The Best Tips to Keep Your Website Secure
Table of Contents
How do I Keep My Website Secure?
There are many things that can go wrong with designing a website, some small mistakes may be enough to be a huge issue for your website. Thus, you want to take a preventative, proactive approach, as opposed to a reactive approach. When designing a website for your business or organization, by far one of the most important things to do is make sure it is up to snuff with respect to cybersecurity. Cyber risk management is important, and you want to make sure that any reasonable risk that may face your website is accounted for, and then some.
A common mistake all too many business owners make with their website is that they will use the same password for the website as they do, say, their email. What this means is that, if someone is able to get access to your email password information, and they are able to link it to your website, they may be able to get access and do real harm. Be sure to use a secure, unique password, and require two-factor authentication (2FA) to require additional verification of your identity, such as via your smartphone.
What Kind of Cyber Risks Can My Website Face?
There are a number of cyber risks on the Internet, both potential and actual, and with varying intent. For example, let’s say that you own and operate an online store, and are aiming to hire a designer to design this website. Being that it’s the kind of business that most customers will be expected to put their personal info into, having adequate security is of vital importance. If you fail to adequately secure your customers’ personal data, you run the risk of being held responsible if anyone customer is harmed by a data breach.
Another issue that some websites face, either through accident or malice, is when the traffic to their website is so great that they simply cannot handle it. This is especially common with newer companies that become very popular, very quickly, and do not have enough servers to handle all the sudden traffic. How it works is that, if you only have one server, and it is unable to handle all the traffic, it may go down. By having only one, this means you have nothing to run the website on. However, it may also be a malicious act, where someone who wants to do harm to the website or your business tries to send traffic your way. Bad actors will utilize bots, which are sent to the website in order to send more data than the website is able to handle.
Do Large Companies do Better at Avoiding Cybersecurity Mistakes?
No matter how big or small you are, and intentional data breach is still possible. Look to Sony, for example. Despite being a billion-dollar corporation that has been around for more than half a century, its PlayStation Network (PSN) service — an online storefront and infrastructure that at the time was used for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable — was targeted by an external attack, where 77 million users’ private data was compromised, forcing Sony to take the service down for an extended period of time while they regained control of things. One of the major issues to do with the data breach was how Sony handled encryption; while credit card details were encrypted, certain other pieces of information were not, which meant that by getting access to PSN, they get direct access to the information of its users as well.
Make sure that important customer data is properly encrypted, and avoid storing sensitive customer data on the website to reduce the level of vulnerability. In doing so, even if your website becomes compromised, the culprits will not be able to get access to the data through those avenues. No matter how big you are, even a small mistake can do a considerable amount of damage. One might even argue that being a bigger company makes you more prone to making small mistakes, but it still happens to anyone. However, since Sony is a billion-dollar corporation, that means they can more easily get away with a serious mistake. If you are just opening an online business, for instance, and you make a comparable mistake, then you shouldn’t be surprised if your would-be customer base has vanished into thin air. Plus, where Sony can easily afford specialists that analyze potential risks, and PR firms to manage the fallout, that will not be as easy for you.