An Easy Guide to Website Security

Posted February 7, 2019 by Lee

Website Security is not something to ignore. Keeping your website secure is very important; not only to protect your customer’s data but to ensure you can provide your service without unwanted intrusions.

Implementing basic security practices is essential to protect your website and build trust with your visitors.

In today’s online world there are a few security features that customers are expecting to see on your website more and more as they become aware. If you aren’t able to provide essential security features; then it could impact your business.

This list is by no means exhaustive; however, these are what we believe are six of the best website security tips; that you can apply to your website today

Understanding Website Security

What is Website Security?

Website security refers to the practices and measures taken to protect a website from unauthorized access, use, modification, destruction, or disruption. It involves safeguarding the website’s web application, web server configuration, password policies, and client-side code to prevent security threats and vulnerabilities. Effective website security requires a comprehensive approach that includes design effort across the whole of the website.

Why is Website Security Important?

Website security is crucial for protecting sensitive information, preventing data breaches, and maintaining the trust of users. A secure website ensures the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data, resources, and user experience. Without proper security measures, a website can be vulnerable to various security threats, including cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and cross-site request forgery (CSRF). These threats can lead to financial losses, reputational damage, and legal liabilities.

Common Website Security Threats

Common website security threats include:

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): This allows attackers to inject client-side scripts through the website into the browsers of other users, potentially stealing information or performing actions on behalf of the user.
SQL Injection: This enables malicious users to execute arbitrary SQL code on a database, which can lead to unauthorized access to sensitive information.
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF): This allows a malicious user to execute actions using the credentials of another user without that user’s knowledge or consent.
Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks: These attacks overload a website with traffic from multiple sources, making it unavailable to legitimate users.
Ransomware: This blocks access to a website until a ransom is paid, potentially causing significant disruption and financial loss.

Regular Software Updates (including WordPress!)

As a website owner, your utmost priority should always be to ensure that you are running the latest and greatest versions of all software your website relies on – for example; WordPress, all themes, plugins and any other scripts your site uses.

Regular updates are crucial to protect your website from attackers who exploit vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access. It’s also advisable to update your devices themselves; applying any security/maintenance updates regularly to your devices and the software within, including your web browser.

Protect Your Website Code & Database with Web Application Security

Hackers can use something as simple as a web form to find vulnerabilities in your code and then exploit these insecurities to make it act unusually. It will lead to many problems for you and your website (none of which you want).

An example of this is an insecure contact form script on your website. Most people with a web site have a “contact us” page, with a similar kind of form on it where visitors input their name, email address, telephone number, and a short message/enquiry – which is then emailed to you, or entered into a CRM system. If your contact form does not have CAPTCHA protection already, that’s an excellent place to start.

Your form inputs (the boxes where people can enter data); especially when results are submitted to a database; should be clean. Validating user input will help prevent SQL Injections in your database. If your contact form submits data directly into a database, it’s a good idea to clean the input before putting it into your query.

It’s good practice for the developer of the form to implement it from the start; however, if this is not the case for your contact forms – you should seek assistance from your website developer.

Monitoring Blog Comments for Cross Site Scripting

WordPress is excellent, we love it. However, straight out of the box, it’s not secure (and neither is most other open source blogging software). Further steps need to be taken to prevent bots from attacking the comments sections on your lovely new blog post!

In WordPress, there’s a couple of neat website security features under ‘Settings’ then ‘Discussion’ which let you apply to filter to comments automatically. You can filter out specific comments by name, email, domain name, IP address and even the content of the comment; or add the same phrases to the blacklist, and they will be sent straight to the trash. You can use these features to prevent spam submissions of web addresses, and inappropriate content by filtering out keywords and formations to should stop anyone from abusing your comment boxes.

Make Error Messages Simplistic

If you can modify the error messages on your website – try to keep them as simple as possible. You will want to avoid giving away the full error as this can be used by attackers to find vulnerabilities in your software or script. It’s best practice to keep the message short, sweet and user-friendly. “Something went wrong” along with some useful links to continue browsing your website should suffice.

User Validation & Two Factor Authentication (2FA) to Prevent SQL Injection

When users are logging in – make sure you pass validation checks to verify their identity and protect their login credentials, lowering the risk of attacks on compromised accounts. There are many ways to validate users, two of the most popular are CAPTCHA Protection and Two Factor Authentication (2FA for short).

Using Two Factor Authentication (2FA) is becoming more and more popular among the technology industry, social media and banking sites to confirm the users’ identity with a text message, email or time based token.

These methods are becoming increasingly popular and are pretty simple to add to your existing website. There are many free and paid modules and plugins available for a range of different software which bring this additional security to the table and offer reassurance to your users that you are protecting them, and their information as much as possible. It will go a long way to building trust in your business website.

HTTPS / SSL (and why you should be using it already!)

Since 2014 when Google declared that it was going to use SSL as a ranking factor in SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) – there was widespread adoption of SSL Certificates with nearly every website you’re likely to visit daily (Facebook, Twitter, Unlimited Web Hosting…) using valid SSL Certificates. There are many different types of SSL Certificates; some are free and others (Premium SSL) that you have to pay an annual fee for to your web hosting company.

SSL Certificates encrypt the connection between the customers’ web browser and your web server for better security. If your website is not already using SSL and providing encrypted connections for your customers – you should make this your priority.

We include free Lets Encrypt SSL Certificates unlimited web hosting packages. And, offer a range of Premium SSL Certificates should you require a warranty on your certificate.

Advanced Security Measures

DDoS Protection and Content Delivery Network

DDoS protection and Content Delivery Network (CDN) are advanced security measures that can help protect a website from security threats.

DDoS Protection: This uses sophisticated algorithms to block malicious traffic before it reaches the server, preventing DDoS attacks and ensuring website availability. By filtering out harmful traffic, DDoS protection helps maintain the performance and accessibility of your website.
Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN caches website content on servers located around the world, reducing load times and improving website performance. CDNs can also provide DDoS protection and help prevent attacks by distributing the load across multiple servers, making it harder for attackers to overwhelm the website.

By implementing these advanced security measures, website owners can provide an additional layer of protection for their website and prevent security threats.

Categories: SSL Certificates, Web Hosting