Tips For Protecting Your Website Investment
With the internet being extensively used today in every walk of life, security issues have risen in prominence. Advances in technology have been used both positively and negatively to enhance websites and businesses as well as to destroy them. Negative impact of technology can be seen from the constantly increasing cases of hacking websites or of malware attacks that are being reported. While it is not possible to secure your website completely from such attacks, there are several steps, which as a website owner you should take, to secure your website investment. Following are some of the basic tips, which if followed, will help you to protect your website from malicious hackers and attacks:
Virus protection: Good virus protection is essential for ensuring complete security of your website. This can be achieved by installing a good anti-virus program on your PC, so that it will help prevent virus attacks on your website. It is important that you choose an anti-virus program that also deals with problems related to malware.
Selection of alpha-numeric passwords: Secondly, it is important to keep changing or modifying your FTP password. While this could be a pretty mundane yet irritating task for many, doing so will definitely ensure complete safety to your website. It is essential to note that your passwords should be as long as you are allowed and should contain a healthy mix of numbers and alphabets, mixed properly. Never use common dates like that of birthdays, anniversaries or names while setting your passwords as these can be easily hacked. It is important to protect your databases with passwords in a similar manner. However, if you are still unsure of how to do it, you can enlist the services of an ethical hacker to help you find the vulnerabilities in your website and overcome them. Using proper security patches: The next step is to ensure that you are up to date with your security patches as the lack of these will cause Trojans and other similar viruses to enter through these gaps. When using web hosting packages to host your website, it is important that you ensure that the hosting company is diligent in ensuring that the server patches are up to date. It is important that you download and install the latest patches that are available with regard to websites and software that you are using.
Failing to use the current patches will only result in your website and system becoming vulnerable to malicious virus attacks as some viruses can easily pass through existing software and require newer patches to stop them. Be judicious with your file server permissions: File server permissions should be set in such a way that you do not allow indiscriminate entry to your website and are aware of what is being uploaded or downloaded or even simply accessed. Like your home, it is important that you guard the gates of your website, especially if you do not want unsolicited entry that may harm to your website. Use Google webmaster: Linking with the Google webmaster account will help you learn about any hacking attempt immediately, which in turn will assist in determining the future action in case of any problem. This is freely available and helps you deal with your hacking problem without losing any time. Take regular back-ups: Last but not the least, you should always ensure that you regularly take back-ups of your material, either manually or with the help of your web hosting company. Taking regular back-ups of your information and website is essential as this allows you to easily restore the site without any hassle in case of any malicious attack that leads to complete loss of information.
So, use these steps to protect your website investment.