How To Protect Against Cyberattacks And Prevent Cybersecurity Breaches?
We often think that cyber-attacks often happen to only big e-commerce business and hackers do not target small and medium scale companies. Before going on this topic, let us see the striking features of the Wildcard SSL Certificate and EV SSL Certificate for protecting the websites from any kind of attacks or intruding situations.
Wildcard SSL certificate protects the whole website along with the other sub domains that includes the primary or the main domain and all the relevant sub domains. So if you have a domain ABC.com.
Then you can have blog.ABC.com or shop.ABC.com etc. Basically, a wildcard SSL lets every domain and the sub domain grow and also secures all the main and sub domains as well.
On the other hand EV SSL certificate establishes you the secured online connection which is important for increasing the online website performance. EV SSL certificate also increases the online visibility of the website and help your business grow online.
Here are few trust indications given below that are specifically enabled by the EV SSL certificate.
- It displays the organization name in the browser.
- Activates HTTPS
- Displays padlock
- Visitors can see the green color address bar in almost all browsers.
- Comes with a trust logo
But the fact is, most of the cyber-attacks happens for small business companies. According to a report in CNBC 43 percent of attacks happen to small size business. So, the size of the business does not matter what matters is the ways you consider to secure your website online.
Also, according to cyber experts almost 90 percent of the data breaches happen in retail, government and technology industries. One main reason could be these sectors do not concentrate much on business security and are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Every 50 seconds there is a website attack is happening. They steal the personal records and personal information of the customers.
Even the health care industry is much affected with the malware and the spam because of its high scope of the personal information.
In this article we will walk through the top tips to secure your e-commerce website.
Choose A Secure Hosting Service For Your Online Business
With the latest user friendly website making platforms it is easy to make a website but make sure it is hosted and has a trusted and reliable server. So, it is crucial to choose a trustworthy and top hosting service company which guarantees the overall security and PCI complaint.
This helps in a smooth payment and checkout process. Using a hosting on a website makes easy to crawl into search engines and makes websites visible for better ranking.
There are many free hosting platforms available in the digital platforms but do not trust them. They are risky and more prone to cyber-attacks.
All you need is a good hosting provider that can provide adequate security and privacy and VPS hosting is a good option for websites.
We know that VPS stands for virtual private server, which means that you can allot resources which results in faster loading time.
Moreover, more disk space, CPU and RAM. VPS hosting simply means that the traffic of other server customers do not affect your website.
Keep All Software Updated
Once you are done with the setting of the right hosting platform, this is the first step in preventing website security risks.
Because the outdated software increases the chances of your laptops, desktops, and websites becoming the prey to cyber-attacks.
However, software updates can be set to automatic mode to avoid time. All the required software will be automatically downloaded. It makes difficult for the cyber hackers to invade your website and hack your networks and the data.
Use A Secure Password
Passwords, this seems to be hard to believe but most of the cyber-criminal activities have become easy due to password vulnerabilities. Make sure you always change the password that has come by default on your networks. It is easy to guess for the hackers to guess the password.
Choose to keep a hard to guess password and change passwords every 90 days. If they remain unchanged for long time, passwords will affect your business websites.
Special attention to be given to the passwords. Passwords should be a combination of letters, numbers, special characters and symbols. Use both the upper and lower case alphabets so that these are difficult to crack.
Use A Web-Application Firewall
You have learn that the website’s firewall is the source for the defence mechanism whenever the cyber-attack happens. Web-application firewall not only monitors the security but also controls the incoming and outgoing web traffic along with the security protocols.
A firewall easily detects the stolen data from the network. It protects the system from other malwares and other cyber online threats.
Moreover, a firewall automatically shuts down the process if something weird or fishy happens your system. However, there are some tips to consider before you invest in a firewall:
Look for the inbuilt firewall solutions that come along with the website filter which enables you to blacklist the websites that are not trustworthy. So choose a firewall that filters the spam and fulfill the security protocols.
If you have a firewall in your system, then there is no need of a separate anti-virus to be installed as most of the work is already done by the firewalls.
Install SSL
Moreover, if you browse through the secured SSL certificate make sure you go through the steps which include data encryption, data integrity, and data authentication.
1. Firstly, the browser establishes a connection on the client system to the webserver which is secured through the SSL certificate and requests for the server for the identification.
2. Then the server sends the SSL certificate copy with the public key to the client’s server.
3. After the identification, transmitting the public key then the browser confirms the root directory on the trusted certificate authorities. Only then the symmetric key is built by using the public key of the webserver.
However, the web browser should confirm the validity of the SSL certificate. Along with this, it verifies the expiry date of the SSL certificate.
4. Now the server starts decrypting the symmetric key with the use of the public key which is encrypted before this.
5. Now the webserver and the web browser encrypt the data that’s is transmitted through the servers.
For your understanding, the search engine Google Chrome changes the HTTP indicator to a red triangle as the customer tries to enter the information on that page.
Overall the website performance enhances to a great extent if you have a multidomain wildcard SSL certificate running.
If your website is content-based or a blogging website that involves no shopping then you should protect your content. Overall, investing in website security boosts website traffic, conversion rates and also in SERP.
To avoid unnecessary penalties from Google, it is a must to install an SSL certificate. You can buy Trusted SSL Certificates from SSL provider such as CheapSSLShop.com
Back Up Regularly
The best way to protect the website from being attacked or damaged is by regular backup.
You can lose all the crucial data, important files, documents if the system is attacked. In such scenarios if have a proper backup, you can recover them without having to losing them forever.
You can try the data recovery by restoring the data to the original location. However, it takes only less time and also the hosting provider will allow to configure the backups but you have to utilize it.
To avoid following scenarios, look at the below tips regarding the data backup:
- If the computer system crashes at any moment you can lose days of data in the absence of a good backup system.
- Data backups serve you as a best option if there is a physical theft at the workplace.
- Data backup helps you prevent data loss in the event of cyber-attack.
- There are chances that sometimes even hard drives can be the culprit, then data backup comes to rescue.
Final Thoughts
So after discussing the topic you must have realised the importance of website security and also the Wildcard SSL Certificate and EV SSL Certificate also play their role in securing the safety and protection as well.
As the number of internet crimes has increased drastically, online e-commerce businesses have suffered a lot and it is high time they follow the above steps to secure the business. Remember, online e-commerce security should be the main and stand alone for any big, medium and small sized businesses.
If you want to take your online business to the next level and protect your customers’ sensitive data from cyber attackers and win the trust from them, be sure to follow the 10 steps mentioned above.