How to Protect Your Website from Hackers?

There are a lot of reasons why a hacker would attack a company website. For example, a hacker might try to steal your financial information for personal purposes. He might also try to obtain business-related data and sell it to your competitors. Because of this, you must do your best in protecting your site from malicious hackers.

Typical Hacking Attacks

SQL Injection – With this attack, a hacker can spoof your identity, access your site’s database, and destroy/modify the information inside your database. Here, the hacker will insert malicious SQL codes into the form fields of your website.

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) – The goal of this attack is to bring down a website temporarily. If a DDoS attack is successful, legitimate users won’t be able to use the website. Hackers perform it by flooding the target with continuous requests.

CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery) – Here, the hacker will hijack a session to make purchases on the victim’s behalf. This attack happens when the victim clicks on a URL or downloads a file that runs unknown and/or unwanted actions. 

XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) – Hackers use this technique to destroy your website and/or run their payloads. Basically, an XSS attack happens when a hacker injects malicious codes or payloads into a program that runs on the user’s end.

The Defensive Measures

To protect your website from malicious attacks, you should:

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  Ask skilled programmers to review the codes on your website.
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  Run code scanners.
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  Offer rewards to people who will detect existing bugs within your site.
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  Make sure that your site has WAF (Web App Firewall). This type of firewall
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  monitors your system and prevents potential attacks.
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  Implement CAPTCHA or ask website visitors to answer a question. This way, you can make sure that each request comes from a human.

How to Keep Your Business Secure

Here are some practical tips that you can use in protecting your business:

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  Don’t store irrelevant customer information – Your website will be a tasty target for hackers if it contains various customer related information. If you want to protect your business, don’t save information that you are not going to use. For example,refrain from storing the credit card information of your customers if you don’t need it for your business.
• Educate your people – The defense of your network is as powerful as your weakest employee. Keep in mind that hackers can use social engineering tactics. If one of your employees falls for such tricks, the security of your business will be in danger. Your firewall and flawless website codes won’t matter if your employees are reckless when dealing with their passwords.

These days, digital security is everyone’s job. Educate your employees regarding the

importance of vigilance and carefulness, especially when handling confidential

information. In addition, train your people on how to identify social engineering tactics.