10 Easy Ways How to Secure Your Website

Every day there’s a new case of data breach recorded on the World Wide Web. Whether it is personal information or bank details, hackers have taken over the Internet and taken full advantage of its vulnerability. Because of these cyber threats prevalent in the digitalized world, you ought to secure your website so that the user information and your confidential business information remains safe.

It can hardly take much time for hackers to make your website a malicious spy bot and leak personal data, and you would not even realize it. They can manipulate critical information while hijacking the hosting server to be used in botnet DDOS attacks.

Here are the top 10 tools that will help you ensure your website security:

1. Have an SSL Certificate

The most important tool to keep your website secure is SSL Certificate. Comodo SSL Certificates are the most popular brands as far as Certificate Authority is concerned. It allows you to encrypt the data that is shared between web servers and websites. Your website should be secured with HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure). It works by adding an encryption layer of TLS (Transport Layer Security) or SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to your HTTP. You can buy the SSL Certificate from your Web Hosting Provider.

SSL Certificate and HTTPS is an indispensable part to consider for online transactions. If you are an eCommerce website owner, this is a must.

2. Use Strong Passwords

It goes without saying that you should use strong passwords that are difficult to crack by hackers. Brute force attacks are constantly rising, and these attacks make an attempt to guess the username password combinations. Numerous such attacks are reported every day throughout the Internet.

To prevent such attacks, it is important to use strong passwords that include alphabets, numbers, and symbols. It should be at least 12 characters long.

Another thing to keep in mind is that do not use the same password for multiple accounts. It is a good practice to change your passwords at regular intervals. If you want to store the users’ passwords, do so in an encrypted form. This will not let the hackers access the real user passwords.

3. Secure Admin Directories

Many a time, hackers get entry into your website by hacking into the admin directories. These attackers take help of scripts that go through every directory on your web server that have names such as ‘admin’ or ‘login’. They enter the folders and compromise the website security. Generally, Content Management Systems let you rename the admin folders to the name you like. You should choose a name that can be recognized by your webmasters only.

4. Update the Software Programs Regularly

Regardless of how your website is developed, all your software programs should be updated regularly. Developers at WordPress, Joomla and the like make tireless efforts to introduce patches and updates to reduce the vulnerability to attacks. Remove any plugins that have gone obsolete or are hardly used. Hackers can use these as a gateway to break into your site and create a cyber disaster.

5. Refrain from Allowing File Uploads

It is a huge risk to allow users to upload files to your website. It is quite likely that even an innocent-looking file can have a script that opens up your website on execution at the server.

In case your website mandates the need of file upload form, you should process the files carefully. You should not count on the file extension or the mime type to confirm the file type. It is not safe to open the file and read the header or use functions to know the image size as these methods are not reliable.

As a workaround, you can refrain from giving direct access to the files uploaded. As a result, every file that is uploaded to the website is stored in a folder outside the Webroot or as a blob in the database. For those files that are not accessible directly, you can prepare a script to fetch the files from the private folder and send them to the browser.

You should have a firewall setup so that you can block the unnecessary ports. You can even set up a Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that allows access to port 80 and 443 from the outside world. This is possible only if your server is accessible from an internal network.

6. Stay Wary of Error Messages

Keep a close eye on any error messages that you send to your users. You should not provide too many errors to the users so that they do not leak your secrets on the server. You should not provide full exception details because this information can facilitate the occurrence of complex attacks like SQL injection. Make sure you display only the required information to the users rather than showing the detailed errors.

7. Check for SQL Injection

Whenever a hacker takes help of a web form field or URL parameter to get entry into your database or manipulate it, it is known as SQL injection attack. To avoid these attacks, use parameterised queries that are easy to execute through many web languages.

8. Secure Against XSS Attacks

Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks add malicious JavaScript into the pages and these pages can then modify the page content or steal the user information when runing in the user’s web browser.

If you are generating HTML dynamically, you should put to use functions that clearly make the changes you need or functions that do proper escaping automatically instead of using raw HTML content or link strings.

9. Validate on Both Browser and Server Sides

Validate simple things such as mandatory fields that have been kept empty or text entered into a field that takes only numbers. Hackers can bypass such requisites and insert malicious code into the database, thereby giving rise to website errors and unexpected results.

10. Have Extra Layers of Security For Your Website

You can have free tools such as Netsparker, OpenVAS, SecurityHeaders.io and Xenotix CSS Exploit Framework to make your website all the more secure for the visitors and drive more traffic. Cloud-based Web Application Firewalls can also be used to ensure that there is no security mitigation whatsoever.

Final Thoughts

Website owners overlook the importance of security, thinking that hackers would not target their website. This is the biggest mistake you could make. Follow these simple tips and avoid any risk to your website.