3 Best Practices for Website Security That Every Business Should Follow

A little over a decade ago, people and businesses threw up websites with abandon

10:53 05 October 2019

They hoped that nobody would hack their way into the contents of the site or inject it with a malware script programmed to siphon off all the data stored in it.

Fast forward to now. Everything about website security has changed and how. Not a single day goes by without the news of cyber attacks surfacing. Hackers launching an organized cyber assault on popular websites and applications is quite common these days, and, in most instances, even web applications and sites hosted on secure servers are not spared. 

The more popular a website or a web app is, the higher the odds. That’s how it is.

Cybercriminals are notorious for looking for security gaps and loopholes in their target systems and jump at the first opportunity to prey on them when they sniff a chance. They fully exploit the sites and apps they target by nefariously modifying the content, stealing confidential data, initiating fraudulent transactions, and injecting malware scripts etc.

What this means is that businesses should be proactive and take precautionary steps in order to safeguard their systems, websites and applications against deadly cyber attacks. In this article, we run through some of the best practices that your business can follow to protect itself from the next wave of cyber attack.

Let’s get started.

1. Use Updated Software and Systems

It cannot be emphasized enough. Using outdated software makes your website a soft target that even a newbie hacker can breach.

By having upgraded software running on everything right from the website’s core files and extensions to the server that it is hosted on to the firewall that’s supposed to act as a shield, you’re reducing the odds of a vulnerability being exploited by cybercriminals. Whatever the platform of your website, find the current configuration and upgrade your website to it. Failing to upgrade is a basic error that may prove to be costly and needs to be avoided at any rate.

Pro Tip: If your website runs on a content management system like Wordpress that has defunct plugins last updated several years ago, uninstall them and find an alternative plugin that gets regular updates.

2. Have a Proper Incident Response Plan

Taking preventive measures to protect your site or web application from getting hacked is just one part of the equation. With breaches occurring frequently, it makes sense to take a proactive approach to website security and put together a robust incident response plan for dealing with attacks.

Before drawing a plan, your IT team or web developers should sit and analyze how exposed or vulnerable your website or application is, and come up with appropriate steps to quarantine different threats that are likely to emerge from different possible scenarios based on the degree of exposure.

If your company cannot afford to lose anything to a security breach, invest in assembling an incident response team and give them the right set of tools and training so they could deal with an attack effectively and limit its impact by making sure that there is business continuity. A good incident response plan should be sound enough to provide protection against known threats and unknown threats alike.

Pro Tip: A good incident response plan to counteract the threat of a zero-day exploit, which basically means a vulnerability previously unknown , is to lock down everything and go off the grid immediately. Sure, your clients and customers may not be impressed with the downtime and find it totally inconveniencing, but sometimes there is no other alternative. By going offline, you’re not just ensuring that your business data is secure and your customers are protected but you’re also giving your IT team enough time so they can do their best to get to the bottom of the issue, identify the vulnerability and figure out ways to patch it.

3. Security Audit

Auditing how secure your site or web application should be your first line of defence against potential threats. It can be in house if you’ve got the right team and resources for it or you can very well contact a team of security experts who usually have a suite of audit tools at their disposal to identify potential threats and help you take proper recourse.

Such companies also offer a bundle of services through which they assure you of prompt resolution of threats and quick mitigation of attacks that cause a denial of service. All this comes at a cost but pales in comparison to the peace of mind that comes from knowing that your website or application is still up and all your business data and user data is still intact and not compromised.

Security Checkers is a team of security experts who are dedicated to helping companies enhance the security of their websites and applications by providing a range of service - they perform thorough audits, reinstate hacked websites without too much downtime and make them secure again. Check them out if you’re looking for help with your website security.

Whether you plan to have your IT team perform the audit or seek expert assistance, it’s very important that audits are carried out regularly, to identify new threats as and when they come up, and neutralize them responsively.