How to Improve the Security of Your Website
2020-06-22 23:55How to Improve the Security of Your Website
How to Improve the Security of Your Website
In today’s post, we’ll be talking about effective ways to protect your website in 2020. Business owners today, as well as solopreneurs, influencers, and bloggers constantly focus on staying relevant by researching competitors and learning about their markets.
The many challenges they all need to juggle daily sometimes lead to neglecting their digital security, which may compromise the safety of the information on their websites. Today more than ever, cybersecurity should be a pivotal segment of your business strategy.
Investing in cybersecurity means investing in your brand reputation, whether you work as an individual or you run a large organization, but it also means preserving customer loyalty and trust and ensuring longevity for your presence.
Table of Content
5 Effective Ways to Protect Your Website
The following security measures are considered some of the most effective to help you protect your website, so use them to keep your digital assets secure.
1. Hosting providers do matter
Among many partners you’ll need when you run a business, selecting a hosting provider will certainly be one of those key decisions to work towards better security of your digital presence. Modern-day hosting providers need to ensure that your site is stored securely on a server that will not allow for any kind of breach.
Of course, you’ll first focus on site speed and the level of support they can provide when you expect large numbers of people to visit your site, especially if you run an e-commerce store.
However, make sure to check their security credentials, as well as their past and current customers. Their reviews and experience can speak in their favor, or you can discover if a specific hosting company keeps running into security glitches on their servers – a clear red flag for you.
Do your hosting homework, and you’ll choose a provider that will keep your site safe.
2. Passwords to the rescue
Firstly, you should allow only a limited number of people to have access to your website and related accounts. If you alone are responsible for your website, you can consider sharing your credentials for your development team, but no more than that.
However, even with yourself in charge, figuring out simple passwords that use personal information is extremely simple for any experienced hacker.
Instead, you should start using a password manager that will not just help you generate complex passwords, but also serve as a vault for storing them safely, and away from prying eyes.
Add to that several steps for proper authentication, and you’ll complicate matters just enough for a hacker to be warded off indefinitely.
3. Educate your teams on security
While it’s true that your website relies on a slew of external factors for security, including different tools and service providers (as we’ve mentioned hosting), your employees are equally responsible for the secure handling of your online presence.
Every business can learn so much from Australian companies, where the culture of cybersecurity means ongoing education for all.
Not all team members under your wing might be experts in the field, but your IT team dedicated to cybersecurity should always be able to implement the latest security practices.
That is why many companies choose various cybersecurity courses Australia has to offer since local businesses recognize the importance of keeping up with security requirements and trends.
Add to that, training your non-expert staff to handle your website with security in mind will greatly help to keep all of your data safe.
4. Update all software and website plugins
No matter how secure and simple your existing website platform is, there is no single security solution strong enough to ward off every advanced hacker attack.
Preserving your website security starts with always updating all of the software that you use, including the theme of your site, the related plugins and functionalities, and all the accompanying security protocols.
When you use malware protection software, you should remember that novel security patches are there for a reason. Never neglect these regular updates, make them part of your security routine, and your website will stand a much better chance to banish unauthorized access to your most sensitive information.
5. Always monitor and look for threats
If your marketing teams have their own KPIs to keep track of in order to boost the performance of each campaign they launch, your IT gang should rely on a variety of tech tools and AI-driven software solutions to look for website vulnerabilities.
Schedule regular scanning sessions and set up a monitoring solution that will keep an eye on your website at all times. Combined, these two steps will make all the difference in keeping your website’s security airtight.
Some of the most common issues to look out for include weak authentication, which is an issue you should be able to resolve with the help of a password manager and multi-step authentication, and cross-site scripting. Getting to know potential security risks allows you to prevent them with greater ease.
Website security will never be a stagnant, one-time effort. It’s a matter of your collective mindset, ongoing adaptation, and stepping up to the learning curve to master the latest methods in cybersecurity.
Much like hackers and their own methods change and advance, your preventative actions need to follow the same pattern of flexibility and evolution. With a bit of help from the listed methods, your website should stay secure and your brand reputation intact.