The primary concern of every internet user is security. The dangers of online threats have increased exponentially in the past few years with millions of hackers trying to shut down a website and steal every single piece of valuable information. Nowadays e-commerce businesses are booming as well as the number of transactions taking place online. These practices lure website hackers and other security threats like viruses and malware. Fortunately, there has been consistent progress in the field of online securities that focuses on reducing online threats.
One of the primary directives of a web developer is to find ways to keep a website secure from hackers and viruses. Every e-commerce business and website depends heavily on professional web developers in this matter.
Let us discuss 10 of their mostpreferred security practices to protect websites from online threats.
1. Keeping Software Up-to-date
Most of the time, a website becomes easier to hack by people who have limited knowledge about it due to updated software. Webmasters should be quick in updating any and every software related to their website on a regular basis. Every single software update includes security improvements that make it difficult for hackers who intend to exploit such weaknesses.
2. Frequent Malware Scans
Once a web developer has completed a website, all which is left to do is running security checks and malware scans to ensure that there are no loopholes and vulnerabilities. Most of these problems escape initial inspection. But a reliable malware scan can help you find any fault in security settings that could jeopardise your website’s entire security system.
3. High-performance firewall
Web development technologies have reached a point where you can find an application, tool, or add-on for every necessary feature for a functionally complete website. Expert developers know the significance of a high-quality firewall to protect web applications from hacking attempts. Such a firewall can keep a track of data transmission and alert webmasters if it is not secure.
4. Regular or Semi-Regular Backups
Websites are up day in and day out, open for all kinds of online visitors from all across the globe. It means, an immeasurable amount of data passes through it all the time. Any of these visitors could be a potential hacker, trying to find out some weaknesses to cause a security incident. Constant backups keep your websites free of unnecessary data and move essential data to a secure server.
5. Keeping Track of Errors
Web applications are smart enough to detect malfunctions way before human eyes can identify them. Smart web developers never miss an error message and take the necessary steps to remove them even if they are minimal errors. If you maintain a log of every error solved then it would be easier to avoid them in future instances.
6. Encrypting Sensitive Data
We access millions of websites each day and hundreds of them store our data in different forms like date of birth, full name, address, contact number, and even card details. Websites like these are prone to suffer regular security threats from hackers and invading viruses whose goal is to steal sensitive information. The best way to avoid this is encrypting all of your clients’/users’ personal data such as credentials.
7. Securing All Connections
Hijacking a website has become more frequent and quite an unavoidable problem these days. Hackers can easily gain access to your website using hijacked sessions if they get their hands on not-so secure login system. For these reasons, cybersecurity consultants advise developers to keep every connection secure so it does not get misused for nefarious reasons.
8. Client & Server Validation
Users of any particular website input a lot of information that must be accepted to the website database. It could contain malware or a dormant virus if a hacker is posing as a user of your web application. Since web developers prefer using JavaScript for accepting user input (because it’s easier) they must validate the same data server-side as well to ensure it will not cause harm to the database once accepted.
9. Limiting User Access
As mentioned earlier, in common website security incidents, more harm is done by an invader posing as a user. Web developers need to strictly monitor the freedom provided to their users with regular security checks to avoid issues caused by seemingly harmless visitors.
10. Storing Selective Data
The more a website keeps a database full of sensitive information belonging to its end users, the more security threats it faces every moment. Storing so much important data is like inviting troubles like hackers in the form of malware. As a web developer, always decide what you need to store and what do you need to protect to make sure you can do both and avoid security-related issues. The aforementioned ideas can help anyone who is having a hard time securing their website. And also, always remain updated about the latest news and trends on cybersecurity.
