We have written many articles about security for your site. Previous article, we inform how to protect wordpress site from hackers. Now, in this article, we will inform in general how to secure your site from hackers.
As a website owner, is there anything more terrifying than the thought of seeing all of your work altered or entirely wiped out by a nefarious hacker?
You’ve worked hard on your website (and your brand) – so it’s important to take the time to protect it with these basic hacker protection tips! This article will also teach you how to check if a website is safe and what you can do to ensure your website is completely from hackers.
#1. Use HTTPS
As a consumer, you may already know to always look for the green https in your browser bar any time you’ll be providing sensitive information to a website. Most consumers know to recognize those five little letters as an important shorthand for hacker security: they signal that it’s safe to provide financial information on that particular webpage.
In July 2018, Google Chrome released an security update that alerts website visitors if your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate installed. An SSL certificate is important because it secures the transfer of information – such as credit cards, personal data, and contact information – between your website and the server. Search engines are taking website security more seriously than ever because they want users to have a positive and safe experience browsing the web. Taking the commitment to security further, a search engine may rank your website lower in search results if you don’t have an SSL certificate.
What does that mean for you? If you have an online store, or if any part of your website will require visitors to hand over sensitive information like a credit card number, you need to invest in an SSL certificate. The cost of an SSL certificate is minimal, but the extra level of encryption it offers to your customers goes a long way to making your website more secure and trustworthy.
But, you don’t need to worry again about this paid SSL certificate since there are many hosting provider that support FREE SSL certificate and you can easily install it through their control panel. You can find out hosting provider that support Let’s Encrypt
#2. Keep Your Software and Software up-to-date
One of the best things you can do to protect your website from being hacked is to make sure your apps, or scripts you’ve installed are up-to-date. Because many of these tools are created as open-source software programs, their code is easily accessible – to both good-intentioned developers as well as malicious hackers. Hackers can pore over this code, looking for security vulnerabilities that allow them to take control of your website by exploiting any platform or script weaknesses.
As an example, if you’re running a website built on WordPress, both your base WordPress installation and any third-party plugins you’ve installed are potentially vulnerable to these types of cyber attacks. Making sure you always have the newest versions of your platform and scripts installed minimizes the risk that you’ll be hacked in this way and usually takes very little time to do.
#3. Use Strong Password
It’s tempting to go with a password you know will always be easy for you to remember. That’s why the #1 most common password is still 123456. You have to do better than that – a lot better than that to prevent login attempts from hackers and other outsiders.
You also want to make sure everyone who has access to your website has similarly strong passwords. Institute requirements in terms of length and the type of characters that people are required to use so they have to get more creative than going with the standard, easy passwords they turn to for less secure accounts. Creating strong passwords can prevent a hacker from being able to gain access to your accounts.
#4. Use CSP
Similar to SQL injections, cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks are another common threat site owners have to be on the lookout for. They occur when hackers find a way to slip malicious JavaScript code onto your pages which can then infect the pages of any visitors to your website that are exposed to the code.
Part of the fight to protect your site from XSS attacks is similar to the parameterized queries you use for SQL injections. You should make sure any code you use on your website for functions or fields that allow input are as explicit as possible in what’s allowed, so you’re not leaving room for anything to slip in.
Another handy tool that can help protect your site from XSS is Content Security Policy (CSP). CSP allows you to specify the domains a browser should consider valid sources of executable scripts when on your page, so the browser knows not to pay attention to any malicious script or malware that might infect your site visitor’s computer.
Using CSP is simply a matter of adding the proper HTTP header to your webpage that provides a string of directives that tells the browser which domains are ok and any exceptions to the rule. You can find details on how to craft CSP headers for your website provided by Mozilla here.
#5. Use Parameterized Queries
One of the most common website hacks many sites fall victim to are SQL injections.
SQL injections can come into play if you have a web form or URL parameter that allows outside users to supply information. If you leave the parameters of the field too open, someone could insert code into them that allows access your database. It’s important to protect your site from this because of the amount of sensitive customer information that can be held in your database.
There are a number of steps you can take to protect your website from SQL injection hacks; one of the most important and easiest to implement is the use of parameterized queries. Using parameterized queries ensures your code has specific enough parameters so that there’s no room for a hacker to mess with them.
Conclusion
Don’t put off taking this important step. Securing your site and learning how to protect against hackers is a big part of keeping your site healthy and safe in the long run!
