What is web security and why is it so important?

Attacks can cause costly clean-up, damage website reputation, and discourage visitors from coming back. But there are a few ways, you can prevent it all with effective website security. We will discuss some basics of website security and what type of solutions will help ensure your website isn’t taken down by any attacks.

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Type of the attacks and where they lead to?

Website security is an action or application taken ensuring website data is not exposed to any cyberattacks or to prevent exploitation of websites in any way.

Type of attacks your site can face every day:  

• DDoS attacks – can slow or crash your site entirely, making it inaccessible to visitors.
• Malware – short for “malicious software,” malware is a very common threat used to steal sensitive customer data, distribute spam, allow attackers to access your site, and more.
• Blacklisting – site may be removed from search engine results and flagged with a warning that turns visitors away if search engines find malware.
• Vulnerability exploits – Cyber Attackers can access a site and data stored on it by exploiting weak areas in a site, like an outdated plugin.
• Defacement – this attack replaces your website’s content with attacker’s malicious content, that will bring people to another website or infect their computer with the viruses.

Strong security at your website protects your visitors from:

• Stolen data – From email addresses to payment information, cyber attackers frequently go after visitor or customer data stored on a site.
• Phishing schemes – Phishing doesn’t just happen in email – some attacks take the form of web pages that look legitimate but are designed to trick the user into providing sensitive information.
• Session hijacking – some cyberattacks can take over a user’s session and force them to take unwanted actions on a site.
• Malicious redirect – certain attacks can redirect visitors from the site they intended to visit a malicious website.
• SEO Spam – unusual links, pages, and comments can be put on a site to confuse your visitors and drive traffic to malicious websites.

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What you need to protect your site

An SSL certificate

SSL certificates protect the data collected by your website, like emails and credit card numbers, as it is transferred from your site to a server. This is a basic website security measure, but it’s so important that popular browsers and search engines are now labelling sites without SSL as “insecure,” which could make visitors suspicious of your site.

A website scanner

A cyberattack costs more the longer it takes to be found, so time is of the essence when a site experiences an attack. A website scanner looks for malware, vulnerabilities and other security issues so that you can mitigate them appropriately. Our default service provides FREE malware scanners and notify us if the site has suspicious activity, the malware scanners also look for threats on a daily basis, reducing the amount of damage it can do to your site.

Regular software updates

Websites hosted on a content management system (CMS) are at a higher risk of compromise due to vulnerabilities and security issues often found in third-party plugins and applications. These can be prevented by installing updates to plugins and core software in a timely manner, as these updates often contain security patches – you can even use an automatic patching solution to make it easier.

At GeoBrand we regularly check our customer websites, to make sure that the site software all up to date to avoid any user experience issues.