6 Tips to Enhance Your Website’s Security

Do you have a business website or e-commerce store that handles sensitive customer data? Or maybe you store important company information on your website?

Whatever the case, you'll need to ensure your stakeholders and customers that your website is secure. With the increasing threat of hackers, data leaks, and malware, protecting websites has become more difficult.

Fortunately, it’s not as difficult as you may think!

Simple things like having an HTTPS or the best SSD hosting in UK can protect your website from most malware attacks.

So, how can you ensure that your website is completely safe? Read on for expert tips on how to protect your website!

Safety Starts with the Basics

Unless you have a high-profile website that requires additional security, you probably won’t be targeted by top hackers or spy organizations! Most of the website hacks may be from unethical competitors or online thieves looking to make money from sensitive data.

By ensuring that you cover the basic safety requirements of your website, you won’t have to worry about hacker attacks.

Here are the top 6 tips to help protect your website from being compromised:

1. Get an SSL Certificate

Having an SSL certificate is the best way to protect your website, especially since it involves no technical skill. SSL certificates allow data to be encrypted to protect it from third-party viewers. So, if a customer enters information such as payment details or email addresses on your website, they won't have it compromised.

Even if the hackers do get access to view the data, they will only be able to see the encrypted version. This is often your website's first line of defense against third-party hackers and malware attacks.

The best web hosting services may offer SSD hosting in UK packages that include SSL certificate installation. Even if your desired SSD hoisting package doesn’t come with an SSL, you can always add it to your package.

2. Make Sure Your Server and Website Software is Updated

Have you ever wondered why Microsoft gives regular updates, even though they may not contain any new features? One of the primary reasons for these updates is to patch up any security flaws in the software.

The same applies to your website and hosting software. Whether you have chosen SSD hosting in UK or have dedicated server hosting, you’ll need to ensure that the server software is regularly updated. If you have a WordPress site, then you should install any updates that WordPress rolls out.

Hackers often target hosting servers for weaknesses, so having the server software updated is key to protecting your website. If you have the best SSD hosting in UK, you can get dedicated support. With this, your hosting provider will take care of any security updates and patches to the server software.

3. Protect Your Passwords

One way to ensure your website data is safe is to use strong passwords. It’s surprising how many people use the same password on every website and social account!

If you don’t have a unique password for your website, you are putting it at a major risk. For instance, if a hacker gains access to a password from one of your social accounts, they may use the same password to access your website.

A good option is to enable two-factor authentication on your login page, which may give it an additional layer of protection. If you are unsure whether your password is safe or not, then use an automatically generated password.

Lastly, don’t save your passwords on your laptop as this may be compromised. In this case, the old method of writing your passwords down on a piece of paper works best!

4. Get a Safer Hosting Plan

You may not realize it, but your hosting plan may determine how secure your website is. Hackers have several ways of making it onto your website and one way is through the servers.

Unfortunately, many people have a simple shared hosting on their website. With this form of hosting, you are sharing resources with other websites. If one of them gets compromised, it could create a backdoor for hackers to access your site.

So, if you have SSD hosting in UK or VPS hosting, you’ll have better protection from external attacks. Also, keep in mind that SSD hosting is quite reliable as the data is stored and transferred much faster than with HDD hosting.

So, next time you need to choose a new hosting plan for your website, consider the security features of each plan before making a choice.

5. Get a Backup for Your Website

Data loss may not only be caused by external breaches. Sometimes, human error can cause your website to be compromised. You may erase your data by mistake or unknowingly post sensitive website data to the public.

Sometimes, no matter how many measures you have put in place to protect the website, it may still be compromised. So, if you lose precious website data, what do you do?

The best solution is to get regular backups. The best SSD hosting in UK plans may also offer regular backups, so you can restore your data in case it gets lost. You should also backup your website to an external drive or storage device as a last case resort.  

6. Avoid Phishing Emails

Lastly, avoid dangerous phishing emails designed to get hold of your passwords. Hackers try to imitate a reliable company to get you to click on dangerous links or provide sensitive website information. They do this by sending an email that may look very similar to the real one.

So how do you spot phishing emails? Here are 4 tips:

• Subject Lines that instill urgency
• Emails that ask you for personal information or login details
• Incorrect email addresses (this one is easiest to spot)
• Suspicious structure, way of addressing you, or unprofessional wording

By far the easiest method to spot a fake email is to look at the email address. Unfortunately, many people still fall for these scams, so always be aware of them.

By following these security tips such as getting an HTTPS, using the best SSD hosting in UK getting a good website backup, you’ll be able to ensure that your website won’t get comprised easily.

By Websouls Content Team - 25 Jan 2022