Aside from having an appealing, user-friendly, and responsive website, your website should be a safe place to conduct business transactions and a source of valuable information. It’s crucial to ensure that your website is secure, not just for you but also your visitors. While antivirus or anti-malware software or applications are available, you need to take the necessary steps to safeguard your web presence.
You can keep your website safe from bad guys, like cyber hackers without complex and expensive procedures. By keeping your account secure you and your visitors will have peace of mind, drive more traffic, and help attain your goals for your website. In this post, you’ll learn effective ways to help improve your website security. Let’s get started!
- Keep Up-to-date Software
All scripts or platforms you’ve installed on your site should be up-to-date. It’s easy for hackers to target security flaws aggressively in popular programs and web software. It’s crucial to patch security holes and regularly update all software products you use. You can keep up-to-date software with these tips:
- Using the Windows automatic update. Take advantage of updating Windows 10 to avoid stability and reliability issues through the built-in update feature on your Windows ‘settings’. Choose ‘update and security’ then ‘check for updates.’
- Update third-party applications regularly. It will fix, improve and patch glitches, crashes, irritations, and annoyances.
- Change your IP as needed, especially if your computer or a program has been ruined with a virus or malware.
- Maintain a Clean Website
Hackers usually penetrate vulnerable websites through applications, plug-ins, or databases. If you’re not using some of these applications, you need to delete them right away for security, especially if you aim a successful e-commerce business. Keep track of the changes by keeping an organized file structure. It’ll be easier for you to delete old files. You can take proactive steps to reduce the risks on your website through the following tips:
- Activate the Web Application Firewall or WAF. Reduce your website’s risks from software vulnerabilities through WAF which stops attacks before they even happen. You can activate WAF through the DNS settings of your website.
- For WordPress or Joomla users, even for other platforms, make sure that you have the current version (including themes, plugins, CMS version, and other extensions). Out-of-date software can lead to infections.
- Update Your Passwords
When creating more administrators, you need to update all passwords on your administrator accounts. A strong password is long, complex, and unique. Also, changing your database password on a regular basis will help you keep your account secure. Here are some security tips involving password use:
- Configuration file update must be edited manually because this isn’t automatic.
- Hackers usually use sophisticated software to crack passwords forcibly. That’s why you need to set up a complex password, containing uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. It must be at least 10 characters long.
- To help you remember a password, create an easy-to-remember sentence with all the elements of a strong password such as MyDreamHappens@12MN.
- Using a password manager, like Dashlane, is a good idea if you have a lot of passwords. Make sure to use a strong password to keep your password manager secure.
- Do Backups For Your Website
Another critical step to keep your website secure is to perform regular backups. You can find tons of backup solutions such as site backup automatic integration. Maintaining backups of all website files is important especially if your data is lost. Here are your options:
- You can contact your web host provider. Web host providers provide backups using their servers, but you also need to backup your files regularly.
- You’ll find content management programs, like WordPress, with extensions or plugins that can help you automatically back up your website’s important data. They’ll also allow you to back up content and databases manually.
- Check Your Site for Vulnerabilities
You can find free tools available online that helps in measuring the security of your website. These online tools (e.g., Metasploit, Nmap, and Wireshark) can provide a brief review but won’t entirely detect all security flaws. You can perform a web security scan on a schedule or after adding web components.
Conclusion
You don’t have to spend a fortune to secure your website. Taking small steps to prevent security issues will take you far. Safeguard your site from cyber attacks and hackers by paying close attention in managing your files and passwords, as well as ensuring that all plugins, applications, and software are updated.