When you manage a small business, the security of your on-site computers and mobile devices is a significant concern. However, you must also be just as diligent in ensuring your business website is secure. Since your website is publicly accessible, anyone with the skills can access sensitive information. Here are a few steps to make your site faster.
Install a Cybersecurity System
Just as there are security systems designed to protect a specific machine, other types of applications are intended for commercial websites. Installing a security information event management, SIEM will help you monitor and evaluate any security applications you install. Applications designed for business websites will monitor user activity to look for and guard against unauthorized access. Cybersecurity applications will also make it more difficult for hackers to access sensitive areas on your site.
Keep Your Applications Updated
You should consistently update any software applications you use on your website. Software companies issue free updates to ensure customers use their product’s most influential and secure versions. An update will address new security threats that have arisen since your last update or since you purchased the software for your site. In some cases, the version of the application you installed on your site may be older and lack the most recent updates. For this reason, you should update any new applications as soon as they are installed. You should also check for updates once per week unless there’s an option for an auto-update setting.
While keeping applications updated, it’s important to remember that databases and production servers also need updating and attention. Keeping databases up to date by modernizing outdated architecture patterns and managing multiple databases is vital. Database synchronization with MySQL can help ensure you are up to date and keep you running smoothly. You can learn how to install MySQL by clicking here.
Limit Access to Secure Areas
You can also make your website more secure by requiring credentials to access areas in which sensitive information is communicated. This typically requires each user to create a unique username and password to gain access to their personal account and your eCommerce store. To ensure funds are kept up-to-date and secure, you should require each user to change their password every three months. On pages where users transmit personal information, such as financial data used to complete a transaction, your site should use an encrypted SSL protocol. This type of encryption will keep others from gaining access to the data as it’s being transmitted. Even if your customer is accessing the site via a public WiFi service, the SSL encryption will offer some protection for their data.
Back-Up All of Your Data
While some individuals will try to hack your website to obtain sensitive information, others will seek to destroy or erase the data on your site. You can avert this type of disaster and protect customer data by using a secure backup system for your data. The best method is to use a secure cloud computing account that allows storing data and restricting access to the report. If there is a data breach on your main website, you can access the cloud account to retrieve any data that may have been lost.
Help Make Connections More Secure
You can take several other actions to protect your website, such as hiding administrative pages. By placing these pages in a robots_txt file, you’ll keep search engines from indexing those pages. Hackers can’t breach pages that they can’t find. You should also limit how files are uploaded and stored. Keep them outside of the root directory. Your IT technician can help you set up a script that will allow you to access these larger files when you need to retrieve that data. You should try and stay up-to-date on the latest security trends, like encrypting a token to ensure your security and privacy. Another easy fix you can do yourself is to disable the autofill capability. While autofill is convenient for your legitimate customers, it also helps hackers get the information they need to gain unauthorized access to your site. Keeping your login fields clear is better to avoid easy hacks from outside entities.
When you take these extra steps to protect your website’s data, you’ll show your legitimate customers that you care about protecting them. While this may mean following some extra cybersecurity protocols, your customers will happily compensate for the inconvenience because they know these steps are intended to keep their information safer. As a result, consumers will be more likely to visit your site and maintain open accounts with your business.
