Don’t Get Hacked: A Mini-Guide to Website Security

Don’t Get Hacked: A Mini-Guide to Website Security

If you have a website, you need security. Good security. Somewhere right now someone is thinking, “Nah, I’m pretty invulnerable to being hacked; I spend a lot for my web site security.” Not true. If someone can hack Sony, Target and the government, they can hack you.

Believe it or not, hackers don’t necessarily want to steal your stuff; they may want to set up a temporary server to distribute (probably illegal) files, or use it as an email relay for spam. There could be any number of reasons that a hacker wants to hack your site.

It’s easy to say that you need strong website security, but it’s tough to know how to implement it, especially if you’re a beginner. If you don’t understand the particulars of creating a secure site, find someone who can explain the most important parts to you, and make sure you have a reliable host that can protect your site.

There are some basic things you can do, though, that will start you on your way to making sure your website is as secure as is possible that aren’t hard to understand at all.

Here are four ways to help beef up the security on your web site:

#1: Passwords.

People who don’t use complex passwords (i.e. the people who use ‘password’ as their password) are the reason that there are hackers. No matter what, make a unique, complex password, preferably one made of characters, numbers, lowercase letters and capital letters.

One big reason why we make up simple passwords is because they are easy to remember. If they’re easy to remember, they are even easier to hack. Try to use a mixture of characters, numbers, lowercase letters, and capital letters. To keep track of your passwords, check out LastPass.

#2: No uploading from visitors.

If you are letting your visitors upload files or images to your site, you are taking a huge risk. It may look innocent enough, but that’s exactly what it’s supposed to look like so that when the file is accessed, it can destroy or open up your site, notes Creative Bloq.

#3: Choose a host who really cares about security.

One of the first things a hacker does is find out what host you’re using. Penetrating your host is what he is most interested in, since once he takes over the host, he has complete control over your site.

Check the security policies and measures that your host implements. Are you using a free host? Dump it. Hackers use free hosts to put malicious files on the site, and then when visitors download something, it can be detrimental to the entire network, to say nothing about what it’ll do to your visitor’s computer, reports Simplified Online Communication System.

#4: Does your host perform regular backups?

Your host should perform backups once a day at a minimum. That way if there is any malicious activity, everything can be restored in a timely fashion.

A huge and growing computer security problem is identity theft. Approximately 15 million United States residents have their identities stolen each year; identity theft is the biggest growing computer crime.

There are many online resources that can help you protect your site and yourself. Lifelock is an example of an online resource that protects your identity around the clock. It will monitor your checking and savings accounts, any bank account activity, scan court records, and much more. These types of companies watch every move made on anything you have with your identity attached to it.

Your visitors need to be able to have faith in you. They need to be able to know that when they come to your site, any information they give you is safe. If you don’t have customers, then you should at least want security for the site itself. And for your peace of mind.

Don’t set yourself up to be someone else’s attack. Secure your site.