Can You Get a Virus from a Website?
Internet security can be a confusing topic. On the one hand, by now, probably most people, certainly most business owners, have grasped that it’s important. On the other hand, while there is plenty of information about how to keep yourself, and your company, safely online, there’s also a lot of misinformation and information which is only partly true.
As a result, people can be left with a lot of unanswered questions, like “can you get hacked by visiting a website”. This article will help to clear up the confusion.
Can you get hacked just by visiting a website?
The question “can you get hacked by visiting a website” seems to be floating around the internet a lot. The short answer to it is “yes”, in principle you can. As is often the case, however, the short answer only tells part of the story. The whole story helps to shed a lot more light on internet security.
The threat of drive-by downloads
Drive-by downloads are downloads that are initiated without the active permission of a person viewing a site. They are still a relatively uncommon way of spreading malware. Drive-by downloads can only succeed, however, if a user allows automatic downloads in general. From an IT security perspective, this is a really bad idea.
So the real answer to the question “can you get hacked just by visiting a website” is “probably not, as long as you take steps to protect yourself”. This is the answer to most questions on IT security. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to the key steps you need to take to protect yourself and your business.
3 Key Steps to Protect yourself from Hacking Website
1. Invest in robust anti-malware protection for your computers, mobile devices, and website
For your computers and mobile devices, the best option is generally a cloud-based, all-in-one anti-malware solution with an integrated firewall. If you choose a product from a reputable provider, you’ll get all the protection you need right out of the box and at a price even SMBs can afford.
Protecting your computers and mobile devices will also protect your website since it will make it harder for hackers to steal any login details which may be stored on the devices you use to connect to the back-end of your website. You should, however, still give your website its protection in the form of a robust website vulnerability scanner.
Different products will have different functionality, but any decent product should have an anti-malware scanner and a web applications firewall. These perform much the same function as their counterparts for regular computers and mobile devices, they are just designed to work on websites instead.
2. Be careful about adverts
These days, the best anti-malware products for computers and mobile devices will come with ad-blocking functionality. This is because adverts have been notorious as a tool for spreading malware. In particular, they are a source of drive-by downloads which see you get hacked just by visiting a website.
The reason why adverts have become so popular with malicious actors is that internet adverts tend to work by agencies buying up advertising spaces on websites and filling them with their own choice of adverts. The agencies are supposed to screen the adverts they accept but the sheer volume of malicious advertising (malvertising) on the internet shows that they aren’t always doing a very good job of it.
On the one hand, this is understandable given that these agencies have to process huge numbers of adverts to turn in a profit. On the other hand, this opens the door for malicious actors to put adverts on reputable websites and essentially leverage their credibility.
As a result, people surfing the internet are turning to ad blockers to protect their security, and people running websites are having to think long and hard about whether or not to accept adverts on their site.
To be quite blunt, although businesses, especially SMBs, often have to look at all possible sources of revenue, the potential income from adverts tends to be below. This, therefore, raises the question of whether it’s worth the reputational and SEO risk of becoming an inadvertent host for malware.
3. Be alert to the dangers of links
As an internet user, if you are using a robust anti-malware product, you will almost certainly be alerted before you click on a dangerous link. The key point to note, however, is that this is not a complete guarantee. You, therefore, need to check before you click. If necessary use a URL decoder or a URL expander.
If you’re running a website, keep an eye on who is backlinking to you and disavow questionable links. They aren’t a security threat but they can negatively impact your SEO.
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How to Protect your Website from Viruses?
Removal
Security stack layer 1
Malware Detect & Removal
Our malware detection scanning, preventive methods and removal enables you to take a proactive approach to protect the business and brand reputation from malware attacks and infections.
- Unsuspecting websites get infected with malicious code.
- Continuous website monitoring to detect any incidents.
- Identify and remediate the cause to hardening your websites.
Comodo cWatch Web can identify malware, provide the tools and methods to remove it, and help to prevent future malware attacks at the edge before it hits the network, included as a paid member.
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Response
Security stack layer 5
Cyber Security Operations Center
Our exclusive C.S.O.C. is staffed with certified security analysts to monitor, assess and defend websites, applications, databases, data centers, servers, networks, desktops and other endpoints.
- 24 / 7 / 365 security monitoring using state-of-the-art tech.
- Engage clients of complex threats to resolve the issue.
- Real-time web traffic monitoring and proactive incident fixes.
C.S.O.C. checks for threats, identifies and analysis then performs the necessary actions to resolve the issue while offloading costs of in-house experts by using stack layer 3 to handle the heavy lifting.
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Intelligence
Security stack layer 3
Security Information • Event Management
S.I.E.M. collects logs and events the network traffic and web assets, security devices, operating systems, applications, databases, and reviews the vulnerabilities using artificial intelligence to process.
- Reduces billions of events into prioritized threats real-time.
- Identifies changes in network behavior with activity baselines.
- Flows data searches in real-time streaming or historical mode.
S.I.E.M. senses and tracks significant threats to links to all online supporting data and context for easier investigation. While anomaly detection to identify changes associated with the network safety.
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Prevention
Security stack layer 4
Web Application Firewall
W.A.F. by Comodo eliminates application vulnerabilities to protect websites and web applications against advanced attacks including Denial-of-Service (DDoS), SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting.
- Destroys malicious requests and thwart hack attempts.
- Protection to account registration forms and login pages.
- Malicious bots and brute force attacks are block and patched.
Combined with malware scanning, vulnerability scanning and automatic virtual patching and hardening engines provides robust security is fully managed for Comodo cWatch Web customers.
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Performance
Security stack layer 2
Add a network of globally distributed servers designed to boost the speed for websites and web applications by transferring content to your user based on their proximity to the nearest CDN web server.
- Proven to increase search engine rankings and site scores.
- 29 worldwide CDN node locations to reach your users.
- Save your bandwidth by leveraging CDN browser caching.
CDN serves your users your website content with virtually unlimited capacity. Giving you the freedom to focus less on site maintenance, more on scaling the uptime of your traffic and target audience.
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Compliance
Security stack layer 6
Payment Card Industry • Data Security Standard
PCI • DSS ensures that your customers' cardholder info is kept secure from security breaches through a meticulous scan of your network and applications to identify and fix security vulnerabilities.
- Simple and automated way to stay compliant with PCI • DSS.
- Pass the requirements for the 12 points PCI • DSS standard.
- Schedule on-demand PCI scans to report quarterly results.
Establishes and implements a firewall, hardens your environment, disables unnecessary services & configures system parameters to prevent misuse, ensures system audit components are protected.
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