Congratulations, you have successfully launched your website but, is it all done? how secure is your website? and is it ready for business? These questions are the best to ask at the end of the project and just before launch. At this point we are thinking of potential cyberattacks, encourage potential visitors and maintaining your reputation. In this article, you are going to be informed of your new best-friend website security.
Now, What is Website Security? You might ask. This is an action or application taken to ensure the protection of website data is not exposed to cybercriminals or prevent exploitation of websites of any form, this is an ongoing and essential part of your website management.
Why is it Important and What does it Protect?
Website security is important as it protects as hacks, simple. Having security is just as important if not more than all other aspects. Look at it this way, no security results in potentially being hacked, being hacked can result in data loss, data loss results in a damaged reputation, possibly blacklisted, lawsuits and this can result in some huge fines.
Some of what you will be protected against are as listed:
Defacing: replacing your website content/material with other malicious data.
Malware: This can be used to steal sensitive information.
Blacklisting: The possibility of your website being removed for search engines.
All of the above shows lost and now results in favor of your or your business.
As for your users some of what the will be protected against includes:
Phishing: In most cases, this is found happening emails, however, this is now seen in various web browsers and is designed to trick the user into giving up sensitive information.
Malicious Redirect: In this case, the attack redirects the user from the intended site to another.
Stolen Data: Cybercriminals oftentimes attempt to save users’ data which may vary from as simple as your name to SSN and also payment information done online.
How Do You Secure Your Website?
There are many steps to take in securing a website, here goes to name a few:
Web Application Firewall: A web application firewall (WAF), stops automated attacks usually carried out by malicious bots that seeks to attack from your more vulnerable points to exploits or even slows down and crashes site through a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
SSL Certificate: This certificate protects data collected by the website as it is being transferred to the server. Though considered a basic security measure a site on any browser labeled “insecure” is without an SSL certificate and is suggested to stay off.
The cost of an SSL certificate may vary depending on the site and their of at that moment. Some of the most popular sites to get your SSL certificate are:
- SSL.com
- Namecheap
- The SSL Store
- GoDaddy
- GlobalSign
- Digicert
Just to list a few and you will see that all sites offer to vary in prices.
Though we have only touched the surface of what website security is remember, “a breach in your website security cost more the longer it stays”.