Your website is not secure?
If you’re hosting your website with a paid website hosting provider, you expect security to be in place. Normally you’re not concerned with hackers stealing your data or pilfering passwords to empty your business account. However, your business website is living in an unsecured world.
In this world, you should be aware of potential security risks.
Even if you believe your hosting provider has your back and your website is not big enough to warrant an intrusion. But do you:
- Store critical data on your computer about your customers, vendors and prospects, including bank and credit card information, lists, buying history, bank account numbers, passwords and more.
- Use a firewall for the inhouse company network?
- Keep your anti-virus and browsers up to date?
- Practice strong password protection?
If you aren’t paying attention to security, you should be because the reality is that most data breaches strike small businesses. Cyber-attacks and data breaches are a continuing threat to all business owners. Its usually not that one guy late at night sniffing around the internet looking for a vulnerability on a web site. Security breaches likely happen when your website is part of a targeted group, carried out by an organized hacking syndicate.
Or you can be a victim of a botnet usually automated so several sites are targeted at once.
You can reason that your small business site doesn’t sell anything, it is only information for your customers. Why would anyone bother with it? Well, that may be true, however breaking into your website leaves it open to vandalism, which means your entire site can be rewritten, redirected somewhere else, or have malware installed just waiting to download to your next visitor. In all cases, hacking, malware, botnets are things to be avoided.
What should you do? Install an SSL certificate to start.
An SSL (indicated by an S after https:// in the address bar) creates a secure encrypted connection between the browser you’re using and the web server your domain lives on.? Besides adding this layer of security, you will also be in compliance with most internet browsers, that now warn visitors away from visiting a website without SSL installed. In addition, Google uses SSL to rank websites in its search engine. Those without it are lower on the totem pole. Security should not be left up to your host, you need to do your part too. In conclusion: Use strong passwords. Update your plugin’s, update everything, install SSL, easily when you host with DWLI. We want you to be secure.
