The recent security breach of the HSE systems in Ireland highlights the chaos that can occur when such an event happens. This particular cyber attack has had a huge impact on a national health service and will take weeks or months to resolve at an enormous cost. On top of this, over 700GB of data has been breached which opens up a whole other can of worms.
The majority of websites are quite vulnerable from a security point of view and should take action to address this and protect data now before it’s too late.
Website Security
Cyber Attacks are not going away, in fact they are now more prevalent than ever before. The groups behind these attacks are extremely sophisticated and they are also practically untraceable. This we cannot control. What you can control however is your website’s security. Think of website security as the health of your site, when your website security is strong your site is in good health, when your website has poor or no security your site is in bad health, and just like humans when you are feeling weak, it’s harder to protect yourself from dangers. Hackers thrive on sites that are in weak health and vulnerable.
How do I protect my website?
In order to ensure your website is secure, you should get into the habit of regularly performing a health check or penetration testing to see how it’s performing and reacting. Some basic ways of increasing your website security and keeping it in good health are switching to HTTPS and having a firewall/brute force protection in place. Tools like Sucuri and Wordfence Pro are great for this.
In order to switch to HTTPS, you will have to acquire and install an SSL certificate. Normally, older websites are hosted and indexed on just HTTP, this is a problem because HTTP is not secure and hackers can essentially ‘listen’ in on any data that is being passed between your site and a visitor’s browser. This data could be of a severely sensitive nature such as card details or login credentials such as username, passwords etc..
HTTPS provides an encrypted connection between your website and a user’s browser. This ensures that any data can not be intercepted or “listened” to by hackers. Google has also made it clear that HTTPS is a ranking factor in their algorithm. Google favours websites that use HTTPS over HTTP.
To inquire about getting an SSL certificate for your site get in touch with us today!
Malware Protection
As well as switching to HTTPS, another way of drastically improving your website security is by having a malware protection tool such as Sucuri or Wordfence (as above). This is a security feature that monitors your website and it looks for things such as malware in particular. You can think of this as being like an anti-virus for your website. This constantly works in the background and monitors your files and activity and if it comes across malware it will notify you so that you can remove it and keep your site safe.
Website Maintenance
Having your hosting, website security and maintenance looked after by a professional company is simply the smart decision, it will not only give you peace and mind that your site is being looked after by experts but you will also now be able to focus your time on your business and your customers.
By having a maintenance agreement in place you won’t have to continually pay each and every time you need an update done, you can rest easy in the knowledge that it will be automatically covered by your agreement, it will save you money in the long run compared to having to go it by yourself.
Once you think you have done all you can in relation to improving your security then it’s time to actually test your website security and give your site a health check. The most effective way of doing this is via the use of some website security tools, often referred to as penetration testing or pen testing for short.
For more information about increasing your website security and making sure it’s in good health contact us today!
