Web Security

How to Secure your Website from Hackers? (in just 5 steps)

Everyone who launches their business online would want to build a business website. While creating a business website, one has to keep in mind that it must be simple to utilize, easy to navigate, and engaging enough to let the visitors find value. 

However, the security factor often gets overlooked during the process of website development. That is because when people get assured of the backup plans and recovering data strategies, they generally excuse the fact that their website is completely secured or not. You may think if you can acquire all the lost data or files, why do you need to make the business website secure in every way. The reason behind this is that your website incorporates sensitive customer information, and an insecure web page makes it possible to manipulate and intercept such data. 

To Secure your Website from Hackers you must guarantee the safety of your and your customers’ data. Customers put their trust in your business website, thinking that you have taken all the necessary measures to protect the website and their data. If your site gets into any trouble due to the lack of security, you may recover the data, but you will lose your customers’ trust and the revenue that could have been generated from them. Moreover, your business website will be subject to a bad reputation in the marketplace. Hence, the information security of your business website is paramount to any other thing. 

To ensure comprehensive security in this context, here we have introduced this guide on How to Protect your Site from Hackers in just 5 simple steps. Hop to the subsequent section to discover and discern these steps. 

5 Steps to Secure Your Website from Hackers

Following are some of the most significant steps related to the site’s architecture and infrastructure that can lead your business website to achieve maximum security and integrity. You must ensure that your site is not missing any of these, or else it can become vulnerable to security threats and third-party attacks. 

Get your Business Website an SSL connection.

An SSL is an acronym used for Secure Sockets Layer. The SSL connection is one of the most straightforward approaches to let the visitors and your customers know that your website guarantees the security of the services provided and the users’ information.

Once you accomplish the task of getting an SSL connection, your website will acquire an official certificate claiming that it is secure, and the Certificate Authority confirms the fact. It will be best to opt for the reputable, recognized CA (Certification Authority) to get the SSL certificate to assert the website as completely secure. 

The SSL certificate functions to provide encryption, which is made between the connection of your web host’s server and the visitor’s browser. Through the secure socket layer, any form of transaction, submission, or retrieval of any data or information is secured by a third party.

It does not give any opportunity to the hacker to interrupt the connection during transit and manipulate or stole the data or information. The transferring data gets encrypted and then decrypted only at the end of the user or your web host. At Hostbillo we provide 4 different types of SSL certificates

Implement Strict and Firm Password Policies for Admins.

Many business websites incorporate a Content Management System(CMS). In such scenarios, there is a backend dashboard linked to the site. The dashboard gets utilized by your team or site administrators to sign in if there are some requirements for modifications or editions to the website.

They can also sign in to work further on various functionalities. For security purposes, the sign-in process involves entering the set password known only to the people you allow to access the backend dashboard. 

As an admin, it is expected that you will want to set a password that you can easily remember. However, it can lead to a security risk for your website if the password code is easily breakable by a third person. You may enforce all the other security to your website, but all of them can go in vain if you fail at setting the right password for your website, as the hacker can have all the access once it cracks the password code and enters into the main backend dashboard.

Consequently, the hacker can further take away the complete authority of your website functionalities. Therefore, to Secure your Website from Hackers it becomes necessary to implement strict and firm password policies to ensure the website’s maximum security and integrity.

Make Sure to Manage your Software up-to-date.

With the existing code in your business website’s programs, you can discover new vulnerabilities every other day. The vulnerabilities can be found in various areas, for instance, in the injecting code of PHP, javascript codes in the WordPress plugin’s jQuery version, etc. When these vulnerable codes or programs are exposed to the public, the software providers eventually modify and update the codebases.

They do the updations to mend the vulnerabilities of the programs. That way, new security is set up. Being a website administrator, you have to make sure that you keep up with the updated versions and manage your software up to date. 

Hackers often prey on sites that grow out of date with time. It becomes easier for hackers to get control over such websites and strive to hack the data or information from the website. 

The website administrators should opt for a reliable host-level backup process that can update the software instantly with minimal testing. If anything wrong happens during an update procedure, you get the privilege to go back to the last backup. You can further consult with your web developer to check how the update crashed the site. 

Find a Perfect Web Hosting Solution. 

To protect your website from being hacked you must find a reliable and excellent web hosting service. It makes the website follow specific security modes for its own and customers’ protection. For instance, such web hosting services will urge their clients to upgrade hosting packages and software to the latest version within a short period once they are released.

Some web hosting providers implement this security conduct by making the process simpler for the users. They enable the users to test run their business websites under the latest version to know how the websites will perform after upgrading their existing environments. It lets the users try before they buy the upgraded version while helping them accept the agreement and adoption more flexibly. It also permits the chance to avoid crashed websites and disappointment.

If your website is on WordPress, many host providers will offer automatic plugin updates that will keep the plugins up-to-date all the time and secure them from getting exposed to vulnerabilities. 

The managed web host services further will monitor your website operations 24*7, and any unusual event within the website, if it happens, gets detected by the monitoring team. That will help to resolve the issue before it gets out of control. There are various kinds of web hosting available to host your business websites such as Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Server, and Cloud Server

Ensure that you Follow File and Folder Permission’s most Desirable Practices.

The permissions that the server executes on your business website’s files and folders help regulate their usage and control their access authorities. The set of rules and regulations are applied individually on each file and folder. However, there are modes one can use to update them in a group based on the type if required.   

To protect your website from Hackers you need to acquire the most desirable practices that involve the right file and folder permission. That is because if the wrong permission is set to them, a hacker will get the possibility to access the middleware file.

The hacker further can modify and inject different functionality and codes and hijack communications. It will then become challenging for your system to eradicate such hacks. You can find many plans to update the file and folder permissions. The different CMSs will need different licenses, and the changes can be done either one by one under the file manager or through the SSH terminal commands that can direct more files in one go. 

Final Words

A secure website not only protects your customer data but also saves your company’s reputation in the market. It gives people the confidence to have the desire to work with your company or purchase the products or services your business website has to offer.

The website security we have just discussed has not remained an advanced development in the current time. Instead, it has become the norm, and everyone expects such security if you are running an online business. Everyone who is an intelligent visitor to your website or a customer of your business will definitely judge you based on the level of security you provide.

People only desire to connect with a company that can offer a secure environment for communication and transactions.  Any breach in your business website’s security level will redirect your customers towards your competitors who can provide better, safe, and accessible services. 

Arpit Saini

He is the Chief Technology Officer at Hostbillo Hosting Solution and also follows a passion to break complex tech topics into practical and easy-to-understand articles. He loves to write about Web Hosting, Software, Virtualization, Cloud Computing, and much more.

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