As a website owner, is there anything more terrifying than the thought of seeing all of your work altered or entirely wiped out by a nefarious hacker?
You’ve worked hard on your website (and your brand) – so take the time to protect it with these basic hacking protections!
In addition to regularly backing up your files (which you should already be doing, for various reasons), taking the following seven easy steps will help keep your website safe:
Keep platforms and scripts up-to-date
One of the best things you can do to protect your website is to make sure any platforms or scripts you’ve installed are up-to-date. Because many of these tools are created as open-source software programs, their code is easily available – to both good-intentioned developers as well as malicious hackers. Hackers can pore over this code, looking for security loopholes that allow them to take control of your website by exploiting any platform or script weaknesses.
Install security plugins, when possible
Once you’ve updated everything, further enhance your website security with plugins that actively prevent against hacking attempts.
Again, using WordPress as an example, you’ll want to look into free plugins like iThemes Security andBulletproof Security (or similar tools that are available for websites built on other content management systems). These products address the weaknesses that are inherent in each platform, foiling additional types of hacking attempts that could threaten your website.
Alternatively – whether you’re running a CMS-managed site or HTML pages – take a look at SiteLock. SiteLock goes above and beyond simply closing site security loopholes by providing daily monitoring for everything from malware detection to vulnerability identification to active virus scanning and more. If your business relies on its website, SiteLock is definitely an investment worth considering.
Note: Our Deluxe WordPress hosting plan has SiteLock built in, along with other features to help secure your site.
Use SSL Certification
As a consumer, you may already know to always look for the green https in your browser bar any time you’ll be providing sensitive information to a website. Most consumers know to recognize those five little letters as an important shorthand for security: they signal that it’s safe to provide financial information on that particular webpage.
If you have an online store, or if any part of your website will require visitors to hand over sensitive information like a credit card number, you have to invest in an SSL certificate.
Implement parameterized queries
One of the most common website hacks many sites fall victim to are SQL injections.
SQL injections can come into play if you have a web form or URL parameter that allows outside users to supply information. If you leave the parameters of the field too open, someone could insert code into them that lets them hack into your database, which may well contain sensitive customer information, like their contact info or credit card numbers. Obviously that’s information it’s your duty to protect.
There are a number of steps you can take to protect your website from SQL injection hacks; one of the most important and easiest to implement is the use of parameterized queries. Using parameterized queries ensures your code has specific enough parameters so that there’s no room for a hacker to mess with them..
Secure your password
It’s tempting to go with a password you know will always be easy for you to remember. That’s why the #1 most common password. You have to do better than that – try to use Uppercase, letter, number and symbols.
Make the effort to figure out a truly secure password (or use password generator). Make it unique and hard. Use a mix of special characters, numbers, and letters. If a hacker somehow gains access to other information about you, they’ll know to guess those first.
At Metropolitan Host, we have created a set of custom mod security rules to aid in the protection of your website. If you’re looking for a new hosting provider, you can click here to sign up for a great deal. For new accounts, we’ll even transfer you for free! After you’ve created an account, you just need to fill out the form here.
Amaretto is a New York-based content writer and lifelong learner with an ongoing curiosity to learn new things. Founder of a positioning and branding firm that helps consultants to increase their fees by up to 2,000%
