How Do Websites Get Hacked?
There are many reasons why websites get hacked but most of them hinge on carelessness (or ignorance) on the part of the site owner rather than genius on the part of the hackers. This means that a few straightforward measures can go a long way to protecting your website.
Why Websites get hacked?
The reasons why websites get hacked often change over time. It’s therefore advisable to keep checking in on current security best-practices. At present, however, the main reasons why websites get hacked tend to involve the following issues. These are hosting issues, software issues, design issues, user-management issues, and security-monitoring issues.
Hosting issues
You can self-host, but many organizations, particularly SMBs, prefer to use third-party web-hosting vendors. This makes perfect sense, but you do need to make sure that you choose a good one. Even when money is tight, it’s important to remember that security is an investment. In fact, you could even say that organizations on tight budgets have the greatest need for security because they can’t afford the financial consequences of getting hacked.
In addition to ensuring that your host has a good track record with security, you need to decide whether to use a dedicated server or a shared server. Dedicated servers mean that you are never at risk of being compromised due to someone else’s lack of security. Shared servers, however, are often much more affordable and can offer excellent security, provided that you know what you are doing. In particular, you need to manage your file and directory permissions very carefully.
Software issues
Similar comments apply here. The safe choice is to go for one of the all-in-one website-building solutions, which combine hosting and a secure content management system. In these arrangements, the vendor usually takes care of anything and everything technical and the client basically just adds the content and customizes the design within the limits of what the vendor supports. This may sound restrictive, but actually, many SMBs will find these options more than adequate not only for their needs but also their wants as well.
If, however, you are going to go down the open-source CMS route, then it’s your responsibility to inform yourself of the details of your chosen CMS and, specifically, on what you need to do to keep it secure. If you’re using one of the mainstream options, especially WordPress, there is a ton of free, high-quality information available online.
Regardless of what CMS you use, however, it’s vital to keep it updated and equally vital to curate and manage any third-party extensions you use. In this context “curate” basically means minimize. The fewer third-party add-ons you use, the fewer third-party add-ons you’ll need to manage (e.g. keep updated), and the less exposed you’ll be to one of them causing a security vulnerability.
Design issues
If you’re running a long-established website, it is highly recommended to have someone give it a thorough security audit. This should uncover any instances where security has been compromised to achieve someone’s idea of an enhanced design. These need to be addressed promptly.
If you’re currently in the process of building a website, then you need to keep security front and center during the design process. In short, you work out what you need your website to do. Then you work out the most secure way of making that happen. Then you create your design around that. You absolutely do not create a design and then see what security you can fit around it. That is basically asking to be hacked.
User-management issues
You need to exercise effective management over both internal and external users. Internally, you want the lowest possible number of people to have access to the back end of your website and you certainly want to keep the number of administrators down to a bare minimum.
Externally, you may be happy to have any number of genuine users, but you do need to ensure that they are genuine or, at least, harmless. For example, users may be increasingly wary about entering their personal details on a website (ironically enough due to security issues, but they shouldn’t be using a sign-up form or a contact us form, as a means to enter malicious code either. Effective validation will help to prevent this.
For completeness, if you’re allowing users to upload files, then you need to put very robust monitoring in place or you are basically creating a security hazard for yourself.
Security-monitoring issues
These days, all websites need a website vulnerability scanner, and all devices used to connect to the back-end of a website need to be protected with a robust anti-malware product (which has an integrated firewall). This is basically non-negotiable.
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