To know the importance of having well-established website security, we need to first know the answer to ‘what is website security?’ Website security is the act of protecting personal or confidential data from identity theft or any form of cyberattacks. Today in this article, we will be talking about essential steps that need to be taken to improve your website security.
The Basics
Here are some basic tips that you can implement to ensure and enhance your website security.
1. Be Up-To-Date
The most straightforward and perhaps the most overlooked method to enhance your website security is simply to not ignore any update notifications or requests. Usually, when we see a software or plug-in update that says ‘bug fixes’, we do not take it seriously. Little do we know that a simple bug fix can save your entire website from crashing down due to hackers who are always on the lookout for outdated websites so they can break-in.
In fact, if you do not receive any update alerts for over a week or so, you should make it a habit to check for their availability yourself. There are a lot of steps to be taken to ensure website security, but without this basic habit, the rest of the steps might as well be useless.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
2. Don't Be Lazy With Passwords
When creating a website, people tend to overlook the most basic of things because, well, they seem too basic to cause any sort of a problem. Setting up passwords is one action that falls victim to such thinking very often. And just like making sure your plug-ins and software are up-to-date, having strong, complicated passwords can save you from a lot of trouble having to do with website security. That is why this step is second on our website security guide.
All you need to do is make sure you have enough knowledge regarding the brute force used by most hackers to crack website passwords. If your password can stand the test of a hypothetical brute force known to be common, then you are good to go! Make sure to use uppercase and lowercase letters, both, along with unusual patterns and symbols. But do not forget the passwords yourself because that might land you in a completely different issue.
3. Choose a Secure Host
When it comes to website security, your host is like the head of a family. In case all other security systems were put into place, the person who would think of how to protect everyone beforehand was to fail in the case of a robbery. That is why you need to thoroughly search whether your potential host is aware of the issues that need to be tackled regarding website security and learning to secure a website properly.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
A quick tip is to ensure your host has a robust data backup system so that even if your website does fall victim to a cyberattack, the damage can be minimized. It is essential to think a few steps ahead to improve your website security, and your website host can help you do so.
Going A Step Further
Now that you are familiar with the basics of ensuring website security, let’s take it one step further and look into some advanced strategies. These protect your website from the more severe threats it might otherwise face.
1. Get an HTTPs and SSL Certificate
You can think of HTTPs (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) as the security guard of the internet who helps ‘information’ to ‘travel’ over the internet. Basically, if you have an HTTPs certificate, your website is that celebrity who has a personal bodyguard. And of course, a guide to website security would not be complete without making sure we make sure our website can be considered amongst the elite.
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SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) can be considered a helper of the HTTPs certificate. As HTTPs protects the information being transported through your website, the SSL encrypts it to make the HTTPs job easier like a good little helper. Together both these certificates become the perfect team to aid website security.
2. Get Access to a Web Application Firewall (WAF)
A Web Application Firewall or ‘WAF’ is another software that will further aid the certificates discussed above. It is a relatively newer software that often gets overlooked or not taken seriously enough. An HTTPs protects the data, and SSL protects it; WAF takes on the job to double-check whether or not the information being transmitted is safe enough to be approved by your website. Together all three make the ultimate team for providing website security.
As someone enters their personal details on your website, the following step-by-step process involves the presence of HTTPs, SSL, and the WAF aiming for optimal website security:
- The HTTPs certificate will intercept to help take the information across the internet.
- The SSL certificate will encrypt the data to make it easier to be protected.
- The WAF will check in to ensure no funny business occurs within the encrypted data being transported over the internet.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
3. Take Help From a Security Expert
A tip for anything you do in life is to make sure you network your way through with the help of people and organizations who are more knowledgeable regarding whatever work you are doing. There is no scenario in which this will not work in your own favor. In this case, you must look for people who know how to secure a website. When you own a website and work mostly from the comfort of your home or office, the way to network with people more knowledgeable than you is to contact a security expert. They are ‘experts’, so who else could know better about website security?
This is the final step we will discuss in this website security guide aiming to learn how to fully secure a website. A website security expert will help you by regulating your website with scans to professionally and thoroughly check for presence of vulnerabilities on your website with the help of a concept called ‘security audits’.
One Additional Strategy
As a bonus tip, here’s an additional strategy or technique to secure a website. Your site’s security will significantly depend on the platform it is built on. Gone are the days when individuals and businesses needed to hire an expensive web developer to do all the programming for their site. More often than not, they also needed to hire a separate website designer who would create their site’s design and layout from scratch.
These days this hassle is reduced with the availability of numerous website building platforms, where users neither need to hire a professional web developer or designer nor have to indulge in any coding themselves. These platforms take care of the technical matters on their end while providing user-friendly interfaces to their customers. The trick is choosing the right platform to ensure your website security rightfully and effectively.
Let’s take the example of Strikingly. Strikingly is a growing website builder that regularly comes up with new updates and tools to ease out the process of website building for users. We offer ready-to-use templates and a very user-friendly interface, the combination of which makes it easy for any layman to create a professional and attractive website for their business or personal brand.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
The features of Strikingly allow you to enhance your website security in several different ways.
- We offer automatic HTTPS for all our users who use a custom domain for their Strikingly website.
- We allow you to clone or copy your website to keep all your content safe as a backup if your website is faced with a vulnerability or insecurity issue.
- We equip you with built-in website analytics so that you can always keep a check on your site’s performance.
- We provide reliable password protection features to help you prevent any unnecessary or unauthorized access to your website.
- We also have an internal security system that ensures your website security at all times.
In addition to these, if you regularly run website security audits and be careful about the type of content you give out to your visitors on your web pages, you will be able to run a smooth, safe and secure website.
By using our trusted website builder, you can be rest assured that even if your website is at any kind of a risk, you will not be alone in dealing with the issues. We have your back 24/7 through our live chat support and respond to our users on it instantly. We have always been strong advocates of website security and strive against any vulnerabilities our users’ sites could have.
