How to Create a Secure Website?
A business website needs to be a secure website. Customers expect it, regulators demand it and your reputation depends on it. Fortunately for SMBs on a tight budget, creating a secure website is a lot more about forethought and discipline than it is about expensive products and services.
5 Ways to Secure your Website
If you want to make sure that your business has a secure website, there are five areas you must address. These are as follows. Make sure you control your domain. Choose your host with great care. Sign up for a website vulnerability scanning service. Manage your software carefully. Take care of your user accounts.
1.Make sure you control your domain
Your domain is one of your key business assets and as such it’s generally far preferable to have it under your direct control. If you are just setting up a business, then consider buying your domain directly from a domain registrar, even if your host offers to include one for free as part of a hosting package. If your host has already bought your domain for you, consider having it transferred to you directly and held in an account you hold with a domain registrar.
However you hold your domain, make sure that you apply all available privacy options, even if you have to pay extra. Also, make sure that there is a lock on your domain so that important actions (like transfers) require additional verification.
Last but not least, note when your domain needs to be renewed. You will almost certainly be sent a reminder about it, but these reminders can easily end up in your junk mail folder. It’s important to keep on top of this to avoid the risk of somebody buying your domain as soon as it expires and either using it for malicious purposes or forcing you to pay a significant amount to get it back (or both).
2. Choose your host with great care
If you start looking for a host by searching on the internet, then there’s a very strong possibility that you’ll see adverts emphasizing the lowest price. This is understandable because it’s a point all companies (and individuals) can understand. Price should, however, actually be at the end of your list of priorities. Security, uptime, page-load speed, technical support, and customer service are all far more important.
Similarly, it can be helpful to remember that premium hosting packages can work out better value than more affordable ones. For example, paying a bit extra for a dedicated server means that you never need to worry about hardening your website to protect it from security issues created by your neighbors. It can also make it easier to delegate work to third-party vendors since you have full control over the environment and, hence, don’t have to ask anyone else for permission to do anything.
3. Sign up for a website vulnerability scanning service
There are some security tools you definitely do need and for most SMBs both the most practical and the most cost-effective way to get them is just to sign up for a website vulnerability scanning service. These are offered by numerous vendors, but any reputable vendor will include an anti-malware scanner and a website applications firewall. These are the twin pillars of your website security. They are, however, intended to complement robust security practices, not compensate for their lack of them.
4. Manage your software carefully
The main content-management systems are all open-source, as are a lot of the third-party add-ons which extend their functionality. There is nothing inherently good or bad about open-source software. You do, however, have to remember that the fact that the code and documentation are available to anyone means that it is easy for cyberattackers to inform themselves about how they work.
This means that you need to do likewise. What’s more, you need to look at the situation from the perspective of security rather than just from the perspective of getting your website to do what you want it to do and to look and feel how you want it to look and feel. In particular, you need to inform yourself of all important default settings and customize them, you also need to manage your file and directory permissions.
5. Take care of your user accounts
Any user account has the potential to damage your website, hence you should do everything possible to limit both their number and their access rights. You cannot limit the power of administrators, but you can, should, and, indeed, must limit their number and monitor their use very carefully.
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