Top 5 Ways to Protect Your Website Against Hackers
Hackers are everywhere! And the worst part is that they are extremely good at their job. Let’s face the fact: Website hacking has become a menace. According to a news report, approximately six million Australians fell victim to cybercrime in 2017.
A website is important for your business, and so is it’s security!
Today, it has become essential for every business to strengthen its online presence to reach out to a larger audience and get on the growth path. However, we often keep hearing about unfortunate incidents of hacking, data breach, phishing emails, and financial frauds.
Luckily every problem has a solution! All you have to do is follow some basic practices to ensure a secured online presence. These simple tips will help you create a solid protective shield against any malicious attacks on your website.
But before understanding how to protect your website, it is essential to learn how hackers work!
How a hacker attacks your website?
Unfortunately, not much is known about how a hacker works. But, we do know that hackers usually look for the ‘Achilles Heel’ of your website!
They try to find the weak spot or a vulnerable point from where they can launch their attack on your website. And once they get control of your weakness, they are in a position to do all sorts of damage.
Some common things a hacker can do are:
- | Deface your website
- | Send out phishing emails.
- | Target confidential information of your users (credit cards or bank account details).
Protecting your website against malicious attack is possible! And here are some practices you can follow:
#1. Keep your software/plug-ins updated
An outdated software, script or plug-in is the easiest target for hackers. The outdated versions have several loopholes, and a hacker aggressively targets those flaws. The best way to patch these security gaps is to keep software, scripts or plug-ins updated. Talk to your website developer to help you keep a tab on the recent updates and version upgrades. If you find it difficult to update the script or plug-ins, talk to an expert.
#2. Login with strong credentials
A weak password is the “Achilles Heel”. Usually, a password is the first thing hackers target. And nowadays, they use highly sophisticated software to crack passwords.
Make sure you have a complex password that is difficult to guess and even crack. Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. Ten characters long password is considered to be the best and hard to crack.
#3. Get an SSL certificate
SSL encryption lets you transfer sensitive and confidential information like the credit card details, PayPal account details, bank account information, and other login credentials using a secured gateway. When your website has an SSL certificate, the data on your page gets encrypted. It prevents hackers from accessing the private data of your users and hence it is secured. Talk to a reliable web development agency to help you get an SSL certificate. Read more about SSL certification here.
#4. Hide the admin pages.
Getting admin page indexed by search engines means exposing yourself to the world of hackers. There is no need to index admin pages since it hardly helps in SEO. Make sure you hide your admin page, and non-indexed admin pages are hard for hackers to find. You can use the robots_txt file to prevent search engines crawling through and listing your website’s admin page.
#5. Protect your website with WAF – Web Application Firewall
A web application firewall or WAF reads every bit of data that is transmitted between the web server and connected devices. Quick and easy to install, WAF, filters out the malicious bots or scripts. Result? – Hackers cannot enter your cyberspace.
Our Take:
Hackers will do their job; you need to do yours! Make sure you follow the tips mentioned above to prevent any malicious attack on your site. But, if you ever feel your website is vulnerable or under threat, talk to our experts. We will help you get a secured website and a robust online presence.
