Businesses today are getting increasingly dependent on their websites. They use websites to drum up a new business, or sell things, or position themselves in their industry. Websites are often in the center of digital communications strategies. They are also the part of the business that is facing the public. As such, websites face exposure to various threats.
In the United States alone, every day brings another 4,000 ransomware attacks. And that’s just ransomware —many other security attacks happen daily. Your website is a target, just by the fact that it is online. And while using professional web design services will go a long way in bettering your website’s performance, it will do little to address some security issues your website has. The most devastating of these issues are your misconceptions about website security. Let us bust a couple of common security myths and make you aware of the things lining up against you.
Small Businesses Are Safe
So maybe there is no such thing as being safe online. But there has to be a difference between attack rates on big corporations and the attack rates on small businesses. There is not that much to steal from small businesses, so why should any hacker bother?
It turns out there are plenty of reasons. If there were not, we would not see the numbers that show that 61% of cyber attacks in 2017 hit small businesses. The scariest part is knowing that hackers are increasingly turning to targeting small businesses. Year after year, we are seeing the share of small business attacks grow, while the share of big business attacks shrinks. The “we’re too small to count” belief is a myth. Hackers do not care, and being a small business makes you an even better target.
We Don’t Work with Credit Cards so We’re Not a Target
Hackers are mostly targeting businesses that require customers to use credit cards online. They are in it for the money, after all. There is no reason to attack a website of a business that is not an online store.
All of that would be true if everything hackers wanted were credit card numbers. But it isn’t everything hackers want. They want whatever they can take. They can breach your website and freeze your entire tech until you pay them — that is called a ransomware attack. Some breaches take over your assets and use them in DDoS attacks. Mostly, hackers are looking for any kind of information they might find useful, and that includes more things than just credit card numbers.
SSL and Antivirus Will Keep Us Safe
There are useful software solutions that defend websites from attacks. Antivirus and antimalware software are two of them. A secure connection will protect all the information we exchange with website visitors. As far as we are concerned, our website is completely safe.
Antivirus and antimalware solutions are very important, and so is SSL. But between the three of them, they will not fend off every possible type of attack. If a hacker really wants to access your website, they might go through your employers, try to get their passwords, and then use them to access your website. So no matter how important it is to have security software and enable a secure connection, they will not cover all of the bases.
All of Our Data is Backed Up
In case something bad happens, it is handy to have a complete backup of the website and all of its data. That way, even if someone hacks into our website and brings it down, we will not suffer much. They cannot take away that data we backed up.
This type of defense might be effective against a ransomware attack. You can simply tell the extortionist that they can go ahead and delete your data because your backup is safe. But this will not protect you from other types of attacks. And it does not mean that the data in your backup cannot be poisoned.
Data Encryption and Strong Passwords Are Foolproof
It’s extremely hard to decrypt encrypted data. And long passwords with a mix of numbers, special characters, and lower and uppercase letters are very strong. There is no way a hacker would be able to bypass the passwords or decrypt the data.
Everything that is encrypted can be decrypted. The strength of the encryption determines how difficult it is to decrypt. The more difficult the decryption, the less economical it gets for hackers to try to break it. Encryption is useful only if it is the strongest encryption available. Strong passwords can also make it too time-consuming for hackers to try to break them. However, they have a workaround for passwords — the people who use them. Strong passwords are only strong if few people know them.
The best way to protect your website is to implement as many security features as possible. No single solution is good enough to cover every possible line of attack. Having a strong combination of security measures is time-consuming, tedious, and expensive. But it is the only way to keep your website safe and secure.