Tips to Ensure Website Security

Website security is a primary concern of website owners across the world. It does not matter which framework you are using, you should still maintain the web application and server to prevent intrusions. Hackers can attack your website to get access to sensitive data and use the server for sending abused mail and hosting malicious files.

To prevent security attacks, you can follow the suggestions mentioned below.

Keep the Software and Frameworks updated:

All software development companies fix security bugs in updated versions of their products. You can keep hackers away from the website by updating the framework and software you used during web development. In this way, you can make your website more secure from attacks. Generally, hackers use security holes in a website to perform malicious activities. If they cannot find any vulnerability, they start finding other websites that have security holes.

Use strong and impossible-to-guess passwords:

It is always recommended to use strong passwords for FTP accounts, cPanel, and email accounts to prevent security breaches. You should use small letters, capital letters, special characters, and numbers in your password to make it impossible to guess.

Always filter HTML and JavaScript:

The Cross Site Scripting (XSS) is the most common method used for intrusion. Intruders can insert scripting code in web forms or use JavaScript to run malicious code. To ensure security, you should check the data being submitted and remove the unnecessary HTML tags.

Display error messages carefully:

When users insert incorrect login details, a simple error message must be displayed on your website. However, you should be careful about what you will write in this message. Hackers use brute force attack methods to find usernames and passwords. If you display messages such as “username is incorrect” and “password is incorrect”, hackers will know that their job is half done and can focus on another field. To put a stop to this, you should use a common slogan such as “either username or password is incorrect”. Captcha can also be used on a login page to give extra security.

Use both server-side and client-side validation:

To prevent any malicious data from being inserted, you should use both client-side and server-side validation. On the client side, JavaScript can be used for validation, but most browsers offer an option to disable it. Therefore, you should also validate the data on the server to prevent undesirable results on your website.

Scan the uploaded files:

If you offer a file upload facility to allow users to upload their images, you should be careful about what they upload. Hackers can also upload infected files to your server to run malicious code. You cannot rely on the file type to prevent attacks. To protect your website, you should check the file extension and change file permissions. For example, if you set chmod 0666, these files will not get executed. You can also store them on different servers by using Secure File Transport Protocol or Secure Shell Protocol for secure file transport.

Well, these are some security approaches you can follow for ensuring website security. In this way, you can keep your website safe from attacks and users can use it without any fear.

Website Security Audits

The safety of websites is one of the main ongoing battles for a large number of website owners, particularly when there are multitudes of treacherous viruses and smart tech asses present over the internet. Securing your website is not a piece of cake and a large number of website owners neglect this part. Even if your website does not have a transaction base and is just a normal informative site, it might still be prone to the dangers of the web world. Therefore, the owners have to pay special attention to website security rather than to the operations of websites. There are various ways to get you to maintain the security of a website and one of the main widely accepted mediums includes website security audit.

Website Security Audit examines the pages, applications as well as servers of your website to spot the probable weaknesses and vulnerabilities of your website security that can invite hackers to cause some serious damage. The security audit identifies all the key security issues of the website, including the Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and the SQL injection, and helps you in securing the website in the best possible manner. The audit procedure will not hamper the visitors from accessing the website. They can easily surf the web page and carry on the desired activities without any obstruction from the auditing process.

A large number of people recommend third-party security audits on annual basis and in several instances, this recommendation is more than sufficient. It is just a periodic check to notice any probable changes that may have occurred between this audit and the previous periodic check. This will surely reveal any potholes in the security of your website that may have widened in the period of the interval. Website Security Audit is a simple and fast susceptibility assessor that will reveal the exact weak point of your website accurately, rate the level of risk of each loophole, and will provide the best solution for handling the problem.

Website Security Audit consists of six simple steps. The vulnerability assessment test begins with the Port Scan. All the services available on all the ports of your web server including FTP, SQL, and web are investigated and all the open ports are detected within no time. After that, a Vulnerability Scan is done to identify the services available at each open port. These services and their configurations are matched with the vulnerability database for finding the potential ones and an active test is performed to determine any existing weakness.

This is followed by thorough scanning of each web page for identifying the vulnerable entry points. Detailed reports of all the risks discovered along with their severity are delivered to the owners. Each of these reports includes certain recommendations for improving the security of the website. You can guide your staff in the direction of proper and safe actions and carry on the repairing process. Finally, a security certificate is provided to the website owners, which makes the 100% secure tagline appear more realistic.