Website hacking can lead to damage of reputation, operations, and money
November 2018 – World-renowned five-star hotel group, Marriot announces a security breach of its Starwood hotels data base. An estimated 339 million guest records were affected worldwide, leading to a huge loss of reputation and subsequent financial repercussions.
The UK fined the Marriot group nearly $24 million (£ 18.4 million) for the mishap and cautioned the hotel group to have tighter security controls and protocols in place.
None of us would want to be in the shoes of Marriot, do we?
Marriot group apart, many other top multinationals faced website and data security breaches over the last few years. While there is an obvious objective to any security breach—stealing data—there are also other valid reasons that do not involve stealing of data. Hackers also breach websites to use them as base server to send files that are illegal in nature.
The website is the address and digital infrastructure of your business, and it becomes very essential to keep it secure and safe from all attacks.
Here are 7 tips to keep the website secure:
Software update
All websites have software that keeps them functioning and it is important to keep the software updated and upgraded. Keeping the software—server operating systems, web platforms, and scripts—current is essential to ward off website attacks.
Open source or sometimes free software from third parties is easily available on the open internet for hackers to study and find loopholes to strategize an attack. For example, popular CMS or content management systems such as WordPress has its scripts readily available on the internet for hackers to make use of. So, it is all the more important to regularly accept and install upgrades that WordPress and other website systems provide to keep hackers in check.
Strong passwords
A 2016 report on ‘most common passwords’ used found that a whopping 17% of people use ‘123456’ as their password! Not too difficult to predict, isn’t it?
Using weak and predictable passwords such as these is but an open invitation to hackers to breach and steal the data and render the website or account paralysed.
Some of the ways to keep passwords stronger are having a password length of eight characters or above; having a mix of letters, numbers and special characters; and using a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters. Avoid using birthdays, locations, and names as passwords—these are easily predictable.
You could store passwords as encrypted values by the use of SHA or Secure Hashing Algorithm which is a one-way hashing algorithm. Using hashed passwords is another means to limit the damage by hackers as decryption of hashed passwords is not possible.
SSL secured domain
It is very important to have SSL certificate that reassures visitors and customers that the website visited has data coming from a secure source. The SSL certificate also lets visitors and customers know that you indeed care about the security of your website and it also adds another layer of data protection to all the transactions done on the website.
Also, having an HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) as a system to facilitate an encrypted and secure connection between the web browser and server has become vital to secure websites. Google, Yahoo and Bing also require HTTPS in order to not term a website as “unsecure’’.
Fight off SQL injections
Many websites use web forms that allow users to supply them with information. Hackers use this facility to inject malicious code to infect the website. SQL injection can take ‘control’ of the website and make it perform unwanted actions and may even conduct a data breach. The way to fight off SQL injections is to use parameterized queries that lay down strict parameters in place to ensure what sort of web language should be used to access which database. It is important to limit the terms and conditions under which your website can be accessed to keep SQL injections from harming the website.
Safe web configurations
It is essential to check website configurations such as API tokens, database credentials, etc. Periodic checks and evaluations help understand the changes made to the website and also helps review current configurations and see what changes need to be made. Many websites store their configurations directly in code or in an unencrypted manner which allows hackers easy access. The way out is to encrypt the configurations to make it difficult to hack and breach the website.
Use Web security tools
Finally, it is very essential to test the security of your website using various tools. Adhering to the aforementioned security measures is a must; but your website must also undergo regular testing to ensure it is at its best, security-wise. These web security tools imitate the various attacks planned by hackers and showcase the gaps and loopholes in the website. By helping detect various security issues the tools will help plug-in the required security gaps and strengthen your website.
Back-up database
Anything can happen in the digital world! Good or bad.
Prevention is better than Cure, so it becomes that much more important to back up all the files, data, plug-ins, content and, anything related to your website. This is the only way to ensure that you have all that is required to start fresh if the worst ever happens. Experts suggest to also back-up all web-related content and files offline as well, and not just on the cloud or with web hosting provider.
Website hacking can lead to big-time damages in terms of reputation, operations, and even to financial losses as we have seen in the case of Marriot. No company wants to be embarrassed and left with an impression of being an unsecured platform—this could lead to loss of customers and business. Securing your website becomes a top priority as it is your digital representation and even your brand.