With the vast amount of information about ourselves online, we all understand the importance of personal cybersecurity to protect our information. When you buy a domain, it is crucial to set up a way to protect it. You know the drill – don’t use public WiFi, use strong passwords, use multi-factor authentication when available, etc. However, securing your website is just as important as securing your personal information. A breach of your website can crash your website, put your company’s private data at risk, put your customers’ data at risk, and damage your company’s reputation. As a business, all this means lost money.
So, just like you take precautions with your personal security, you also need to secure your website. You’ll notice that some of the ways to secure your website align with the ways to secure your personal information.
Here are some tips for how to secure your website:
1. Use security software
Anti-malware software for your website is a must as 18,500,000 websites are attacked by malware each week. And if your site gets infected by malware, you could even get blacklisted by search engines.
The good news is that many website builders include security software as part of their package. They may also offer website security plugins for free.
2. Install SSL
An SSL certificate encrypts the data that is sent between your site and its visitors, including login credentials, contact forms, and payment information. It is what signals to the Internet that your website is secured (it’s what adds the ‘s’ to https:// and the padlock to the address bar when someone visits your website).
Without an SSL certificate, any information sent on your site is essentially out in the open for hackers to see. Additionally, Google adds a warning to websites that do not have SSL, and those sites will also rank lower for SEO.
3. Keep your website updated
You should regularly update your website to include the latest software updates as they typically include important security patches. If you use a website builder, it’s likely that they will handle the updates for you. But if you use WordPress, you need to make sure you regularly update to the latest WordPress software in addition to any plugins you use. Think of it as updating your operating system.
4. Use strong passwords
Just like it’s important to use a strong password for all your personal accounts, it’s crucial to have strong passwords for your admin and employee accounts on your website. Passwords are easy to overlook, but they’re many times literally the only things standing between hackers and all of your company’s data.
Follow these tips to make sure your passwords are as strong as possible:
- Make them long. The longer, the better (at least 10 digits)
- Make them unique without using personal information
- Use special characters and numbers
- Don’t reuse any of your passwords
- Change them regularly
Another note on passwords – you should encrypt your stored users’ passwords instead of storing them as plain text.
5. Regularly back up your data
Even though you’re prepared with the rest of the tips on this list, the worst could still happen. You should always be prepared for the worst-case scenario by backing up your website, which is essentially creating a copy of it. Think of it as backing up your personal data onto an external hard drive.
Without a backup, if your website were to be hacked, you might have to completely rebuild your entire website from scratch, data and all. Because of the high-risk nature of a potential hack, you should back up your website daily.
There are many options for backup services, including standalone services, web host-provided backup services, and WordPress plugin backup services.
6. Be smart
This one may seem like a no-brainer, but unfortunately, the reality is that many hacks occur due to victims unwittingly giving away their information to hackers.
Your website could be the most secured website on Earth with every cybersecurity bell and whistle. But all that could be for nothing if one careless employee responds to a phishing email.
That said, here are some things you can do to be smart with your website’s data (again, these are some of the same tips you can follow to protect your personal data online):
- Avoid public WiFi like the plague. These connections are completely unsecured and ripe for hacking.
- Be wary of emails. If an email seems odd or suspicious to you, simply delete it. And never click a link on that email. If the email is important enough, the sender will find another way to contact you.
- Vet your admins. You should only ever provide admin access to people you trust 100%. This one doesn’t need any further explanation.
- Change default passwords. See 4. Use strong passwords above.
By following the above tips, you should be well on your way to having a more secure website, which should provide peace of mind to both the business and your customers.
If you are interested in purchasing a domain name for your business, the domain professionals at saw.com can provide a free domain consultation. Our dedicated team is well-versed in all things domains, including website security. With a domain brokerage service like Saw.com, anyone can buy a domain, sell a domain or protect a domain.
