Like everything else in our world, the internet is not a totally safe place at all. But even if you are completely prepared for pickpockets on the streets, the online world provides new and new methods for thieves to grab what they want. Recognizing the catastrophe before the incident could be enough offline, but if you do that online, it’s too late. You need to be aware of your website’s vulnerability and prevent attacks at the very first moment. In this article, we provide you with some tips to make your website more secure to not only save your belongings but prevent your users from malicious software.
If you read the next parts, you will get a complete guide to your potential opportunities to make your website more secure. You also get a glance at website security, one of the hot topics of the 2020s.
Be aware that every year 10% of small businesses suffer cyberattacks. It is a large-volume issue that requires solutions!
Gather an SSL certificate!
The SSL is an abbreviation, which comes from Secure Sockets Layer. This layer makes an encrypted link between the web browser and the web server. So, the SSL technique can help you remain shielded from cheaters and hackers.
There are various reasons why websites need SSL certificates:
- The SSL technique keeps the users’ data secure
- Attackers can’t make fake versions of the site, and direct the clients there
- It enhances customer trust
- Google rates these sites better
There are tons of different SSL certificates, but sometimes it’s not your job to pick. You must read legal acts in your actual industry to find out the special certifications you need. If your online entity is connected to the banking sector, data protection is highly needed. That’s why laws require you to get more in-depth SSL certifications.
To get an SSL certificate, you need to pay money to the chosen authority. However, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. You need to create a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) on your own. If your website’s hosting provider lets you, you can generate a CSR in a matter of minutes, if not, a slower version (an online CSR generator) may lead you to success. After the request is made, you need to send it to the certificate authority. If they don’t find any particular problems with your website, you can install your certificate to your website.
Collect trust badges!
The trust badges were definitely made for the protection of buyers. That’s why most B2C businesses take advantage of these little badges, thus its popularity has risen high amongst E-commerce businesses.
However, trust badges can’t only protect the buyers, as to gain these badges, your website needs to go through a complete checking.
There are four common types of trust badges:
- Security badges (the badge issuer checks your website’s SSL certification(s), and their expiry date)
- Payment badges
- Policy-specific badges
- Endorsement badges
Of course, a badge can’t provide you protection from data breaches, and cyber-attacks. Although, they can be a great final inspection of the complete protection of your online belongings.
Do not download every plugin and extension!
Sometimes we fall into the same trap again and again. We tend to be perfectionists when we want to make our website better. That’s why we add dozens of plugins (if we use a WordPress site), and other apps from websites we have never heard of.
However, this activity may harm more to our website than help. Generally, adding too much content to our site may eventually decrease the user experience. Slow-load times, complex routes, too many clicks… Visitors rather prefer clean, and seamless sites.
But, in terms of website protection, that’s not the source of the problem. After one or two helpful plugins, we believe all bring us to the same success. So, instead of checking these sites, reading customers’ feedback, or taking a look at their privacy policies, we just add the tool to our own website.
What’s the problem with that? It may happen that the codes of these apps contain viruses, but since we brought it to our own website, our antivirus programs may not block the tool from making hell from our website.
So always follow these given questions as an indicator of what tool you should add to your site and what should not.
- Does this feature is certainly needed to get more visitors (or to achieve your exact goal)?
- Is the average customer feedback of the given site positive?
- Does the website have an SSL certification?
- Does the website offer a contact address?
- Does the website look professional?
- Is the price of the given tool within your buying range? – Occasionally you find offers that are too good to be true. Most of the time these are complete scams, so avoid buying things under the minimum value of your buying range.
Find a reliable hosting provider!
A hosting provider is a company that does every invisible work around your website. They host and maintain the site, they store your website’s data or give cybersecurity. That’s why it is important to search for the most reliable hosting providers and don’t save money on buying more in-depth plans!
Although a hosting provider is not mandatory to have, if you want to scale your business, and become a more favorable option inside your niche, you can’t ignore their advantages.
But here, we must direct our focus to one of their additional activities. Enhanced cybersecurity! Let’s see what we are thinking of:
- In a DDOS attack, the perpetrator creates fake internet traffic and directs that into your website. The website can’t handle the quick increased traffic and freezes down. Many web hosting providers include a “traffic scrubbing” in their plans, which filters the fake visitors and does not let them reach the website
- SQL injections and cross-site scripting attacks are very popular techniques to cause damage on vulnerable sites. Luckily, hosting providers often include Web Application Firewalls that block these malicious activities
- An effective hosting provider makes security updates quite often, which means your site will always be ready to defend against new and new harmful techniques
According to some statistics, 500 thousand pieces of malware pop up each day, making continuous updates unavoidable.
To get these features we highly recommend you to use Rackhost.uk, one of the leading domain names, and hosting providers in Central-Europe.
Rackhost.uk also offers websites with SSL encryption, which not only gives secure communication over a computer network but changes the first few letters of your website’s URL. It gets a HTTPS tag that ensures your strong protection. Modern browsers don’t load up non-https websites without confirmation from the visitor. So, without the “HTTPS” abbreviation on your website’s URL, you won’t have the same number of traffic you can reach by using it.
Conclusion
Overall, website security is needed to create a safe place for your buyers’ data. Introducing our tips not only makes your site more protected but may enhance your traffic as well.
Do not forget: Google gets access to any website’s SSL certificates and lists those sites higher on the search lists that own this certificate. Also, you can calm suspicious visitors, recheck your defense with trust badges, or check different extensions’ vulnerability to avoid the worst: the absolute chaos!
