8 Security Tips To Protect Your Website From Hackers

Welcome to the digital era, when websites serve as both the foundation for businesses and as a platform for people. However, with the advancement of the internet and technology,  the likelihood of cyberattacks has also increased. Hackers can use the website’s weaknesses to gain unauthorized access to your website.

Thus, staying secure in the digital world is more than necessary today. It is critical to take website security seriously and have protective measures in place for your website. In this article, I’ll provide eight security tips to protect your website from hackers.

So, fasten your seatbelt and get set to boost your website security!

It may not seem like your website is vulnerable to hacking, but websites are constantly compromised. In most cases, hacking is performed to find software security vulnerabilities that can be exploited to break into websites. Thus, it is crucial to put website security into place to prevent your website from hacking and data breaches.

The following are eight tips you can use to make sure your website is protected from hackers.

1.   Update your software

It’s possible for even the most established apps to occasionally be launched with unpatched security flaws that expose websites to attack.

Thus, it is essential that all software is kept up to date for your website to remain secure. If it has been identified that your website is using a vulnerable version of that software, it is crucial to update the software as soon as possible to avoid being attacked.

Additionally, updating frequently has the added benefit of giving you access to the newest and most advanced features.

2.   Adopt good password practices

Along with creating strong passwords for your server and website admin areas, it’s also necessary to enforce good password habits for your users to safeguard the security of their accounts.

To help protect their information, you can enforce password criteria to be at least eight characters long, include an uppercase letter, and include a number.

Web developers should add indicators of password strength on their registration forms to give users a sense of their password’s strength. If a user is unsure how to create a password, they might also add a random password generator.

3.   Set up HTTPS

The communication between your website and the user’s browser can be encrypted via a security protocol called HTTP Secure, also called HTTPS. This stops man-in-the-middle attacks from hackers, which use sniffer tools that seize private data, including cookies, passwords, and login information.

As most hosting companies provide their own tools, enabling HTTPS on your website is simple. Nevertheless, you can also set up HTTPS quickly and easily on your own. All you have to do is copy the required files to your server and ensure the right lines of code have been added to your website.

4.   Only use trusted plugins

WordPress users often install any plugin they find, especially if it’s free and includes all the required functionality.

However, because these plugins frequently have access to your website’s files and databases, this is a simple way to compromise the security of your website.

As a result, your website may be infected with malware as they have the ability to insert malicious code into your website. Thus, it is best if you only employ those WordPress plugins that have been approved by the WordPress community and created by reputable brands.

5.   Monitor file uploads

As harmless as it may appear, allowing people to submit files to your website can be a significant security risk. These files could contain malicious scripts that, if run on your server, could entirely expose your website.

Thus, every file upload should be monitored with the same level of suspicion regardless of the file extension being used, as these can easily be spoofed.

Preventing immediate access to all the uploaded files can be the best solution. In addition, you can minimize the risks of your data being compromised by storing files in a directory other than the web root where there is no direct access.

Also, remember to limit physical access to your server.

6.   Remove HTML from submitted forms

To prevent XSS (cross-site scripting attacks), form submissions should be encoded and stripped of any HTML.

Malicious JavaScript can be injected into your pages through cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, which then run in your users’ browsers and modify the content of your pages or steal information to transmit back to the attacker.

7.   Use parameterized queries

SQL injections may occur if your website has a web form or URL parameter that allows external users to input information. Therefore, protecting your website from such attacks is crucial because if the field’s parameters are left too open, someone could insert code, giving them access to your database.

One can prevent an SQL injection attack by using parameterized queries. By employing parameterized queries, you can ensure that your code has sufficiently detailed parameters that hackers cannot alter.

8.   Avoid revealing too much in your error messages

Although error messages are frequently sent to users to explain why they cannot complete a particular action, such as logging in, hackers may utilize this information to perform a more strategic attack on a website.

When performing a brute force attack on a login page, for instance, mentioning common error messages like “incorrect username” and “incorrect password” separately will let the attacker know that they have half of the username/password combination correct.

However, sending a message like “incorrect username or password,” where one may be correct but the other may be incorrect, won’t give them any additional helpful information.

Thus, it is crucial to prevent disclosing all the information to your users stored on your server. Just give minimum errors to users (e.g., API keys or database passwords). Be cautious about how much information you reveal in your error messages.

Conclusion

Website security is more crucial than ever in the modern digital environment. Thus, by putting these 8 security measures to protect your website from hackers in place, you can considerably minimize the chance of a cyber attack and keep your website and its visitors safe.

Remember that the key to avoiding hackers is to remain cautious and maintain your website security up to date. Securing your website is important not just for your business but the trust of your users, their information, and their privacy all depends on it.

So invest in website security today and protect your website from hackers and malicious attacks!