Easy Guide To Website Security

Why Website Security is Important

Do you run a personal, or even business website? Website Security is important for a number of reasons:

• To prevent malware (viruses) being uploaded to your site
• To prevent phishing emails being sent via your site
• To reassure your website visitors that your site is safe
• To get a better ranking in the search engines like Google
• To protect your business from getting hacked and to protect against losing vital data

What happens if your Website is not Secure?

If you website is not secure then hackers and criminals can target your website and exploit any weaknesses.

They have a range of hacking tools at their disposal but the main ones are:

• Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) Attack – this is where details are accessed between your website and the person’s browser
• Malware Uploads – malware is injected to your website through vulnerabilities in the code

How to Secure your Website

There are two main ways to secure your website:

• Switch to secure HTTPS
• Use a Website Security Seal (SSL) with Malware Detection

Secure HTTPS (SSL Certificate)

The most basic way you can protect your site is to switch to HTTPS hosting. This requires an SSL certificate.

Normally websites are hosted on HTTP – check up in your browser. The problem with HTTP is that it is not secure. Hackers can ‘listen’ in to any data that is passed between your visitor’s browser and website.

This could be sensitive data such as credit or debit card details or login credentials for their website.

With HTTPS a secure, encrypted connection is made between the browser and your website so that any data passed between them cannot be intercepted. In short this means that Google favours websites that use HTTPS.

If you want to switch to HTTPS you will need an SSL Certificate. These are not very expensive and they are easy to install.

Website Security Seal

A Site Seal is a security feature that monitors your website looking for malware (i.e. viruses uploaded by hackers.)

It’s like having an anti-virus for your website. You wouldn’t access the internet without using an anti-virus so why expose your website to potential threats? It monitors your files and if it detects any malware it notifies you so that you can remove it.

Depending on the level of service the Website Security Seal that you use it can also remove any malicious files too for extra security and peace of mind.