your servers, your desktops and other business hardware with top of the line firewalls, antivirus software, security solutions, etc.

What about your website?


A Website Is Hacked Every Three Seconds — How Long Until Yours Is Taken Down? 

Did you know that 30,000 websites are hacked on a daily basis?

What you and so many other business owners and managers have not realised is that protecting your website is just as important as protecting your hardware. Without reliable IT security services for your website, you'll be left vulnerable to hackers trying to manipulate, control or just take down your business' web presence. 

You can’t expect your small size or low profile to keep you safe. With tens of thousands of website attacks taking place every day, it’s only a matter of time until you get hit. 

A Hacked Website Can Eat Into Your Profitability And Destroy Your Reputation—Fast

Web users are fickle — 57% of prospective clients refuse to recommend businesses with poorly designed websites. How do you think they’ll respond if your website is offline when they try to visit?

 If your website is hacked, you can face a range of consequences:

• Current and potential clients can’t visit a website that’s been taken offline, which costs you business
  
  
• You’ll gain a reputation as a company that can’t be relied on
  
  
• You’ll have to spend time and money bringing your website back online

Each and every one of these consequences can be easily avoided by ensuring your website is properly protected against the following types of threats:

• SQL Injection: Structured Query Language injection, which can interrupt the queries made to your databases in order to destroy them.
  
  
• DDoS: Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks floods your business’ website host with multiple data requests, resulting in lags and crashes.
  
  
• Brute Force Entry: Cybercriminals break into your administrator account by running an automated program to try thousands of passwords in mere minutes. Once inside, they can deploy malware, change settings, and more. 

5 Ways Experts Protect Websites

1. Use SSL: Investing in a Secure Sockets Layer certificate is a foundational part of website security. This confirms your website’s credentials and provides robust encryption capabilities.
   
   
2. Defensive Software: Deploy an anti-malware solution to identify and prevent malware infections before they take effect. Antivirus software is used in conjunction with a firewall to provide protection against malware, adware, and spyware. Each of these cybercriminal tactics has the potential to do immense damage to web processes and a company’s reputation.
   
   
3. Strong Password Policies: Your website access passwords need to be sufficiently strong. Make sure to keep the following in mind:
   
   
4. Length and Complexity: The easier it is for you to remember a password, the easier it'll be for a hacker to figure it out. That's why short and simple passwords are so common — users worry about forgetting them, so they make them too easy to remember, which presents an easy target for hackers.
   
   
5. Numbers, Case, and Symbols: Another factor in the password's complexity is whether or not it incorporates numbers, cases, and symbols. While it may be easier to remember a password that's all lower-case letters, it's important to mix in numbers, capitals, and symbols in order to increase the complexity.
   
   
6. Personal Information: Many users assume that information specific to them will be more secure — the thinking, for example, is that your birthday is one of 365 possible options in a calendar year, not to mention your birth year itself. The same methodology applies to your pet's name, your mother's maiden name, etc.
   
   However, given the ubiquity of social media, it's not difficult for hackers to research a target through Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sites to determine when they were born, information about their family, personal interests, etc.
   
   
7. Pattern and Sequences: Like the other common mistakes, many people use patterns as passwords in order to better remember them, but again, that makes the password really easy to guess. "abc123", or the first row of letters on the keyboard, "qwerty", etc., are extremely easy for hackers to guess.
   
   
8. Patch and Update Management: Did you know that the most common way cybercriminals get into a system is through loopholes in common third-party programs and services, such as your website host?  Whether you use WordPress, Squarespace, or another service, you need to ensure that you’re keeping them up to date. Similarly, if you are using javascript or python code, you need to check that any code libraries you use are secured against any exploitable vulnerabilities. Leaving your hosting software or code libraries outdated will make you highly vulnerable to penetration by cybercriminals. Unfortunately, software patches can be time-consuming and complicated; most of us just end up clicking the "Remind Me Later" button instead of sitting through an often-inconvenient update process.
   
   
9. Manage Web Backups: Don’t assume your website is ever going to be 100% secure against external threats. You need to manage and test robust backups of all website data. This ensures you can restore and recover your website quickly in the event that something bad happens. 

Protect The Foundation Of Your Business’ Online Presence

Don’t cut corners when it comes to defending your website. It may be your next client’s first interaction with your business. 

Get in touch with the CyberUnlocked team to develop a truly comprehensive cyber security posture that includes your website.