The Headnote
More than 50,000 per day — that’s how many websites are hacked daily, including those mischances eventually becoming fatal to businesses attacked. No doubt, the statistics wouldn’t have been this alarming if more entrepreneurs were more diligent as to existing risks. But most people, as they hear about another severe data theft or leakage incident happening, tend to think that will never happen to their companies, believing that cybercriminals surely have a bigger fish to fry…
Meanwhile, 43% of cybercrimes target small businesses — and that’s the real state of affairs. It’s interesting, however, that 74% of the websites are attacked not for hackers’ self-serving purposes (like theft of email addresses or credit card info), but in the name of rivalry — so that for SEO reasons, such as the intention to drown competitor’s website through impacting their Google search rankings.
Now, let me make it clear: all the above wasn’t an attempt to frighten you or something. My only goal was to emphasize, in numbers and samples, that the field of cybercrime keep tirelessly improving its techniques of hijacking and bypassing — which is why it’s in each and every business owner’s best interest to take proper care of the website cybersecurity… before an attack makes them do so forcibly one day.
Common Website Security Threats
There’s a multitude of sophisticated methods and techniques that intruders implement through their attacks. So before we go any further, I’d like to give you a brief overview of a few most common website security menaces.
Spam Messages
No doubt, having your mailbox flooded with piles of spam on a daily basis is annoying — not mentioning the abundance of popups you face every now and then as you’re surfing the internet. However, spam can be more malicious than it seems.
Say, an army of bots overflows the comments section of your webpage posting tens of links leading to another site — as an attempt to build backlinks. The nasty side of such a situation is obvious: in case the link contains malware, some of your visitors might get their system infected, which further may associate with your brand. But that is not all: since Google’s crawlers are able to detect malicious URLs, your website might get penalized for hosting spam. Needless to say, that will run your SEO ranking down.
Malicious Software
Just think about it: nearly 230,000 malware samples are created each day. Coming through various shapes and sizes — executive files, infected archives, contaminated applications, modified code parts, even as a hidden component of free programs — malware is used by hackers as a tool to access private information, or abuse server resources. Simply put, today malware represents the biggest threat to your website as well as your customers.
DoS Attacks
For those who don’t have a clue about this method: (D)DoS stands for a (distributed) denial-of-service, which is nothing but a malicious attempt to disruрt normаl traffiс of a targetеd network or server by bombarding it with a flood of sided internet traffic. As a result, the attacked website becomes inaccessible to reach and is ultimately taken offline. The biggest catch of DoS attacks, however, is that it leaves the server vulnerable for malware for as long as it takes the host to back everything up.
WHOIS Domain Issues
When buying a domain, you will be asked to release some information about yourself, including that of your URL nameservers (to be further recorded on WHOIS data). The thing here is that malicious actors can use that information as a gateway to reach your web server, or narrow down its location. Both scenarios will eventually interrupt your business workflow, leading it to downtime, or incurring financial losses. Or both.
Most Reliable Cyber Security Measures
1. Select a safe web hosting plan.
Get a reliable recovery option. It may happen that your data will end up corrupted or erased as a result of an unsuccessful cyber attack. And that’s where I want to outrun your thoughts: applying strategies of DIY data restoration can only make things worse. An alternative is to have in sight a credible data recovery company that will come to the rescue in the unlucky event of data loss.
And this is where my preference remains for a trustworthy Salvagedata recovery lab! Being armed with a decade of experience in the field and the proprietary software with most advanced certificates, they are capable of coping with the most difficult and intricate cases (even those other recovery companies have given up on). In addition, they offer a free examination of the failed device. Of course, I’m not wishing you to experience a data loss; but having this step forethought is a wise thing to do.
2. Select a safe web hosting plan.
There are numerous web hosting options to consider, handsome of them (like a shared hosting plan) may be truly appealing — mostly because of the price. But that’s not the most secure choice for the obvious reason: if one website gets attacked, an intruder can gain access to the server that you are using as well. Exposing the data to such risks won’t boost the security of your site, that’s for sure.
3. Bother to monitor the security of your website.
It’s impossible to manually avert all the possible attacks; instead, there’s a multitude of online tools and resources that you can apply in order to monitor your site’s security: for instance, some plugins can provide your website with an effective firewall, while other will help you fight spam, malware, and other menaces in real-time.
4. Do not neglect software updates.
This step doesn’t require you much effort to put, only being serious about keeping your software — such as CMS, WordPress tools, plugins, etc — up to date. While hackers are seeking ways to take advantage of existing vulnerabilities (through bots and automated cyber-attacks), regular software patches provide their users with significant security improvements — in addition to bug fixes and new features being offered, of course. Remember: neglecting timely software updates may importantly increase the risk of successful hacking.
5. Limit usеr accеss.
The truth is that 95% of cybersecurity attacks are the result of human error, highlighting the significance of applying the least privilege/authority concept. Limiting the number of users who can make changes to your website’s settings is crucial for security. Shared usernames and passwords are used in groups, which undermines accountability. In order to effectively track changes and mistakes back to their original source, it is crucial to make sure that each user has their own set of login credentials.
Strong identity governance procedures are essential for reducing the risks to cybersecurity posed by human mistakes. Organizations can limit access to important website settings and reduce the number of people with alteration privileges by adhering to the principle of least privilege. Individual login information for each user encourages accountability and traceability, making it possible to accurately track any errors or modifications attributed to the person in charge, thus enhancing overall security.
Conclusions
Remember: you can’t minimize existing risks to absolute zero, but these simple measures are needed to provide your website with the highest level of security possible.
