Your website is under threat! Today, reports of websites getting hacked and company data getting lost have become way too common. But it is not just hacking that is a threat to your website, business, and personal data. Your site could also experience denial of service, SQL injection, buffer overflow, session hijacking, and cross-site scripting. In the last couple of years, more than 4,000 ransomware attacks took place. These are attacks that take control of your data and demand a ransom before the data is restored. It will also affected your digital marketing campaigns if you are running on paid ads.

What should you do to stay secure? The first thing is to understand what the threats are, how they happen, and vulnerabilities. You might also need to carry a vulnerability test before crafting a security plan. Here are some simple yet highly effective tactics that you can use to keep your website secure. This is an important factor that every SEO agency would advise if you are keeping a track on your ranking.

Secure The Website using SSL Certificate

Getting an SSL certificate is the first step in keeping your website secure. On the website URL, check whether it has “HTTPS://” or it only has “HTTP://”. If the website does not have the additional “s”, it means that it is not secured with an SSL certificate. Besides, websites without SSL certificate security have a red warning icon shouting “not secure.”

To get an SSL certificate, the cost could range from nothing to several hundred dollars every month. Note that some CMB such as HubSpot sells their services with SSL included. Therefore, it is important to start by checking them.

Keep All The Extensions or Plugins Updated

Attackers are always looking for your website’s vulnerabilities to gain entry. Such vulnerabilities can easily be found in old and out-of-date plugins. To avoid such attacks, it is important to stay on top of all the website’s updates. Consider setting all the plugins to auto update so that you will never miss an update because of other engagements.

Utilize Content Delivery Networks

Content Delivery Networks (CDN) are mainly known for their roles in accelerating website’s speed through networks of datacenters, they are also a great option to prevent the websites from DDoS attacks. This is a type of attack that involves flooding of a server with traffic until it stops responding. Then, the attacker gains access to your data stored in the CMS. However, CDNs help to thwart this type of attack by scaling up when a surge in traffic is detected. It is also important to ensure that the selected CDN provider has multiple centers so that the website will continue running even when one server goes down.

Make Use of a Password Manager

One of the simplest ways of staying safe from cyberattacks is utilizing password managers. A secure password should have letters, numbers and special characters to make it hard for attackers to crack. Using a password manager helps you to create a strong password and store it so that you will not forget it at any moment. Besides, it also helps to set timeframes when the password should be updated.

Suffering a hack can be very frustrating for businesses especially those that handle a lot of clients data. To stay secure, website managers and business owners are encouraged to go to great lengths for security assurance. Well, do not wait until the hackers or malicious codes hit your website; the time to get started is now. In addition to the above four strategies, here are some additional tips you should use to stay secure;

  • Train your staff on cyber-security.
  • Have website security reviewed regularly.
  • Keep the website updated.
  • Backup every website data in a cold store.